Arming America

Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture

Author	Michael A. Bellesiles
Genre	History
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date	2000
Publication place	United States
Pages	603
ISBN	0-375-40210-1
Dewey Decimal	683.4/00973 21
LC Class	HV8059.B395 2000

Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture is a discredited 2000 book by historian Michael A. Bellesiles about American gun culture, an expansion of a 1996 article he published in the Journal of American History. Bellesiles, then a professor at Emory University, used fabricated research to argue that during the early period of US history, guns were uncommon during peacetime and that a culture of gun ownership did not arise until the mid-nineteenth century.

Although the book was awarded the prestigious Bancroft Prize in 2001, it later became the first work for which the prize was rescinded, following a decision of Columbia University's Board of Trustees that Bellesiles had "violated basic norms of scholarship and the high standards expected of Bancroft Prize winners."^[1]