Michael A. Bellesiles:
Anti-Gun-Nut Of The Century — Part XXIII

by Larry Pratt

Quantitatively, as a part of the big picture, it’s small. But,
qualitatively, it is very important, very instructive. Because it
shows just how petty and vindictive Emory Professor Michael A.
Bellesiles is.

In what was supposed to be a reply to his critics in the newsletter
of the Organization Of American Historians (November, 2001) — but
which refuted no major criticism — Bellesiles, author of the
scandal-bound book Arming America: The Origins Of A National Gun
Culture (Knopf, 2000), admits what he calls “one significant
mistake.” It was in his discussion of the Militia Act of 1792. He
writes: “As soon as Ian Binnington of the University of Illinois
made me aware of this error, for which I thank him, I contacted
several historical listserves and posted the correction. Knopf
corrected the passage in further printings of the book.”

But — guess what? — once again (surprise!) Bellesiles is wrong.

In an interview, Binnington tells us: “It was, slightly, not really
fair to give me the credit.” In fact, Binnington, who is a Ph.D.
student at the University of Illinois and Book Review Editor of the
online H-South academic discussion list, says he was “surprised”
when he read that Bellesiles was giving him credit for the
“significant mistake” he now admits.

OK. So, why was Binnington surprised? Well, because he is an
intellectually honest man who will not take credit for something he
did not do. He tells us all he did was forward to Bellesiles an
October, 2000, post by gun scholar Clayton Cramer who is really the
person who discovered Bellesiles’ “significant mistake” re: the
Militia Act of 1792. Binnington says Cramer is one of the most
active members of the H-South discussion group. He adds that Cramer
certainly has an opinion “but he seems to back it up with adequate
evidence” — which, of course, is more than can be said about
Bellesiles, to put it mildly.

So, if he was intellectually honest, Bellesiles should be thanking
Clayton Cramer for pointing out not just this “significant mistake”
but scores, indeed hundreds, of other mistakes in his wretched book.

Meanwhile, Amazon.com, obviously unware that Arming America has been
exposed as a fraud — or simply not caring — has praised the book
as (get this!) “overwhelmingly thorough… a singular historical
work destined to have profound ramifications in the current debate
over guns.” This absurd assertion caused numerous individuals to
write Amazon.com blasting the Bellesiles book.

Jim Longley from Texas says: “As an amateur genealogist with many
ancestors in the era, I was quite suspicious of Bellesiles’ work
when I first heard of it. A quick perusal in the bookstore convinced
me not to buy it, I didn’t want the publisher and author to profit
from what appeared to be a bogus work. Now I have obtained a copy
from a second hand store, and I find my suspicions confirmed, and
more. I was initially only suspicious that the author had twisted
data, not that he had ignored some while fabricating other.

“My family roots go back to the colonial era, when a portion of the
family was massacred by Abnakis and others were carried off. The
accounts of that massacre from the survivors indicate that there
were at least five guns in the hands of the family, but those guns
would have gone uncounted by Bellesiles because they do not show up
in wills or probate inventories.

“What I read in the book, combined with what I have found in my own
research, many of the resources he claimed are now available online,
convinces me that the little I paid for this book even in a half
price store was wasted but for the opportunity to see how wrong it
is. I intend to burn the book on Halloween with all the ceremony due
to such pieces of witchcraft.”

A reader from Malvern, Arkansas, says: “Finally this charlatan has
been exposed. I left Emory University in great anger 10 years ago.
The stifling atmosphere of political correctness at Emory had all
but obliterated any semblance of the free discussion of ideas.

“In Prof. Bellesiles’ seminars he routinely denigrated his betters
(Edmund Morgan and Perry Miller among them) on trivial points, while
the students nobly and aptly defended these truly great historians.
Anything dealing with Christianity, men, the South and Southerners
(whom he always referred to as rednecks unless they were wimps in
Volvos), Anglo-American culture — you know the usual liberal litany
of suspects — was constantly belittled, berated, and trashed. I
hate to see the history profession descend to granting this worm the
Bancroft Prize.”

A reader from New York says: “Arming America is another familiar
example of history being rewritten to make the past conform to the
media’s prevailing opinion of the present. Go buy a gun.”

