Fishy Humor
My wife is getting ready to teach a Great American Writers literature course (which includes Herman Melville), and it suddenly occurred to me that the first line of Melville's most famous novel, Moby Dick, must have suffered a serious typo in the first printing. It isn't, "Call me Ishmael." It's "Call me Fishmeal."
Monday, January 14, 2008
What Standard Of Review Should The Court Use?
A number of other bloggers have discussed the Solicitor-General's brief in the DC suit that argues that the Supreme Court should apply not "strict scrutiny" but "intermediate scrutiny" to the question of whether the District of Columbia can ban residents from acquiring handguns. Snowflakes in Hell discusses why his initial upset is mellowing a bit. Right Side of the Rainbow says that it isn't as bad as some think. Say Uncle thinks this brief from the Solicitor-General is a truck sized hole through which more infringements on the right to keep and bear arms will come.
If you are scratching your head about what "strict scrutiny" and "intermediate scrutiny" mean--you are not alone. The courts have created a bunch of different standards of review for deciding whether a law violates your constitutional rights--and just to add to the confusion, almost all of what is below is specific to the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, since challenges to state laws are almost always because one class feels that it is being slighted by how a law is written or applied.
Strict scrutiny means that a law is constitutional if:
1. It is justified by a compelling governmental purpose (like public safety--but not making everyone love each other).
2. The law must be narrowly tailored to achieve that goal. It can't be overly broad, which means that the law takes away the rights of people that aren't the target of the compelling governmental purpose. For example, if the government passed a law designed to prevent the spread of STDs, it can't pass a law that bans everyone from having sex. At the same time, the law can't be underinclusive. If you pass a law designed to prevent the spread of STDs, it can't apply just to homosexuals, because that leaves heterosexuals free to spread STDs.
3. The law must achieve the compelling governmental interest by the least restrictive means. For example, there is a compelling governmental interest in preventing drunk driving. Prohibiting everyone from driving would certainly prevent drunk driving, but this is hardly the least restrictive means of accomplishing that goal.
If this seems like an extraordinarily demanding standard--especially that Goldilocks requirement that a law has to be not overly broad or underinclusive--yes, it is. If the Court applied this standard to every law, it seems likely that a great many laws would be struck down. While the famous saying, "Strict in theory, fatal in fact" turns out not to be true (read this paper by Adam Winkler from Vanderbilt Law Review, which shows that about 30% of laws reviewed under strict scrutiny are upheld), it is certainly the case that most gun control laws that upset gun owners would fail such a test. (Remember that there are a lot of gun control laws that aren't controversial: requiring serial numbers of guns; prohibiting convicted felons from possession; laws prohibiting sales of handguns to minors.)
The Court created the strict scrutiny standard in the 1960s, and uses it if a law relies on either "suspect classifications" (race, national origin, religion, or status as an alien) or because it burdens fundamental rights:
Just to add to the excitement, there are actually three different forms of strict scrutiny, explained in this UCLA Law Review article.
So, if most laws wouldn't survive strict scrutiny review, what standard do the court use, and why?
The next step down from strict scrutiny is intermediate scrutiny, "a regulation involves important governmental interests that are furthered by substantially related means." Examples of cases where this standard has been applied is classifications based on sex. In practice, this means that any law or regulation that classifies based on sex has a high standard to meet, although not as high a standard as strict scrutiny. If DC has to justify its gun control law under this standard, we can probably still win, but then it becomes a duel between various experts about whether the governmental interest--reduced crime--is actually furthered by their law or not.
The step down from intermediate scrutiny is rational basis review, which is perilously close to no review at all. There have been times when the Supreme Court has ruled that a law fails rational basis review. For example, the Supreme Court struck down a city zoning decision designed to prevent operation of a half-way house for the mentally retarded in Cleburne v. Cleburne Assisted Living Center (1985) because the Court decided that it was because of "irrational prejudice against the mentally retarded." Similarly, in Romer v. Evans (1996), the Supreme Court decided that the voters of Colorado were not competent to amend their state constitution. The voters, by initiative, amended the state constitution to prohibit the government from adding homosexuality to the list of protected statuses. The Supreme Court decided that the voters were engaging in irrational prejudice, and overruled them.
