Check back in the next few days for additional information on academic fraud, research fraud, and intellectual dishonesty related to Michael Bellesiles "research" on firearm ownership in early American history. Here is some preliminary information and some references:

For information on how Bellesiles has distorted American history in an attempt to deceive and manipulate the public and take credit for fraudulent "research", visit the internet sites listed below.

Bellesiles uses intellectual dishonesty and bigotry against firearm owners, stereotyping and labeling them as the "gun culture." It is obvious that in both early and modern American history, it is inaccurate and dishonest to lump all firearm owners in the same category, be they peaceful citizens and patriot militia members fighting for independence and freedom, or criminal ruffians and highwaymen. This would be like labeling and denigrating Jews as the "wine culture" because saying prayers over wine and drinking wine is one of many important aspects of Jewish culture. Similarly, labeling and denigrating American culture as the "gun culture" is inaccurate, dishonest, and bigoted.

FraudFactor web site Academic and Research Fraud Index Page (check back regularly for new content):

SAF Guns in Early America Index Page:

These two links provide a representative example of Bellesiles misquoting historical documents by changing and inserting language to misrepresent the meaning of the documents as the opposite of the original language. This practice indicates intentional fraud rather than gross incompetence.

Letter published in the Washington Post from constitutional law scholar and author Stephen P. Halbrook (third letter from top), stating that the inventories of Thomas Jefferson's three estates did not list a single firearm even though it is well known and documented that Jefferson owned multiple firearms of value and he was a strong advocate of widespread private firearm ownership for self-defense. This significant example debunks Bellesiles methodology.

Scholar Clayton Cramer's web site:

Rebuttal to Bellesiles article in the Journal of American History where he asserts that guns and hunting were actually quite rare in America before the Mexican War -- even on the frontier. (25 page PDF file)

Longer, more detailed refutation of Bellesiles "research", exposing what appears to be intentional research fraud:

This position paper, "Counting Guns In Early America" is especially important for those who wish to understand the intellectual and academic dishonesty with which Bellesiles conducted his research.

Download free Acrobat Reader Web Browser plug-in if you cannot view the above PDF files:

NRA Response:

Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 00:52:05 -0700
From: "Clayton E. Cramer"
Subject: What a wonderful resource the Library of Congress has put online!

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html allows you to search the entire journals of the Continental Congress, the U.S. Congress (through 1873), as well as statutes adopted throughout this period. The great advantage of this resource is that you can check accuracy of quotations so painlessly that careless historians can't get away it anymore.

Let me give an example. Michael Bellesiles's book Arming America quotes the Militia Act of 1792, and a bit differently than I remembered it. After explaining that the Militia Act defined every free white male 18-45 to be a member of the mililtia, Bellesiles makes the following remarks, quoting from the statute:

Further, "every citizen so enrolled, shall...be constantly provided with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints," and other accoutrements. Congress took upon itself the responsiblity of providing those guns, and specified that within five years all muskets "shall be of bores sufficient for balls of the eighteenth part of a pound."

[Bellesiles, Arming America, 230]

That every citizen so enrolled and notified, shall within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock: or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder....[2nd Cong., Sess. 1, Ch. 33 (1792), pp. 271-274]

How much more egregious a case of fraud is required before Bellesiles has to answer to anyone for this? If Bellesiles is allowed to engage in this level of dishonesty without consequences, we might as well start congratulating the Holocaust deniers for their "fine scholarship."
--
Clayton E. Cramer
http://www.ggnra.org/cramer to see excerpts from my five published books and full text of a number of scholarly and popular articles.

Posted for educational purposes only.
This article may still be available on-line at http://www.washingtonpost.com

Specifically, check out the third Letter to the Editor at this link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42132-2000Nov19.html

LETTERS
Sunday, November 19, 2000; Page X11

Shooting Straight

John Chambers's review (Book World, Oct. 29) questions Michael Bellesiles's premise in Arming America that sample estates of deceased persons indicate that only 14 percent of Americans owned firearms when the republic was founded. To test this method, I reviewed the inventories of Thomas Jefferson's three estates. They are very detailed, right down to the "2 sickles" valued at $1 and "cotton sheets $1.25." Not one firearm.

Yet Jefferson was a life-long firearm owner. He hunted as a boy and once won "a shilling threepence" in a shooting match. His papers indicate dozens of purchases of fowling pieces and pistols. "Let your gun be the constant companion of your walks," Jefferson wrote his nephew.

Why weren't Jefferson's firearms listed in his estates? He gave his Turkish pistols, with which "I never missed a squirrel at 30 yds.," to Dolly Madison's son. The rest are a mystery, but a pair of pocket pistols he bought in 1786 are on display at Monticello.

Bellesiles's thesis that gun ownership was unimportant to Americans who lived at the time the Second Amendment was adopted is welcomed by supporters of strict gun control. Yet whatever the merits of current proposals, Chambers's review is a welcome relief from writing history as ideology.

STEPHEN P. HALBROOK
Fairfax