Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture
by Michael Bellesiles
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Book Summary Information
Author: Michael BellesilesEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-09-11
ISBN: 0375701982
Number of pages: 624
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture
Book Review: History that Hits a Nerve
Summary: 5 Stars
I read Arming America last year, and I am surprised to discover all the controversy surrounding it today. I'm college-educated, but not a trained historian. Like most of us, I must rely on the peer review process to substantiate the quality of the author's work. This will take some years to accomplish, the final verdict will not be unanimous and it will be greatly hampered by the current political rhetoric - both pro and con - on the subject of gun control.I can say this: The book is consistently plausible and non-judgemental... and it's great read too. It describes an ambivalent and evolving relationship between government, citizen and arms that dates back to the yeoman archers of medieval England. It's a facinating peice of historical detective work with depth and flavor. The author invites the readers to draw their own conclusions.
I've been acquainting myself with the criticism published on various websites. After sifting through the obvious NRA and right-wing polemics, it appears that the only historians who have challenged Bellesiles on his sources and methods are either partisan amateurs or authors of books previously published to uphold the historical sanctity of the Second Amendment. All the rest is simply repeating and escalating these few original charges.
They hold Bellesiles to a level of inerrancy that would benefit research in chemistry or physics, but is hardly appropriate for historical research. Yes, he erred by citing records from San Francisco that actually came from towns across the bay... but the geography does not change the statistical results. No historical work is without such imperfections.
Sorry, but the critics with academic credentials have sacrificed their credibility by allowing their charges against Bellesiles to be inflated in the right-wing media from "erroneous" to "distorted" to "fraudulent". This simply isn't the case.
Some myths die hard. I used to believe that George Washington threw a silver dollar across the Potomac River. I loved watching the "Swamp Fox" outwit the British on TV when I was a kid and I cherished the toy flintlock that I brought home from Disneyland.
But Arming America is history for adults. I recommend that you read it with an open mind... and beleive me, no one will take your gun away if you do.
Summary of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture
How and when did Americans develop their obsession with guns? Is gun-related violence so deeply embedded in American historical experience as to be immutable? The accepted answers to these questions are "mythology," says Michael A. Bellesiles.Basing his arguments on sound and prodigious research, Bellesiles makes it clear that gun ownership was the exception--even on the frontier--until the age of industrialization. In Colonial America the average citizen had virtually no access to or training in the use of firearms, and the few guns that did exist were kept under strict control. No guns were made in America until after the Revolution, and there were few gunsmiths to keep them in repair.
Bellesiles shows that the U.S. government, almost from its inception, worked to arm its citizens, but it met only public indifference and resistance until the 1850s, when technological advances--such as repeating revolvers with self-contained bullets--contributed to a surge in gun manufacturing. Finally, we see how the soaring gun production engendered by the Civil War, and the decision to allow soldiers to keep their weapons at the end of the conflict, transformed the gun from a seldom-needed tool to a perceived necessity--opposing ideas that are still at the center of the fight for and against gun control today.
Michael A. Bellesiles's research set off a chain of passionate reaction after its publication in the Journal of American History in 1996, and Arming America is certain to be one of the most controversial and widely read books on the subject.
From the Hardcover edition.
While gun supporters use the nation's gun-toting history in defense of their way of life, and revolutionary enthusiasts replay skirmishes on historic battlefields, it now turns out that America has not always had a gun culture, and wide-scale gun ownership is much newer than we think. After a 10-year search for "a world that isn't there," professor and scholar Michael Bellesiles discovered that Americans not only rarely owned guns prior to the Civil War, they wouldn't even take them for free from a government that wanted to arm its reluctant public. No sharpshooters, no gun in every home, no children learning to hunt beside their fathers. Bellesiles--whose research methods have generated a great deal of controversy and even a subsequent investigation by Emory University--searched legal, probate, military, and business records; fiction and personal letters; hunting magazines; and legislation in his quest for the legendary gun-wielding frontiersman, only to discover that he is a myth. There are other revelations: gun ownership and storage was strictly legislated in colonial days, and frivolous shooting of a musket was backed by the death penalty; men rarely died in duels because the guns were far too inaccurate (duels were about honor, not murder); pioneers didn't hunt (they trapped and farmed); frontier folk loved books, not guns; and the militia never won a war (it was too inept). In fact, prior to the Civil War, when mass production of higher quality guns became a reality, the republic's greatest problem was a dearth of guns, and a public that was too peaceable to care about civil defense. As Bellesiles writes, "Probably the major reason why the American Revolution lasted eight years, longer than any war in American history before Vietnam, was that when that brave patriot reached above the mantel, he pulled down a rusty, decaying, unusable musket (not a rifle), or found no gun there at all." Strangely, the eagle-eye frontiersman was created by East Coast fiction writers, while the idea of a gun as a household necessity was an advertising ploy of gun maker Samuel Colt (both just prior to the Civil War). The former group fabricated a historic and heroic past while Colt preyed on overblown fears of Indians and blacks.
Bellesiles, who is highly knowledgeable about weapons and military history, never comes out against guns. He is more interested in discovering the truth than in taking sides. Nevertheless, his work shatters some time-honored myths and icons--including the usual reading of the Second Amendment--and will be hard to refute. This fascinating, eye-opening account is sure to both inform and inflame the already highly charged debate about guns in America. --Lesly Reed
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