Where did this rational basis review come from? I happen to agree that the courts should not overturn a law unless there is a clear violation of the constitution. Otherwise, this is simply unelected judges substituting their opinions for that of elected legislators or the people--from whom all sovereignty flows in our republic. Rational basis review, as near as I can tell, is a response of liberals on the Court in the 1930s to the desire to let the Roosevelt Administration have its way with various New Deal schemes--a repudiation of Lochner v. New York (1905), in which the Court struck down a New York State law designed to limit the hours and working conditions under which bakers operated. Carolene Products v. U.S. (1938) seems to be among the earliest such repudiations of Lochner, and footnote 4 of Carolene Products is often cited as among the progenitors of the idea of strict scrutiny. It is interesting, however, to note that the footnote takes the position:
Had liberals adopted this judicial restraint philosophy consistently, many other liberal causes would have suffered, such as desegregation, making obscenity readily available, making abortion legal everywhere, and striking down laws that promoted traditional sexual morality.
That UCLA Law Review article I mentioned earlier points out that the history of strict scrutiny is recent, is not derived from the Constitution, and is so vague that it doesn't get applied with as much consistency as a rule of law should be. It seems clear to me that strict scrutiny is a liberal device for privileging rights that they care about more than rights that they don't care about. If the Court would dismantle strict scrutiny, I would be okay with intermediate scrutiny for the Second Amendment. But if they are not going to dismantle strict scrutiny, they need to recognize that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a fundamental human right, and deserving of the strict scrutiny standard of review.
UPDATE: John Lott has a piece up at National Review about this as well.
If you are scratching your head about what "strict scrutiny" and "intermediate scrutiny" mean--you are not alone. The courts have created a bunch of different standards of review for deciding whether a law violates your constitutional rights--and just to add to the confusion, almost all of what is below is specific to the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, since challenges to state laws are almost always because one class feels that it is being slighted by how a law is written or applied.
Strict scrutiny means that a law is constitutional if:
1. It is justified by a compelling governmental purpose (like public safety--but not making everyone love each other).
2. The law must be narrowly tailored to achieve that goal. It can't be overly broad, which means that the law takes away the rights of people that aren't the target of the compelling governmental purpose. For example, if the government passed a law designed to prevent the spread of STDs, it can't pass a law that bans everyone from having sex. At the same time, the law can't be underinclusive. If you pass a law designed to prevent the spread of STDs, it can't apply just to homosexuals, because that leaves heterosexuals free to spread STDs.
3. The law must achieve the compelling governmental interest by the least restrictive means. For example, there is a compelling governmental interest in preventing drunk driving. Prohibiting everyone from driving would certainly prevent drunk driving, but this is hardly the least restrictive means of accomplishing that goal.
If this seems like an extraordinarily demanding standard--especially that Goldilocks requirement that a law has to be not overly broad or underinclusive--yes, it is. If the Court applied this standard to every law, it seems likely that a great many laws would be struck down. While the famous saying, "Strict in theory, fatal in fact" turns out not to be true (read this paper by Adam Winkler from Vanderbilt Law Review, which shows that about 30% of laws reviewed under strict scrutiny are upheld), it is certainly the case that most gun control laws that upset gun owners would fail such a test. (Remember that there are a lot of gun control laws that aren't controversial: requiring serial numbers of guns; prohibiting convicted felons from possession; laws prohibiting sales of handguns to minors.)
The Court created the strict scrutiny standard in the 1960s, and uses it if a law relies on either "suspect classifications" (race, national origin, religion, or status as an alien) or because it burdens fundamental rights:
1. Denial or Dilution of the VoteThe right to have a gun for self-defense is obviously not a fundamental right to the courts yet--in spite of having its own amendment.
2. Interstate Migration
3. Access to the Courts
4. Other Rights Recognized as Fundamental
Just to add to the excitement, there are actually three different forms of strict scrutiny, explained in this UCLA Law Review article.
