Historian's Failings Have Impact Today

Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin aren't the only nationally known historians whose scholarship is in question. The spotlight of peer and public scrutiny has also fallen on Michael Bellesiles (pronounced "Buh-leel"), the Emory University professor who wrote the book "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture."

Not only are Bellesiles' alleged transgressions less broadly reported than the others. They are, if confirmed, more relevant because his historical thesis has become part of the contemporary public policy debate on the Second Amendment.

While the other historians' purported failings are more, well, academic, Bellesiles' are more relevant. As David Skinner explains in the Weekly Standard, "Arguing that no American 'gun culture' existed before 1850 or so, Bellesiles marshaled a variety of sources to show that guns were much rarer, significantly less useful, and far more regulated than previously believed... If no absolute, presumptive right to own a gun existed back when the Second Amendment was written, then no such right exists today."

That would be a profound strike against the view some of us hold that the Founders recognized an individual right to keep and bear arms important enough to enshrine in the Bill of Rights. Can the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" be culled from the rights of the people "peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances," "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures"?

If so, it would bolster the case that owning firearms is a collective rather than individual right.

Handgun Control. Inc., in April of last year congratulated Bellesiles on his book winning Columbia University's Bancroft Prize, the preeminent award for history writing. The anti-gun group praised Bellesiles' "meticulous research," which "debunks the mythology propagated by the gun lobby that guns were essential for survival in the early history of this nation... By exposing the truth about gun ownership in Early America, Michael Bellesiles has removed one more weapon in the gun lobby's arsenal of fallacies against common-sense gun laws."

Criticism from Second Amendment advocates was to be expected. But the unexpected criticism came from his fellow historians.

James Lindgren, professor of probate law at Northwestern University, asked Bellesiles for the original sources of some of the data in the book for his own research. Bellesiles said his notes had been destroyed in a flood. When an intrigued Lindgren and a colleague checked the sources themselves, they found numerous flaws -- or gaps -- in Bellesiles' research. Other scholars found additional problems.

The world of American historians held its collective breath in anticipation of a review last month by four prominent scholars in a forum in the prestigious William and Mary Quarterly.

Three of the four solicited essays raised serious questions about Bellesiles' work. David Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Emory University colleague, told The Atlanta Journal and Constitution that "cumulatively, those three essays make a powerful case for a charge of scholarly incompetence, of being so blinded by the light that he rode roughshod over anything that didn't propel him toward the light."

Bellesiles has admitted he made errors in the book and corrections have been posted to the paperback edition. Emory University has called for a formal investigation into allegations against Bellesiles.

One of Bellesiles' defenders is Dr. Arthur Kellermann, Director of the Center for Injury Control at Emory University's School of Medicine.

Kellermann's allegiance presents an opportunity to challenge a long-cherished belief of gun-control advocates that Kellermann himself fomented in a 1986 report. Along with co-author Donald Reay, then King County medical examiner, Kellermann suggested that an individual who keeps a gun in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder. The report was based on a study of firearms deaths in King County during 1978-83.

Those in the gun-control community took the study and rushed to sweeping judgments about the safety risks of guns in homes. In their rush, they failed to note at least one important caveat from Kellermann: "Mortality studies such as ours do not include cases in which burglars or intruders are wounded or frightened away by the use or display of a firearm. Cases in which would-be intruders may have purposely avoided a house known to be armed are also not identified... A complete determination of firearm risks versus benefits would require that these figures be known."

Unnoticed, too, was the fact that 84 percent of the in-home deaths was the result of suicide, irrelevant to crime or self-defense issues.

And look at the type of households that made their way into Kellermann's report. Fifty-three percent had a history of a family member being arrested. Thirty-one percent had a household history of illicit drug use; 25 percent reported alcohol-related problems; 32 percent contained a household member hit or hurt in a family fight.It's wrong to make an ideological point by playing fast and loose with history, whether the history is colonial or contemporary.

Sure, Kellerman,whose own work is very questionable if not downright phoney,supports a fellow liar. They are cut from the same anti-freedom cloth; they are both part of the shrinking cadre of those wishing to revise history to fit the socialist agenda.

The four most powerful words in the Constitution are to be found in the 2nd Amendment, and nowhere else in the document: "....shall not be infringed." If the guys who wrote those words meant for the 2nd to apply to the states, they would have put it in the body of the Constitution; No, the RKBA is very clearly an individual right. And it is MORE protected by those words than the socialists precious 1st Amendment which only says, "Congress shall make no law."

I'm trying to think of the name of another professor who wrote about Jefferson--turned out he was a fake, lied about experiences. If I remember correctly, he got only a slap on the wrist from the school where he taught.

Professor Joseph Ellis at Mt Holyoke college wrote a book on Jefferson. He also smeared Jefferson in order to defend Clinton. And lied about being in Viet Nam.

Joseph Ellis Vietnam War Wannabe

I think a more fruitful endeavor would be the investigation of the prevalence of rampant academic fraud on Ivy-League campuses by phoney stuffed-shirt commies who think they can get away with anything as long as its politically correct.

I had to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming when I saw that this was written by Thomas Shapley. I don't recall him ever before taking a conservative position on any issue in the many years he's been with the P.I.

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