Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture

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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


From Publishers Weekly
Like most students of U.S. history, Bellesiles (Emory University) believed gun-related violence was inextricably woven into the American past from its earliest days. Then he started studying county probate records as part of a project about the early American frontier. To his surprise, he found that for the years 1765 to 1770, only 14 percent of probate inventories listed a gun. Further study convinced Bellesiles that American gun culture began only with the Civil War. Sickened by the carnage associated with guns today, Bellesiles, in his second book (following Revolutionary Outlaws: Ethan Allen and the Struggle for Independence on the Early American Frontier), is agenda driven. If U.S. society has, as he contends, been largely free of gun-related violence in the past, then it could be again. This agenda, however, does not taint Bellesiles's scholarship. Through examination of "[l]egal, probate, military and business records, travel accounts, personal letters" and other primary sources, he painstakingly documents the relative absence of guns before the Civil WarAand the rise of the gun culture in its wake, due to an increasingly urban populace now accustomed to shooting and newly industrialized gun manufacturers tooled up to mass-produce firearms. This combination of factors, he argues, led to the violence-prone American ethos, one that fetishizes guns. Bellesiles's approachable writing style makes easily digestible this revision of the historiographical record. "The question is one of cultural primacy," Bellesiles contends. "What lies at the core of national identity?" His answer is bound to inflame today's impassioned controversy over gun control. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Expect vitriolic debate about historian Bellesiles' analysis of when and how the U.S. came to have a "national gun culture," because it upends the traditional notion that guns are as American as apple pie. Bellesiles argues that "gun ownership was exceptional in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, even on the frontier." Guns became commonplace only toward midcentury, as American-made weapons began to equal European guns in quality, and the Civil War taught large numbers of men how to use them. Americans indeed developed "a fixation with firearms that any modern enthusiast would recognize and salute," but this fixation developed only in the 1870s. From the Revolution through the 1840s, government tried to arm its citizens, with limited success; it subsidized the gun industry, which ultimately mechanized production enough to produce large quantities of quality weapons. And then, Bellesiles observes, "The Civil War transformed the gun from a tool into a perceived necessity. The War preserved the Union, unifying the nation around a single icon: the gun." Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


From Kirkus Reviews
A spirited, scholarly analysis of the prominence of the gun in American history and mythology.Bellesiles (History/Emory Univ.) combines the techniques and discipline of the historian with the skills of a felicitous journalist to identify the causes of the "astoundingly high level of personal violence" in the US. Using probate records and variety of other primary sources, he establishes that "gun ownership was exceptional" until after the Civil War. After a quick look at a couple of recent school shootings, Bellesiles dives into the river of history and demonstrates convincingly and eloquently that its current has not flowed in the direction that popular mythology would suggest. He reveals that the famous Kentucky rifle took about "three minutes to load"-and was highly inaccurate. From the Seven Years' War through the Crimean War, an estimated 95 percent of projectiles missed. He notes that during the Colonial period there was not a single manufactory of firearms in North America-and the notion that gun ownership was wide among American colonists is "a grand mythology"; prior to 1850, only about one-tenth of Americans owned guns. Few Americans resorted to hunting for food (trapping and animal husbandry were far more effective and economical), and "the vast majority of American males showed not the slightest desire to serve in the militia." Even American icons crack under the pressure of the author's relentless scrutiny: Eli Whitney apparently defrauded the government by supplying the military with "dreadful" guns and, during the War of 1812, "the militia . . . performed terribly, if at all." In the 1850s the creative advertising of Samuel Colt and the emergence of hunting magazines convinced people that "they needed guns in order to be real Americans," and by the 1870s "guns were everywhere in American life." To document his argument Bellesiles includes hundreds of endnotes, many with compelling supplementary comments and information.A timely and powerful text that reverberates with the explosions of treasured American myths. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Americans have always staunchly, sometimes bloodily, defended their right to bear arms, but does the historical record bear out this right? Michael Bellesiles, in a meticulous study of the issue that draws extensively on archival material and original sources, says no. He traces "gun fever" to its European origins, documents the rarity of firearms in early America, covers technological advances, and details the strange series of developments during the Civil War that helped make the gun an integral and deadly fixture in modern American life. This revised and updated edition offers new research addressing critics' legitimate concerns, showing that the underlying thesis of the book remains as solid — and timely — as ever.


