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Guns and the Politics of History

The debate over the safety and legality of private gun ownership in the United States has intensified over the last decade. The emergence of a heavily armed militia movement in 1995 and a wave of schoolyard shootings in 19981999 have heightened public demands for tighter gun control legislation. During the same period, legal scholars advanced the argument that the right to keep and bear arms recognized in the Second Amendment extends to individuals as well as to the collective military forces of the states. In response, early American historians have stepped forward to challenge the individual rights interpretation. As an outgrowth of research on the role of guns in early American culture, Michael Bellesiles published essays in 1996 and 1998 presenting evidence of gun scarcity and the pervasive state regulation of firearms in early America. He has joined Saul Cornell, Don Higginbotham, and Garry Wills in a number of collective efforts to debunk the "myths" that they believe underpin the individual rights interpretation. Most recently, Bellesiles, Cornell, and Higginbotham signed an amicus curiae brief written by David Yassky and filed in the case United States v. Emerson, a gun control case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.1 It is from this context that Arming America springs. The book represents research into colonial laws, militia muster rolls, gun censuses, and thousands of probate inventories. For the research project alone, Bellesiles deserves credit. Bellesiles brings a variety of methodologies to bear on these records. The book is at once an analysis of material culture, a history of the arms industry, a military history, and a survey of the place of guns in AngloAmerican law.