I am getting nowhere writing and submitting law review articles about The Gunning of America, so I guess it's time to declare war, and start submitting articles to history journals. This is an interesting problem. You can't point out fraud in history journals (as I found out with Bellesiles); they won't even review such articles. History journals are MUCH more progressive (hard left) than law reviews. Instead, I am going to point the serious flaw in the Bellesiles/Haag claim that guns were not widely owned before 1848: the enormous number of gunsmiths and gun makers that are present in the records (both primary and secondary sources). I have a spreadsheet with >3700 gunsmiths/gun makers working before 1840 in America. I also just started searching the Library of Congress' Chronicling America, which has newspapers from 1690 to 1922, most of them text searchable. I have already found many hitherto unknown gunsmiths.
Oh and pistols, supposedly not widely present before evil Sam Colt, appear thousands of times; often in fiction or foreign events but I can sample and figure out what percent are factual and in America.
I've always struggled with the style of James Fennimore Cooper stories, but I don't recall "Leatherstocking" actually using a pistol.
ReplyDeleteWell ... he wouldn't, would he?
Sending you the militia rolls for a couple of years. Thus you can point to actual refernces to Muskets, rifles, Carbines (fasiles) and braces of pistols. Key word, braces or pairs of pistols.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many of those gunsmiths were under contract with the army or if they provided their own that wouldn't show up in the inventory either. There were certainly a great deal of guns during the Manifest Destiny period as Americans started moving west.
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