David J. Peddy of Frankston, Texas, says: “There’s not much to say
about this book except that it is full of historical errors, and
outright lies. The liberal left in this country have a favorite
tactic when their twisted immature philosophy hits the wall of
reality: they lie. Please be sure to check out the lies in this
book. There’s not enough time here to enumerate them, just check his
sources for accuracy! Half of them are wrong, and the other half are
made up. Here’s just one example: on page 74 in his book, he cites
pages 9-25 of a book entitled “For the Colony of Virginia Britanna”
(a reprint of an old book) to say that guns were to be stored in
central warehouses, instead of in peoples homes. But, when examined,
those pages say absolutely NOTHING about guns! What psuedo-scholars
like this are counting on when they are pushing their agendas, are
that the readers will not bother to check the sources for
accuracy…. WRONG! Emory College is not the first school to protect
one of their own in the name of political correctness.”

James J. Klapper from Oldsmar, Florida, says, in part: “The only
reasonably complete survey of firearms ownership in the American
colonies is from the siege of Boston. The British General Gage
ordered that anyone desiring to leave Boston turn in all weapons.
More firearms were collected than there were houses in the whole
town. Considering that this was the oldest city in the English
colonies, not the frontier, that the patriot militia had left long
before with their guns, and many loyalists elected to remain, the
Americans were just as heavily armed in 1775 as today.

“As for there being few gunsmiths or firearm manufacturers, there
are some 300 gunsmiths on the records in Bucks County, Pa., alone,
before 1850. And Sharps produced about 24,000 rifles before the
Model 1859, not “a few hundred of them prior to 1860″. It would take
another book to detail all the errors in Bellesiles, so I’ll cut it
short and state that virtually nothing in this book is true.”

Ellicott McConnell of Easton, Maryland, says, in part: “[Bellesiles]
incorrectly explains something as simple as a flintlock mechanism,
and refers to Custer’s confidence in the ability of his soldiers’
repeating arms to defeat the Indians. I suspect that half the
literate high school students in the United States are well aware
that any repeating rifles on the Montana battlefield were in the
hands of the Indians. These are just examples; the man knows nothing
of firearms.”

John Brewer of Los Angeles, California, says, in part: “This book is
just didactic misinformation. I don’t know what caused Bellesiles to
take sides (or switch sides) on the gun control debate, but in stark
contrast to this book in which he presents carefully selected
“evidence” that the 18th century militia was mostly unarmed and
comprised of poor shots, in his previous book “Revolutionary
Outlaws: Ethan Allen and the Struggle for Independence,” he wrote
about the 1777 Battle of Bennington: “These frontier farmers
destroyed two units of professional soldiers in the same day. The
first victory is surprising for its coordinated encirclement of a
disciplined and well-led enemy…. Several British officers
expressed shock that ‘the peasants of the country’ had ‘fought with
great courage and obstinacy.’” After this victory, “the New
Hampshire and Vermont militias accelerated their campaign of
harassment into full-scale attacks.” That of course resulted in
Burgoyne’s surrender. None of this is mentioned in the 600 pages of
this book! Remember, all this is from Bellesiles! This is but one
example of a conspicuous omission in a tome that some are labeling
“comprehensive.”
_______________________________________________________-

Michael A. Bellesiles:
Anti-Gun-Nut Of The Century — Part XXIV

by Larry Pratt

Things happened a little differently when Emory History Professor
Michael A. (Omama Ibin Lyin’) Bellesiles flew his plane load of
lies, half-truths and fabrications into the Tower Of Truth about
guns in American history. His plane (his awful book Arming America:
The Origins Of A National Gun Culture, Knopf, 2000) went down in
flames. But the truth about guns still stands.

Now, Bellesiles is on the run. Conservative attacks on his book were
the equivalent of being strafed by one of those C-130 gun ships.
This drove him deep into his cave where he continues to stonewall
his critics. But, then the B-52s (the Boston Globe, the Wall Street
Journal) unloaded their 15,000 pound bunker-busters — in this case,
their professor pulverizers — on Bellesiles. And now the New York
Times (12-8-2001) has unloaded another 15,000 pound “daisy-cutter”
on Bellesiles.

In the Times’ five-column-wide, 36.5 inch story, by reporter Robert
F. Worth, the headline refers to what Bellesiles is involved in as
“a Scandal.” Noting that many of Bellesiles’ defenders “have gone
silent,” Worth says that “a number of scholars” say that when all
the evidence is in, the outcome “could be one of the worst academic
scandals in years.”

Bellesiles — once again attempting, pathetically, to portray
himself as a victim — is quoted as saying: “I feel like I’m a
historian who accidentally stepped into a minefield.” Accidentally?
Excuse me, but I believe the professor wrote his book on purpose,
did he not? Of course. And what we have here is not some victim
accidentally blown up in a minefield. No, what we have here is a
liar who has committed academic suicide.

Despite what Bellesiles has implied in the past to the contrary, the
Times says scholars who have documented serious errors in Arming
America “do not appear to have any sort of political agenda” and
many of them are “gun control advocates.”

