The Historian Who Couldn't Shoot Straight
Weekly Standard article by David Skinner summarizing the Bellesiles debacle to date. One of the folks who first questioned Bellesiles work, Clayton Cramer, was kind enough to contact me recently after noting that I had posted the Georgia Militia Act over on the website of The Georgia Refugees. This is one of the colonial militia laws which Mr. Cramer has not yet posted on his site, and it is one which further pokes a hole in Bellesiles' arguments about the government's role in arming the militias. (Be forewarned--The Act is long and boring)

Aside from his book, Bellesiles also presented an article entitled "The Second Amendment in Action" at the Chicago-Kent Law Review Symposium on the Second Amendment, in which he mistakenly states that:

"Every state saw it as the government's responsibility to, in the words of Georgia's militia law, "Arm and Array" the militia "for suppressing all such insurrections, as may happen."[176]"

The citation he gives in endnote 176 is for the 1778 Georgia Milita Act, which quite plainly states that:

"AND BE IT FURTHER ENACTED by the authority aforesaid, that every person liable to appear and bear Arms at any Muster, exercise or training hereby appointed, pursuant to the directions of this Act, shall constantly keep and bring with him, to such training, exercising or Muster, one good Gun, Bayonet, hanger, sword or hatchet, a Cartouch Box, twelve Cartridges a powder horn and half pound of Powder, with at least twenty four rounds of Lead, a Worm, pricker and four Flints each, to be produced at Musters and at all other times retained in every Person's House, and it shall and may be lawful to and for the Officers of the respective Companies as many times as may be agreed upon by them to visit the Inhabitants belonging to their said Companies and to demand a sight of their Arms, Furnature Ammunition and Accoutrements aforesaid and in Case it appears any Person shall neglect or refuse to produce any of said Arms, Furnature Ammunition and Accoutrements or to suffer the same to be viewed and inspected, or if when produced the said Officers shall find the same defective, every Person offending shall forfeit a Sum not exceeding Five pounds."

I am not an academic, nor a historian, but I can read well enough to understand that the State of Georgia did not see it as the state's duty to provide arms for the militia, but rather, the provisions of the law provide that the state's chosen method of seeing that that the militia was "armed and arrayed" was for each militia member to supply his own gun, ammunition, and accouterments.

The whole mess of Arming America can be boiled down to the result of a peculiar arrogance which continues to pervade higher education, particularly the unwillingness of some to take seriously objections voiced by non-academics. In this case, those non-academics saw themselves as having a fundamental interest in the question at hand, and saw refuting the assertions of Arming America not as a simple academic debate, but as a struggle for survival.

Choose your target carefully.
posted by Terry at 9:00:00 AM