So, if most laws wouldn't survive strict scrutiny review, what standard do the court use, and why?
The next step down from strict scrutiny is intermediate scrutiny, "a regulation involves important governmental interests that are furthered by substantially related means." Examples of cases where this standard has been applied is classifications based on sex. In practice, this means that any law or regulation that classifies based on sex has a high standard to meet, although not as high a standard as strict scrutiny. If DC has to justify its gun control law under this standard, we can probably still win, but then it becomes a duel between various experts about whether the governmental interest--reduced crime--is actually furthered by their law or not.
The step down from intermediate scrutiny is rational basis review, which is perilously close to no review at all. There have been times when the Supreme Court has ruled that a law fails rational basis review. For example, the Supreme Court struck down a city zoning decision designed to prevent operation of a half-way house for the mentally retarded in Cleburne v. Cleburne Assisted Living Center (1985) because the Court decided that it was because of "irrational prejudice against the mentally retarded." Similarly, in Romer v. Evans (1996), the Supreme Court decided that the voters of Colorado were not competent to amend their state constitution. The voters, by initiative, amended the state constitution to prohibit the government from adding homosexuality to the list of protected statuses. The Supreme Court decided that the voters were engaging in irrational prejudice, and overruled them.
Where did this rational basis review come from? I happen to agree that the courts should not overturn a law unless there is a clear violation of the constitution. Otherwise, this is simply unelected judges substituting their opinions for that of elected legislators or the people--from whom all sovereignty flows in our republic. Rational basis review, as near as I can tell, is a response of liberals on the Court in the 1930s to the desire to let the Roosevelt Administration have its way with various New Deal schemes--a repudiation of Lochner v. New York (1905), in which the Court struck down a New York State law designed to limit the hours and working conditions under which bakers operated. Carolene Products v. U.S. (1938) seems to be among the earliest such repudiations of Lochner, and footnote 4 of Carolene Products is often cited as among the progenitors of the idea of strict scrutiny. It is interesting, however, to note that the footnote takes the position:
There may be narrower scope for operation of the presumption of constitutionality when legislation appears on its face to be within a specific prohibition of the Constitution, such as those of the first ten Amendments, which are deemed equally specific when held to be embraced within the Fourteenth.If the Second Amendment is recognized as an individual right, this would suggest that strict scrutiny should apply to it.
Had liberals adopted this judicial restraint philosophy consistently, many other liberal causes would have suffered, such as desegregation, making obscenity readily available, making abortion legal everywhere, and striking down laws that promoted traditional sexual morality.
That UCLA Law Review article I mentioned earlier points out that the history of strict scrutiny is recent, is not derived from the Constitution, and is so vague that it doesn't get applied with as much consistency as a rule of law should be. It seems clear to me that strict scrutiny is a liberal device for privileging rights that they care about more than rights that they don't care about. If the Court would dismantle strict scrutiny, I would be okay with intermediate scrutiny for the Second Amendment. But if they are not going to dismantle strict scrutiny, they need to recognize that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a fundamental human right, and deserving of the strict scrutiny standard of review.
UPDATE: John Lott has a piece up at National Review about this as well.
Need Some RAM?
I have two 512MB PC2-5300 memory sticks as a result of upgrading my son-in-law's Compaq notebook. They were working when I removed them. If you have a need or use for them, I would be happy to get $20 for both of them.
Why Freedom of the Press No Longer Exists in Canada
The fact that a magazine publisher who reprinted the Danish Mohammed cartoons is having to answer to a Canadian bureaucrat to defend his right to do so says worlds about where liberalism has taken Canada. See the details here, including video of the publisher defending his right to political speech.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Interesting Use of 911 Call
My co-blogger at the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog has taken a 911 tape that was released by the police a while back, put some videos to it, and produced a nice piece of pro-gun video. A very calm woman who was just given a gun that morning uses it when the stalker forces entry. Dramatic audio.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Snowthrowers, Global Cooling, My Driveway, & Chains
Yes, these all fit together. The Corvette has been sitting quietly in its warm little garage, out of fear that it would get stuck on the driveway. Wednesday, we discovered that even the AWD Equinox wouldn't get up the driveway. There was just too much snow on top of too consistent a layer of ice. Most people would just shovel the driveway. Since my driveway is about 600 feet long....
