Soft Skull Press Issues New Edition of (Bellesiles) Arming America (what an apt name)

Join Together ^ | 1-12-04 | Richard Nash

[Dan from Michigan]

Soft Skull Press Issues New Edition of Arming America
1/12/2004

Press Release
Soft Skull Press
71 Bond Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217

Contact:
Richard Nash
Phone: (snip)

Michael A. Bellesiles' Arming America remains a stunning and seminal book that challenges everything we've previously been taught about America's history with guns.

Brooklyn, NY - Painstakingly examining the historical record, Bellesiles shatters the myth of America's gun-toting revolutionary citizens. Beginning with the European tradition from which the American colonists emerged, Bellesiles indicates that ordinary people had virtually no access to or training in the use of firearms Bellesiles shows that there was a huge surge of interest in hunting in the 1820s and 30s on the part of urban middle-class and elite men, and in the 30s the word "manly" increasingly became linked with gun use. During the 1840s violence increased as well, especially violence inspired by slavery and racism in general. By the mid-1850s technological advances contributed to a surge of gun manufacturing. But it was the soaring gun production and the industrialization encouraged by the Civil War era -- and the decision to allow soldiers to keep their weapons at the end of the war -- that transformed the gun from a seldom-needed tool to a perceived necessity and fostered an emotional connection between man and weapon.

Given the ramifications of this book for opponents of gun control in America, there was an immediate outcry. When questions rose as to details of his research, the politically motivated effort by the gun lobby and its supporters expanded to include a committee of scholars and historians who devoted months to checking Bellesiles's footnotes in the archives where he did his research--a practice that is extremely unusual in historical scholarship--and found evidence of sloppy research in five pages.

In this revised edition, Bellesiles answers his academic critics, providing updated research addressing their concerns, and finding that the underlying thesis of his book remains as solid as ever. Legal scholar and historian Richard B. Bernstein adds a Foreword in which he demonstrates the virulent power of the American Right to obliterate those people who disagree with them.

[Dan from Michigan]

Soft Skull is right. Those that still believe the disproven Bellesiles sure have skulls full of mush.

[Dan from Michigan]

bttt

[groanup]

"Given the ramifications of this book for opponents of gun control in America, there was an immediate outcry"

And an almost immediate firing by Emory University. They must have made a mistake.

[Eaker]

Soft Skull is right. Those that still believe the disproven Bellesiles sure have skulls full of mush.

Load of poop ping!!

[Indie]

This isn't a "revised edition."
It's revised history.

[1rudeboy]

. . . and found evidence of sloppy research in five pages.

That's still five pages more than Bellesiles himself found, before the great flood, or locusts, or losing his job at Emory.

[glock rocks]

finding that the underlying thesis of his book remains as solid as ever

solid as ever.

[jrp]

Oh geez, not this jerk again.
Doctoring phony "data" still results in phony data.
The gun banners are really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

[Bogey78O]

Someone ought to take a pic of the Jefferson gun collection and paste the lie by Bellislies on his gun ownership.

[Travis McGee]

Yeah, we settled the frontier and tamed the west tossing daisies at the indians. Right!

[RAY]

Michael A. Bellesiles agenda is?

"Bellesiles indicates that ordinary people had virtually no access to or training in the use of firearms --".

What the hell does that mean?

Gun were just like an ax or hammer, just another tool for the people who settled and tamed this country. These people were around guns all their life -- and only needed to be safe, they didn't need much training - for most it came naturally.

[Billthedrill]

It isn't as if there were much controversy left - Bellesisles has been repudiated by the academic committee and denounced by the most anti-gun elements of same for the simple reason that his evidence was proven to have been falsified and its sources impossible to have held it in the first place.

But we all said at the time that Bellesiles would continue to be quoted admiringly by people who are entirely uninterested in the truth of the matter. Truth has nothing to do with this, it's received wisdom, and to doubt it is to walk in the realm of the heretic.

[pabianice]

Painstakingly examining the historical record, Bellesiles shatters the myth of America's gun-toting revolutionary citizens.

He's right. Computer-enhanced photos of the Battle of Lexington reveal that the Colonists carried cell phones and whistles, not guns!

[TexasCowboy]

The revolutionaries had no knives or axes, either.
They were very good at making ugly faces at their enemy.

[LanPB01]

Soft Skull are the same people that published "Fortunate Son" (the book about Bush claiming his cocaine related arrests had been suppressed and covered up) after it was determined to be a load of garbage written by a guy with a very shady past. I'm not surprised they'd jump at the opportunity to publish more nonsense.

[LanPB01]

Not just any cell phones - the kind with digital cameras built into them. The worst kind!

[basil]

This is nuts! But then, most gun grabbers are nuts! They probably need a totally lying book to back up what they "feel".

[Joe Brower]

[Puppage]

How did Winchester make all his money? Oh, yeah...with that shirt business he had.

[Tijeras_Slim]

I'm not surprised... Gun Grabbers are the best example today of the "Big Lie'.