Download Description
Michael A. Bellesiles' Arming America is a stunning and seminal book that challenges everything we've previously been taught about America's history with guns. Painstakingly examining the historical record, Bellesiles shatters the myth of our gun-toting forefathers. When questions rose as to details of his research in probate records, 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--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 legitimate concerns, and finding that the underlying thesis of his book remains as solid as ever."


From the Publisher
"Arming America is a myth-busting tour de force. Michael Bellesiles moves to the front rank of American historians with this deeply researched, brilliantly argued, energetically written, and timely book. It is an instant classic, one of the very most important works of historical scholarship published in recent years. In future years it will be impossible to talk about the role of guns in our civic culture without coming to terms with this superb study."-- Peter S. Onuf, author of Jefferson's Empire

"NRA zealots beware! This splendidly subversive book will convince any sane reader that America's 'gun culture' owes little to personal self-defense in its pioneer past--or even to putting meat on the table. It was not the challenge of the wild frontier that armed Americans, but instead a relentlessly insistent federal government."-- Robert R. Dykstra, author of The Cattle Towns

"Arming America is an exciting, timely book. Thinking people who deplore Americans' addiction to gun violence have been waiting a long time for this information. Michael Bellesiles has uncovered dramatic historical truths that shatter the 'Ten Commandments' hokum peddled by the National Rifle Association
and its ersatz Moses."-- Stewart Udall, author of The Myths of August and The Quiet Crisis

"We can hardly understand the context for the Second Amendment without first reading Arming America. No one previously has given us such an authoritative account of firearms in our history from the colonial period through the Civil War."-- Don Higginbotham, author of George Washington and the American Military Tradition

"Meticulously, even extravagantly researched, this book is a tour de force. Bellesiles has done what no one before has -- examine the fact behind American gun mythology. This book will transform the modern gun debate by moving it from hysteria to sensible analysis. In every respect, a superb piece of historical work."-- Robert J. Spitzer, author of The Politics of Gun Control

"This is stunning history, brilliantly argued. It knocks into a cocked hat our most cherished assumptions about guns and gun culture in early America, making us rethink one subject after another. What an eye-opener."-- Alfred F. Young, Senior Research Fellow, Newberry Library

"At long last a superb book that systematically dismantles one of our most cherished and dangerous national myths. Bellesiles has made a major contribution to a significant public policy debate."-- Robert C. Ritchie, Director of Research, The Huntington Library

"Arming America is an astonishingly original and innovative book, chock full of fascinating revelations. It ought to raise current controversies about gun control to a more fact-based and rational level. It is certain to endure as a classic work of significant scholarship with inescapable policy implications." --Michael Kammen, Past President, Organization of American Historians

"This book changes everything. The way we think about guns and violence in America will never be the same. Neither will our notions of manhood, race, the rise of big business, or our national character. Neither will our understanding of the Second Amendment. Michael Bellesiles is the NRA's worst nightmare."-- Michael Zuckerman, author of Peaceable Kingdoms

"Bellesiles has uncovered one of the most profound ironies in American history. The contemporary debate about the role of guns in American society has actually-- turned history on its head. While many early Americans rallied at their government for doing too little to arm the American people, some in contemporary America now rail at their government for seeking to limit access to weapons.-- No one interested in the controversial problem of guns in American society can afford to ignore this important book."--Saul Cornell, author of The Other Founders

"Michael Bellesiles' work shifts the terms of the debate about the gun's place in the modern United States. Today we assume that the gun has always been central to American culture. Those who seek to limit its prevalence have largely accepted that they ask us to depart from a tradition of long standing. Bellesiles argues, however, that the centrality of guns is a recent phenomenon, dating form the mid-19th century. His research raises fundamental issues that go to the heart of widely-held but apparently erroneous assumptions about American gun culture."-- Carla Gardina Pestana, author of Liberty of Conscience and the Growth of Religious Diversity in Early America

"This is a book for scholars and, above all, citizens, a wonderful work that bring historical insight and plain good sense to a critical national debate. With wit, commitment, and an unerring command of his argument, Michael Bellesiles shows us that gun culture has not always been embedded in American culture in the past - and perhaps doesn't have to be in the future. It's a lesson we all need to learn from a book we all need to read." -- Greg Nobles, author of American Frontiers


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The origins of the American obsession with guns are surveyed in this study of violence and gun acceptance in America. Research and arguments relay the history of gun use in America from early times to the present, showing how Colonial Americans had virtually no access to firearms, and how the US government had little success in arming its citizens until the 1850s, when technological advances led to a manufacturing revolution. An intriguing study of gun history and social issues. Read all 8 "From The Critics" >


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