Okay, so Thursday we decided that since there are no snowplow attachments for the Equinox (at least that I could find), the right solution was to buy a snowthrower. Astonishingly enough, Lowe's still had four snowthrowers in stock. We bought a Troy-Bilt 5.5 horsepower Storm 2 stage snowthrower. It has four forward gears and two reverse gears. It clears a path 24" wide. And yes, it breaks up ice.
So the plan was: clear the driveway. Drop ice melt on the ice. And this is where the global cooling comes in. We went to Home Depot, and said, "Where's your big bags of ice melt?"
"We're out. And so is the manufacturer."
We went to Wal-Mart. Completely out. No idea when they will see more. It appears that the remarkable cold snap that the U.S. is experiencing right now has sucked up all available ice melt in this part of the country. (I assume ice melt is shipped everywhere in America to meet demand.)
Anyway, if, like me, you come from a part of America where you have to drive several hours to see snow, much less shovel it, you may not think about snowthrowers, anymore than Idahoans think about car alarms.
A snowthrower looks an awful lot like a rototiller. The one we bought has a four stroke gasoline engine that turns a set of blades that pick up the snow, and feed it to an augur that fires it up and out of what looks like a smokestack, which you can direct either left, right, or, if you are feeling particularly masochistic, straight ahead. The blades reach within an inch or so of the ground.
You start it up much like a lawnmower, and aim it at your snowbank. (Ours has an electric starter that you plug into an extension cord if you don't feel like pulling the rope.) The left control runs the blades and augur.
The right control is a weird mixture of a reverse clutch and accelerator. When you release it, the transmission disengages. When you depress it, it engages the transmission and increases power to the driving wheels. (I'm hoping that these are two separate functions, or the clutch won't last long if you use it at lower speeds.)
It picks up snow and throws it with great enthusiasm. It is less enthusiastic about ice, but it will break up the frozen ice layer, along with whatever dirt and rocks it finds, and create the world's least attractive slushy. (Pretend it's chocolate chocolate chip slushy!) The ice tends to come up in big lumps, like 19th century sugar loaves, while the snow just flies!
Anyway, it turns out that the first try on using the snowthrower to clear the driveway took a couple of hours to make two complete passes. I'm glad that I bought one that was driven, but even with this, both my wife and I have muscles that are sore in places that we didn't even know we had muscles. Even this still left long patches of ice, so we bought chains. (It's an AWD--so it takes two sets of chains.)
Anyway, my wife has never put chains on a car before, so this was a new experience for her. I was dreading this quite a bit, largely because all of my memories of tire chains are unpleasant. The strongest memory was helping my father put chains on a 1967 Pontiac Ventura as we crossed the Siskiyou Summit from Oregon to California in 1971. It was cold. It was dark. We were at the side of I-5, with traffic going by at what, in retrospect, could not have been more than about 35 mph, but talk about a way to get your fingers cold and sore.
Anyway, the chains made it possible for us to drive up the ice-covered driveway with only a little adrenalin rush, but the prospect of having to take them off and put them back on again each time we reached the base of our driveway was a bit much for my wife, so I decided to declare war on ice.
I spent most of this morning and into the afternoon--perhaps three hours total--breaking up the ice, enough so that my wife was able to drive straight up the driveway, without drama. As I neared completion of the task, however, one rock managed to get stuck in the augur, preventing it from turning.
This was an unpleasant task to remove, since it was a piece of granite (very useful for dulling high speed drill bits on, by the way), and eventually I could only get it out the same way that one of my lower wisdom teeth came out some years ago: by breaking it in place with a hammer and chisel. (And yes, the anesthetic was bearing to wear off by that point. I'm glad this snowthrower doesn't scream.)
