Arming America

[jimmy the one]

1. witch hunting continued

You post a pro gun link from Wikipedia. There are several gun issues/concerns on wiki which reek of pro gun mentality, I hate to say as much as I do rely on & cite wiki - it is imperfect since it is a people's encyclopedia. Their report does negligible regarding support for bellesiles.

For instance, wiki link includes these allegations regarding Providence, Vermont, & San Fran, which were addressed by an investigating committee, with their findings following:

wiki progun attack on bellesiles: The book .. uses falsified research to argue that guns were uncommon during peacetime in early United States and that a culture of gun ownership arose only much later.
##purported to count guns in about a hundred wills from 17th- and 18th-century Providence, Rhode Island, these did not exist because the decedents had died (without wills);
##had more than a 60% error rate in finding guns listed as part of estates in Vermont records;
##purported to count nineteenth-century San Francisco County probate inventories, but these had been destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire

REPORTof the Investigative Committee in the matter of Professor Michael Bellesiles July 2002
Question 1. Did Professor Bellesiles engage in "intentional fabrication or falsification of research data" in connection with probate records from Rutland County, Vermont?
..... Our conclusion is that Bellesisles’ account of the Vermont probate records contain extensive errors in part because they were not in fact collected with the purpose of counting guns.... He appears carelessly to have assumed that his counts were complete, and moved forward... While this certainly constitutes sloppy scholarship, it does not prove a deliberate attempt to mislead, however misleading the result.

Question 2. Did Professor Bellesiles engage in "intentional fabrication or falsification of research data" in connection with probate records from Providence, Rhode Island?
.....Our conclusion is that Professor Bellesiles’ work on the Providence, Rhode Island records does not raise serious problems of fabrication or falsification of research data. The errors in the first edition of Arming America.. When these errors were identified, he immediately corrected them.

Question 3. Did Professor Bellesiles engage in "intentional fabrication or falsification of research data" in connection with probate records from the San Francisco Bay area?
....Our conclusion is that we cannot prove that Professor Bellesiles simply invented his California research, but neither do we have confidence that the Contra Costa inventories resolve the problem.....

Question 4. Did Professor Bellesiles engage in "intentional fabrication or falsification of research data" in connection with probate records supporting the figures in Table One to his book, "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture"?
... dealing with the construction of the vital Table One, we find evidence of falsification

Question 5. Did professor Bellesiles engage in "other serious deviations 'from accepted practices in carrying out or reporting results from research'" with respect to probate records or militia census records by:
(a) Failing to carefully document his findings;
(b) Failing to make available to others his sources, evidence, and data; or
(c) Misrepresenting evidence or the sources of evidence."
.....Question 5, which raises the standard of professional historical scholarship, we find that Professor Bellesiles falls short on all three counts.
http://www.emory.edu/news/Releases/Final_Report.pdf ------ pg 17, pg 18