…of Michael Bellesiles’s Arming America. You can get it over at the Professor’s.
What I don’t understand after walking away is why Lindgren can’t simply state that the book is a pack of lies, one after another, and that the thesis of the book simply doesn’t stand up under rigorous analysis. Lindgren’s conclusions are fairly damning, yet he can’t bring himself to say what he really seems to think.
I don’t claim to be a working historian, but I am a trained one; have an AB in History and an MA all but thesis in same. I took a graduate-level historiography course and passed it with an A. I understand the concepts of research that are involved. And I come to the conclusion that either Michael Bellesiles is poorly trained in his discipline, or he wrote the book as a shill for the anti-gun lobby and knew exactly what he was doing when he did.
We will probably never know the truth.
A "surly curmudgeon[], suspicious and lacking in altruism." (Robert A. Heinlein)