Okay, so Thursday we decided that since there are no snowplow attachments for the Equinox (at least that I could find), the right solution was to buy a snowthrower. Astonishingly enough, Lowe's still had four snowthrowers in stock. We bought a Troy-Bilt 5.5 horsepower Storm 2 stage snowthrower. It has four forward gears and two reverse gears. It clears a path 24" wide. And yes, it breaks up ice.
So the plan was: clear the driveway. Drop ice melt on the ice. And this is where the global cooling comes in. We went to Home Depot, and said, "Where's your big bags of ice melt?"
"We're out. And so is the manufacturer."
We went to Wal-Mart. Completely out. No idea when they will see more. It appears that the remarkable cold snap that the U.S. is experiencing right now has sucked up all available ice melt in this part of the country. (I assume ice melt is shipped everywhere in America to meet demand.)
Anyway, if, like me, you come from a part of America where you have to drive several hours to see snow, much less shovel it, you may not think about snowthrowers, anymore than Idahoans think about car alarms.
A snowthrower looks an awful lot like a rototiller. The one we bought has a four stroke gasoline engine that turns a set of blades that pick up the snow, and feed it to an augur that fires it up and out of what looks like a smokestack, which you can direct either left, right, or, if you are feeling particularly masochistic, straight ahead. The blades reach within an inch or so of the ground.
You start it up much like a lawnmower, and aim it at your snowbank. (Ours has an electric starter that you plug into an extension cord if you don't feel like pulling the rope.) The left control runs the blades and augur.
The right control is a weird mixture of a reverse clutch and accelerator. When you release it, the transmission disengages. When you depress it, it engages the transmission and increases power to the driving wheels. (I'm hoping that these are two separate functions, or the clutch won't last long if you use it at lower speeds.)
It picks up snow and throws it with great enthusiasm. It is less enthusiastic about ice, but it will break up the frozen ice layer, along with whatever dirt and rocks it finds, and create the world's least attractive slushy. (Pretend it's chocolate chocolate chip slushy!) The ice tends to come up in big lumps, like 19th century sugar loaves, while the snow just flies!
Anyway, it turns out that the first try on using the snowthrower to clear the driveway took a couple of hours to make two complete passes. I'm glad that I bought one that was driven, but even with this, both my wife and I have muscles that are sore in places that we didn't even know we had muscles. Even this still left long patches of ice, so we bought chains. (It's an AWD--so it takes two sets of chains.)
Anyway, my wife has never put chains on a car before, so this was a new experience for her. I was dreading this quite a bit, largely because all of my memories of tire chains are unpleasant. The strongest memory was helping my father put chains on a 1967 Pontiac Ventura as we crossed the Siskiyou Summit from Oregon to California in 1971. It was cold. It was dark. We were at the side of I-5, with traffic going by at what, in retrospect, could not have been more than about 35 mph, but talk about a way to get your fingers cold and sore.
Anyway, the chains made it possible for us to drive up the ice-covered driveway with only a little adrenalin rush, but the prospect of having to take them off and put them back on again each time we reached the base of our driveway was a bit much for my wife, so I decided to declare war on ice.
I spent most of this morning and into the afternoon--perhaps three hours total--breaking up the ice, enough so that my wife was able to drive straight up the driveway, without drama. As I neared completion of the task, however, one rock managed to get stuck in the augur, preventing it from turning.
This was an unpleasant task to remove, since it was a piece of granite (very useful for dulling high speed drill bits on, by the way), and eventually I could only get it out the same way that one of my lower wisdom teeth came out some years ago: by breaking it in place with a hammer and chisel. (And yes, the anesthetic was bearing to wear off by that point. I'm glad this snowthrower doesn't scream.)
