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Vol. 8, No. 40	11250 Waples Mill Road, Fairfax, VA 22030	10/5/2001

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Bellesiles Ordered To Respond To Critics "...[T]he evidence is so overwhelming that it is incumbent upon Bellesiles as a serious scholar to respond. He either has to admit error, or somehow show how his work is right..."   -- Gerald Rosenberg, University of Chicago Law School   Prof. Rosenberg Michael Bellesiles, author of the controversial book Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, has been told he must defend the oft-criticized "research" that was the basis of his book. Bellesiles is currently an historian at Emory University, and the clamor of controversy surrounding his book has reached such a volume that James Melton, Emory's history department chairman, told the Boston Globe Bellesiles must "defend himself and the integrity of his scholarship immediately." The book, according to the author, is a culmination of research that indicates that most Americans around the time of our country's formation did not own firearms. This, of course, is contrary to reams of scholarly research showing that America has always been a nation where the possession of firearms by responsible, law-abiding, private citizens has been widespread. Prof. Volokh While this book initially received high praise from gun-ban extremists and the anti-gun media (the New York Times actually gave the book praise before it was ever released), numerous historians and journalists have since raised extensive criticism of Bellesiles' research. Gerald Rosenberg, a visiting professor of law at Northwestern University, told the Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel in April, "...[T]he evidence is so overwhelming that it is incumbent upon Bellesiles as a serious scholar to respond. He either has to admit error, or somehow show how his work is right." Prof. Malcolm Strassel's April 5 article mentioned several other critics of Bellesiles, including UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, who has pointed to examples of Bellesiles either misquoting sources, or citing sources that do not contain the information the Emory professor claims they contain; Bentley College history professor Joyce Lee Malcolm, author of To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right; Northwestern professor of law James Lindgren, who has tackled what many reviewers have considered to be the most compelling aspect of Bellesiles research - his use of probate records (Lindgren came up with starkly different results showing widespread ownership of firearms in early America); and Randolph Roth, an associate history professor at Ohio State University who examined Lindgren's work on probate records and commented that "it looks as though Mr. Bellesiles' work won't be reproducible." Prof. Lindgren According to Strassel, Bellesiles told her that many of his critics are "ideologically motivated," but she points out that Rosenberg and Lindgren all told her that they favor gun control. Bellesiles has also revealed that he did not keep a database (rather odd in the age of computers), but kept all his data on paper notes, which he claims were destroyed in a flood. Ms. Seckora Even more recently, Melissa Seckora of National Review called Bellesiles' research "one of the worst cases of academic irresponsibility in memory." In an article originally posted to the Internet on September 11, but which can now be found in the October 15 issue of National Review (as well as online at http://www.nationalreview.com/15oct01/seckora101501.shtml), Seckora reveals that Bellesiles' claim of having researched San Francisco probate records from the 1840s and 1850s seems to be a complete fabrication. According to Seckora, every source Bellesiles cited for these probate records indicated the records did not exist, as all were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. While we certainly look forward to the detailed defense of his research Bellesiles has been told to produce, it is likely it will simply inspire a new round of questions from historians. Related Stories... Columbia University Set to Honor Controversial Researcher Support Mounts for Individual Rights Theory