The Times reports that Ohio State University History Professor
Randolph Roth sees, in some cases, Bellesiles’ numbers “being off by
a factor of two, three or more.” Roth says: “The number and scope of
the errors in Bellesiles’ work are extraordinary.”

The Times says that earlier this year, when the criticism of his
book became more intense, Bellesiles asked Prof. Roth to help him
defend himself (Bellesiles). Roth wrote back saying that if
Bellesiles would tell him what records he looked at in Vermont, he
(Roth) would go to the archive on his own time, and that if the
records matched, he would defend Bellesiles. But, says Roth,
Bellesiles never responded to this offer.

Jack Rakove, a Stanford University historian who has been
supportive of Arming America, says that it is important that
Bellesiles “respond to his critics more fully than he has so far.”
More fully than he has?! He hasn’t responded “fully” at all! But
then how would Rakove know? The Times notes that Rakove “conceded
that he had not looked fully at [Bellesiles'] research that has
been questioned.”

One apparent lie Bellesiles has been caught telling involves some
probate records from the 1850s he has said he looked at in a number
of places, including the San Francisco Superior Court. But — ooops!
– the folks at this Court say all the records for the decade in
question were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake! The Times reports
Bellesiles now says “he must have done the research somewhere else
and cannot remember where.”

But, Kathy Beals, former director of the California Geneaological
Society, who has worked extensively with probate records from the
1850 era, tells the Times: “Nobody knows of those records being in
existence, and if they are, there are hundreds of people who would
like to look at them.” And Bellesiles himself is quoted in this
Times story as saying of the probate data in his book: “I wish I had
taken them out entirely.”

Right. And before it’s all over, Bellesiles will wish he had never
written his book.

And Bellesiles continues to stonewall and ignore his serious
scholarly critics and their substantive criticisms. Next January,
the William and Mary Quarterly will publish a lengthy piece by
Bellesiles. The Times says he concedes some mistakes and challenges
others. But, he “leaves many serious errors unaddressed.”

So, what will happen if, as the Times puts it, the scholarly
community reaches a consensus that Arming America is “a seriously
flawed or even a fraudulent book?” Well, the Emory College dean,
Robert A. Paul, says: “If there were scholarly fraud (if?!), we
would take that very seriously.” And Jonathan R. Cole, the provost
and dean of faculties at Columbia University — which awarded
Bellesiles the prestigious Bancroft Prize — says he has distributed
copies of the documents detailing Bellesiles’ mistakes to this
year’s three Bancroft jurors and asked them to examine it.

Well, better late than never, I guess. But one wonders why the
Bancroft jurors didn’t closely investigate Bellesiles’ book before
they gave him this prize.

After all, it is not as if serious criticisms had not been made
before the prize was awarded. If they had exercised due diligence,
and cared anything about the truth, Bellesiles would never have
gotten this award. And if Arming America is officially determined to
be a fraud — and it is! — this is more than something “very
serious,” Dean Paul. Such a finding should cause Bellesiles to be
fired, immediately.

____________________________________________________________

Michael A. Bellesiles:
Anti-Gun-Nut Of The Century — Part XXV

by Larry Pratt

Emory History Professor Michael A. Bellesiles, author of the
thoroughly discredited book Arming America: The Origins Of A
National Gun Culture (Knopf, 2000), has, to put it mildly, been
conspicuously unsuccessful in his embarrassing attempts to back up
certain key claims he makes.

One problem, Bellesiles told us, with a straight face, in an
interview (4/19/2001), is that all the notes to support his book
were destroyed when his office was flooded. All of his notes? Yep,
that’s what he said. How many notes? A friend of his has said, in an
e-mail, that he had “about 100,000 pages” of notes. When we told
this to Dr. Walter Adamson, head of the History Department at Emory,
he said this “sounds like more than anybody really accumulates.”
Indeed.

And then there’s Bellesiles’ problem with the 1906 San Francisco
earthquake. He has said that some of his probate record data came
from research he did in San Francisco. But, officials in that city
familiar with the particular time period which Bellesiles says he
investigated say that this information doesn’t exist because it was
destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire.

But, there’s more. There’s the alleged so-called hacking of
Bellesiles’ web page. When some of the information on his web page
was exposed and proven to be false, Bellesiles said he believes
“dedicated individuals” hacked into his web site “altering and
deleting material.”

Bellesiles says with, again, presumably, a straight face: “Most
outrageously, and this would be funny in other circumstances,
someone had gone through the book section of the probate material
and inserted Cleland’s Memoirs in several book listings.” He says
someone informed him that these Memoirs are the famous early work of
pornography, Fanny Hill, published in the 1760s as Memoirs Of A
Woman Of Pleasure. Bellesiles says: “After I discovered these
alterations in my web site, I called Emory’s web administrator and
asked her to shut down my web page.”

