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     April 28 Neal Knox Update -- Last week Columbia University
presented its prestigious Bancroft Award to Emory University
History Professor Michael Bellesiles for his book Arming America:
The Origins of a National Gun Culture.

That book was cheered by the left and the media last fall because it
claimed, supposedly on the basis of early writings and will probates,
that there were very few privately owned guns before the advent of the Civil
War.

     The day the award was presented Columbia College Conservative
Club hosted a panel consisting of few of the increasing academic
critics of Bellesiles' book -- San Francisco historian Clayton
Cramer, firearms law historian and author Stephen Halbrook, J.D.,
and Yale researcher Dr. John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime.

     Last night's NRA-ILA Fax Alert reported that both the award and
the critiquing panel is scheduled for broadcast at 8:50 p.m. EST
Sunday night, April 29 on C-Span 2.  How sweet it is!

     Cramer, author of Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic
(Praeger Press, 1999), was one of the first Bellesiles critics; he
reviewed the accounts of early visitors to the U.S. -- including
some that Bellesiles falsely claimed didn't mention seeing guns,
yet who Cramer found had talked about guns being common,
and skilled shooting matches being a major entertainment.

     The prestigious Journal of American History, which published
Bellesiles' initial paper, declined to run Cramer's scholarly
critique.  What he calls his "short version" can be seen at
www.ggnra.org\Cramer.

     Instead of the usual academic politeness, Cramer declared:
"Arming America is full of errors induced by Bellesiles'
ideological zeal to find an America where there were few guns, few
hunters, and almost no violence. But it is an America that did not
exist.  Bellesiles has lied to create that America."

     Bentley College history Prof. Joyce Lee Malcolm, author of To
Keep and Bear Arms: Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Harvard),
wrote in the January 2001 Reason, "Arming America has the Facts All
Wrong" (http://www.reason.com/0101/cr.jm.concealed.html).  She
concludes:  "Michael Bellesiles' eagerness to 'bust a myth' about
America's gun culture has induced him to create one."

     Bellesiles' probate "evidence" is torpedoed in "Counting Guns
in Early America" (http://plague.law.umkc.edu/chpl/host/guns/pdf).
The authors, James Lindgren, Professor of Law, Director of Faculty
Research, Director of Demography of Diversity Project, Northwestern
University School of Law, and Justin Lee Heather, replicated much
of Bellesiles' "research."

     They wrote:  "Guns are found in 50-73% of the male estates in
each of the five databases [of probate inventories] and in 6-38% of
the female estates ...."

     Further:  "Contrary to Arming America's claims about probate
inventories in 17th and 18th century America, there were high
numbers of guns, guns were much more common than swords or other
edge weapons, women in 1774 owned guns at rates (18%) higher than
Bellesiles claimed men did in 1765-90 (14.7%)....

     "Bellesiles appears to have substantially misrecorded or
misremembered the 17th and 18th century probate data he presents.
... Nationally, for the 1765-90 period the average percentage of
estates listing guns that Bellesiles reports (14.7%) is not
mathematically possible, given the regional averages he
reports...."

     When the authors (who are reportedly advocates of "gun
control") asked to review Bellesiles' original notes, he advised
they had been ruined in a flood -- the academic equivalent of "my
little dog ate my homework."

     They concluded:  "Nearly everything Bellesiles says about
probate records in early America is mistaken. ... one is tempted to
wonder how he could be so mistaken. ...  Either he is an
extraordinarily poor reader of archival materials or he
misremembered data ...."

       I'm sure these citations, and much more, will astound C-Span 2's
national audience -- and hopefully embarrass the fire out of
the anti-gunners at Columbia University.

       Set your VCR now.
----------------------

     Over 25 years ago, while I was editor of Handloader and Rifle,
and before ILA or the Internet was born, there was a last minute
amendment to bring firearms under the Consumer Product Safety
Commission.  It was killed within 24 hours or so by a swarm of
telephone calls generated by an unorganized phone tree.

     We were alerted by our friends, called our lawmakers and asked
other friends to do the same.  The message was simple:  that if the
CPSC had power to regulate guns for mechanical safety they would
quickly get into "public safety" policy matters, i.e. "back door
gun control."

     We were called paranoid.

     Every session there are a couple of bills to give CPSC
authority over guns.  The one to watch this year is S. 416 by Sens.
John Kerry (D-Mass.), Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), Barbara Boxer (D-
Calif.) and Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.).

     A few days ago the Consumer Federation of America spelled out
why they supported proposed legislation (such as S. 330 by Robert
Torricelli [D-N.J.], who is being investigated by the FBI for campaign
law violations) that would make the Treasury Department "responsible
for gun safety" like the Consumer Product Safety Commission oversees
other products.

     Under such legislation, they say, "the department could issue
recalls for defective guns, set standards for gun locks, *restrict
the size of guns to make them harder to conceal* and *even ban some
guns.*"

       We aren't paranoid -- just wise to the anti-gun crowd's tactics.

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