Bellesiles Torpedoed by National Review
by Larry Pratt

Melissa Seckora, an editorial associate at National Review magazine, is
one
of very few journalists who has cared enough about the truth to do some
original investigative reporting on Emory University History Professor
Michael A. Bellesiles’ hideously inaccurate book Arming America: The
Origins
Of A National Gun Culture (Knopf, 2000). In her most recent piece
(11/26/2001), Seckora takes a close look at Bellesiles’ supposed reply
to
his critics in the November, 2001, issue of the newsletter of the
Organization Of American Historians.

Seckora begins by quoting Bellesiles as saying it is “the duty of any
scholar to take responsibility for errors and to endeavor to correct
them.”
But, she concludes: “Bellesiles does not correct any of the serious,
carefully documented criticisms of scholars who have taken the time to
review his sources…. [his book] represents one of the worst cases of
academic irresponsibility in memory…. Even when Bellesiles comes close
to
giving some sort of explanation for his inaccurate gun counts, he
manages to
give responses that are directly contrary to the ones he has given
before,
and are still wrong…. Instead of responding in a careful way to the
criticism from fellow academics, Michael Bellsiles has produced a
response
that is as inadequate and inaccurate as his book.”

Seckora quotes James Lindgren, a Northwestern University law professor
who
has identified many errors in Bellesiles’ work, as saying: “His errors
in
using sources are dramatic and go to the heart of his book’s argument –
how
many guns there were, who owned them, where they were kept, what
condition
they were in, how they were used, and how important they were in early
America.”

Don Hickey, a professor of history at Wayne State College, who peer
reviewed
Bellesiles’ earlier work, is quoted as saying: “These criticisms have
convinced me that Bellesiles misread, misused, and perhaps even
fabricated
some of his evidence.” Though he believes it is still possible that
Bellesiles’ thesis may be partly correct, Hickey says: “I no longer
believe
that his evidence proves his thesis.”

Seckora reports that the faculty at Emory are following the Bellesiles
story
more closely now. She quotes one Emory professor as telling her: “A
number
of [us at Emory] think the questions that have been raised by critics
whose
motivations are not in any way political, are exceptionally serious.”

Seckora says some of “the most significant statements” in Arming America

are “based” on “data that do not exist.” For example, Bellesiles told
her he
reviewed documents at the San Francisco Superior Court that were
actually
destroyed by fire in the 1906 earthquake. When confronted with this
fact,
Bellesiles said he was working from a “dim memory,” that these records
were
in the Mormon Church’s Family Research Library and the Sutro Library.

Seckora checks. Surprise! These libraries say the records Bellesiles
refers
to do not exist at these libraries.

Then Bellesiles tells The Chronicle Of Higher Education he’s located
these
documents and sent for them. But, strangely, in his OAH reply, he makes
no
mention of finding these documents. Says Seckora: “Instead, he changes
his
story again in an apparent attempt to admit some error. He says: ‘I
completely forget in which of several California archives I read what I
recall to be twelve probate records from 1859 to 1860 with San Francisco
as
the stated location.’”

But, says Seckora: “This conflicts with what he told me in September –
that
he looked at ‘a few hundred cases’ in both San Francisco and Los
Angeles.
Mysteriously, he adds the year 1860, which is not in the sample in his
book.”

Seckora also reports on an upcoming issue of The William And Mary
Quarterly
which will contain an article by Randolph Roth of Ohio State University,
one
of the leading authorities on homicide in early America. In this piece,
Roth points out, among other things, that Bellesiles’ error rate for
homicides in the Plymouth Colony for a 46-year period is 100 percent. In

Arming America Bellesiles said there were no prosecutions for homicide
in
this Colony during this time period.

And on and on and on it goes. Check out and examine closely virtually
anything Bellesiles states as fact in Arming America and it will never
be
exactly as Bellesiles says it is. Never.

Bellsiles does do well, however, at responding to charges nobody has
heard
of. For example, he says he’s been told he did not discuss Daniel Morgan
and
his riflemen. He says he’s been charged with calling for the
confiscation
of firearms. But, he says, he devoted six pages to Morgan and his men;
he
denies the second accusation. Says Seckora: “There is just one problem
with
this: No scholar or journalist has ever heard these criticisms before.”