Interesting. In fact, downright fascinating. But, there is no
confirmation that Bellesiles’ web page was hacked.

In an interview, Jan Gleason, a public relations spokesman for Emory
University, tells us: “I can’t confirm it.” He says a “thorough and
continuing investigation” of Bellesiles’ allegation is being
conducted. But, “I can’t confirm any hacking occurred…. We’ve been
unable to confirm any hacking.”

The New York Times (12/8/2001) reports that “several scholars,
including one of Mr. Bellesiles colleagues at Emory, said they
doubted that story” [that his web page was hacked]. Robert A. Paul,
the interim dean at Emory College, is quoted as saying: “I can
neither independently confirm nor deny that Professor Bellesiles’
web site was hacked.”

In a letter-to-the-editor of The Chronicle Of Higher Education
(10/29/2001), Boston University Law Professor Randy E. Barnett says,
in part: “Unless and until Professor Bellesiles produces the
original data on Vermont guns he says he first posted on the web,
and makes them available for examination to interested researchers,
we are entitled to be skeptical of this latest story” [that his web
site was hacked].

In a posting (10/8/2001) to the H-Law online discussion group,
Robert Churchill of Princeton University makes this same point and
more. He says, in part: “If Bellesiles’ web site has been hacked, it
has been hacked twice. The hacker would have to have changed the
language Bellesiles reported for individual gun estates, while
leaving intact Bellesiles’ claims that guns were present in only
11.4 percent of estates. That overall finding was on the web site
when I first viewed it a week after it was created, on February 16.

“The hacker would have to have inserted alterations entirely
consistent with the alterations Bellesiles made in the Providence
records. These alterations must have been made within weeks of the
original postings. The hacker must then have struck again in the
last week or two to add the references to pornography that
Bellesiles mentions but that did not exist on September 3.

“A clever hacker indeed. It is time for Bellesiles to support these
claims. I would ask that Michael immediately provide a copy of his
‘original’ un-hacked essay on Vermont probate records to the editor
of this list.” Churchill concludes by noting that even though
Bellesiles says all his notes for his book were destroyed, “he
should not, however, need notes to reconstruct his methodology. It
is time to put this matter to rest.”

OK. So, these are just a few of the things that have, supposedly,
plagued Bellesiles and his wretched book — flood, earthquake and a
computer hacker. One wonders: what’s next? Will he claim abduction
by aliens and a forced lobotomy to excuse the fact that Arming
America is a fraud?

As for Bellesiles himself, based on his own say-so, putting this
matter to rest — fat chance. Increasingly, very few people believe
anything he says about anything. So, don’t hold your breath waiting
for Bellesiles to explain everything — unless you look good in
purple.

_________________________________________________________

Michael A. Bellesiles:
Anti-Gun-Nut Of The Century — Part XXVI

by Larry Pratt

Well, now. It’s not often that an author dodges a bullet then uses
that same bullet to shoot himself in the foot. But, incredibly, this
is exactly what has been done by Alexander DeConde, Professor Of
History, Emeritus, at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
who is the author of Gun Violence In America: The Struggle For
Control (Northeastern University Press, 2001).

The bullet dodged by DeConde — or so it seemed at first — is Emory
History Professor Michael A. Bellesiles’ by now thoroughly
discredited book Arming America: The Origins Of A National Gun
Culture (Knopf, 2000). And DeConde dodged this bullet by noting in
the Introduction to his own book that he “regrets” he was “unable to
make full use” of Arming America because it was published shortly
after his manuscript went to press. Still, DeConde, amazingly,
refers to Arming America as (are you seated?) a “fine,
well-documented book!”

OK. Now, the shooting-himself-in-the-foot-with-this-same-bullet bit.
In an interview, DeConde tells us that even though he is unaware of
any of the major articles in the national media demolishing
Bellesiles’ book, he stands by his original praise of Arming
America!

When we tell DeConde Bellesiles’ book has been blown full of holes
by articles in the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe and New York
Times, he says, despite the fact that he has read none of these
pieces, that he thinks the “general thrust” of Arming America “is
accurate but his use of statistics is flawed.”

Huh?! But, how could the “general thrust” of Bellesiles’ book stand
if his use of statistics to support this “general thrust” is
“flawed?” Well, DeConde says he’s “not a statistician” and “has not
gone through all of the records” on this subject. Still, he insists,
the “general thrust” of Arming America is “sound.”

