Arming America, the Origins of a National Gun Culture

by Michael A. Bellesiles

Blurb

Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture is a discredited 2000 book by Michael A. Bellesiles on American gun culture. The book is an expansion of a 1996 Journal of American History article that uses falsified research to argue that guns were uncommon during peacetime in the early United States and that a culture of gun ownership arose only much later.
It initially won the prestigious Bancroft Prize, but later became the first book in that prize's history to have its award rescinded. The revocation occurred after Columbia University's Board of Trustees decided that Bellesiles had "violated basic norms of scholarship and the high standards expected of Bancroft Prize winners."

First Published

2000

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