DeConde says regarding Bellesiles’ book: “No one I’ve read anywhere
has gathered together such an abundance of sources.” But, we say,
the question is: Are his sources true? Has he accurately reported
them? We tell him that History Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm of
Bentley College, a real gun/Second Amendment scholar, has said that
regardless of which Bellesiles footnotes you check out, the footnote
is never what Bellesiles says it is.

DeConde says he still believes Bellesiles, as a scholar, is
“superior.” You mean there are more lies, half-truths and mistakes
in Malcolm’s work than there are in Arming America?! He replies:
“What I haven’t done, and don’t intend to do, is to check every
single footnote in her book or his book…. I don’t know how many
miscitations are in Bellesiles’ book or Malcolm’s book.”

When told that he must know in order to say Bellesiles’ scholarship
is “superior” to Malcolm’s, DeConde simply ignores this point,
noting that he’s been a working historian for over 50 years (he’s
81 years old), he’s made mistakes in his work, so have others –
though he is “not a professional gun historian.”

OK. So, if you haven’t checked Arming America for mistakes, and
you’re not a “professional gun historian,” how do you know the book
is “fine, well-documented?” Well, it’s true, DeConde says, “I did
not check [Bellesiles'] statistics.” But, he “stands by” what he
says.

Amazing!

Q: “Why, in your own book, do you repeatedly speak of the Second
Amendment as protecting a ‘privilege’ when it’s in the
Constitution’s Bill of Rights”?!

A: “Because it is a privilege.”

Q: “So this is really a Bill of Privileges”?!

Well, DeConde says the use of the word “rights” is “an uncomfortable
vocabulary” because all kinds of people claim all kinds of rights.

Q: “But are the first 10 Amendments to our Constitution not a Bill
Of Rights”?!

A: “Oh, yes. But, the interpretation is a disputable issue and the
courts have maintained, generally, that the so-called right or
privilege to own a gun, individually, is not supported by the
Second Amendment.”

When it is pointed out to DeConde that there is growing support in
the courts and among academics for the so-called “Standard Model” of
the Second Amendment, which recognizes the right of individuals to
keep and bear arms, he says, simply, with no proof offered, that the
“Standard Model” is “a charade.”

In his own book, DeConde argues that, among other things, it is the
“easy access” to guns that is responsible for the “gun violence” in
our society. When we note that “gun violence” was much lower in our
country in the 1940s and 1950s, when access to guns was much easier
(you could order a gun by mail), he says he thinks his reasoning is
still “sound.”

In fact, DeConde goes so far as to say — without offering any
evidence at all — that it is his “impression” that there was
“considerable gun violence” in the 1940s and 1950s. It was, however,
not reported as prominently as it is today. But, this is
preposterous. In the 40s and 50s all kinds of violent crime received
far greater news media attention than today because such violence
was much less frequent than today.

DeConde, in his book, not surprisingly, thinks that the virtual
outlawing of all private guns in England and Australia is wonderful.
But, he admits, he is “not aware” of what has happened in these
countries as a result of this gun ban. In a nutshell, what has
happened has, to put it mildly, not been wonderful. In fact,
nothing, in England or Australia, that gun grabbers like DeConde
predicted would happen as a result of such a gun ban, has happened.
Nothing.

Q: “Do you believe in the right of self-defense?”

A: “I don’t agree to any generally broad term of that nature since
it means so many things to so many people.”

When DeConde is taken to task for not meeting head on, and replying
to, the detailed, well-documented gun scholarship of either John
Lott or Gary Kleck — and for not listing them in his book’s index
– he says, shockingly: “Oh, I think John Lott is an idiot in many
ways!” What he’s written “doesn’t stand up at all.”

Q: “How about Gary Kleck? Is he an idiot, too?”

A: “No, no.”

And, having second thoughts, he says he “takes back” what he said
about Lott.

The dust cover on DeConde’s book says it “brings balance” to the gun
control debate. But, it does not. It is a typical gun-grabbing,
gun-hating, anti-Second Amendment, anti-self-defense diatribe. And
his agenda is revealed clearly in his chapter titled “Summing Up” in
which, among other things: he mocks the “birth-right theory” that
there is a “God-given right to keep and bear arms;” he praises the
British for having “banned private possession of guns;” he dismisses
self-defense with guns as only a “theory;” he, absurdly, totally
trusts the police alone has being able to defend us; and he says
“the most effective form of regulation” would be “the prohibiting of
private gun-ownership.”

When one reads Alexander DeConde’s terrible book, and interviews
him, it is no surprise at all the he continues to support Michael A.
Bellesiles and his scandalous book.