I Need Your Help With the DC Suit
Fifteen historians, some of them nationally prominent, have filed an amicus curiae brief arguing that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right. Their names are: Jack N. Rakove, Saul Cornell, David T. Konig, William J. Novak, Lois G. Schwoerer, Fred Anderson, Carol Berkin, Paul Finkelman, R. Don Higginbotham, Stanley N. Katz, Pauline R. Maier, Peter S. Onuf, Robert E. Shalhope, John Shy, Alan Taylor. Their brief makes the claim:
Now, I ordinarily wouldn't see much point to embarrassing these people by pointing out that they were taken in by this tenured conman--after all, many professional historians were. But when you tell the Supreme Court, "Trust us! We're experts on this subject of the Second Amendment and guns in early America," it doesn't say much when it turns out that they were snookered by one of the grossest, most obviously fraudulent history books that I have ever seen--and this is a topic on which they are claiming to be experts! (And a law professor, James Lindgren, and myself, who is nobody, ended up spotting and exposing the fraud.) So here's what you can do: find any published reviews by any of the fifteen historians above of Arming America and send them to me, pronto. Here's what I have so far:
From the dust jacket of Arming America: "We can hardly understand the context for the Second Amendment without first reading Arming America. No one previously has given us such an authoritative account of firearms in our history from the Colonial period through the Civil War." -- Don Higginbotham
From the yellow wraparound band on review copies of Arming America: "Arming America is a myth-busting tour de force. Michael Bellesiles moves to the front rank of American historians with this deeply researched, brilliantly argued, energetically written, and timely book. It is an instant classic, one of the very most important works of historical scholarship published in recent years. In future years it will be impossible to talk about the role of guns in our civic culture without coming to terms with this superb study." Peter S. Onuf
Highly favorable reviews of Arming America by Bogus appeared in Texas Law Review 79, no. 6 (May 2001): 1641-55; by Finkelman in Michigan Law Review 99, no. 6 (May 2001): 1500-19; by Anderson,“Guns, Rights and People,” Los Angeles Times Book Review, 17 September 2000, pp. 1-2.
Jack Rakove has an especially embarrassing part in the Arming America scandal. Bellesiles thanked him: "Jack Rakove kindly went through the second draft with a keen eye and improved every page he read." Michael A. Bellesiles, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 583. When William & Mary Quarterly asked four prominent historians to review the controversy (which historians had ignored, until the concerns of Lindgren and myself received significant popular press attention), Jack Rakove wrote the only one of the four articles reviewing the book that chose not to say anything particularly negative about it, while the other three historians politely observed that it Arming America was severely flawed. Jack N. Rakove, "Words, Deeds and Guns: Arming America and the Second Amendment" [Forum: Historians and Guns], William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 59, 2002, p. 205-10; Randolph Roth, “Guns, Gun Culture, and Homicide: The Relationship Between Firearms, the Uses of Firearms, and Interpersonal Violence,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 59(1):224-7; Gloria L. Main, “Many Things Forgotten: The Use of Probate Records in Arming America,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 59(1):205-16; Ira D. Gruber, “Of Arms and Men: Arming America and Military History,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 59(1):217-22. Subsequent investigation--after the full extent of the scandal had been widely publicized among non-historians--led to Bellesiles resigning a tenured position at Emory University. Stanley N. Katz, Hanna H. Gray, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Report of the Investigative Committee in the matter of Professor Michael Bellesiles,” July 10, 2002.
So do your part: help me find every review these fifteen historians wrote of Arming America!
UPDATE: Let me clarify that I can't hold Shalhope Constitutional Commentary (1999) paper against him. He operated based on what Bellesiles's 1996 Journal of American History paper claimed. While that paper, like Arming America, turned out to be fraudulent, it wasn't obviously and grossly so.
Amici Curiae, listed in the Appendix, are professional historians. They have all earned PhD. degrees in history, hold academic appointments in university departments of history, and specialize in the American Revolution, the Early Republic, American Legal History, American Constitutional History, Anglo-American Legal History, or related areas.For all their expertise, Rakove, Finkelman, Higginbotham, and Onuf were taken in by one of the grossest frauds in recent American history: Michael Bellesiles' Arming America, which set a new first: the first book to receive the Bancroft Prize--and then have it revoked. Robert F. Worth, "Prize for Book Is Taken Back From Historian", New York Times, December 14, 2002. The publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, subsequently withdrew the book from sale and pulped it (instead of remaindering it). Hillel Italie, Associated Press, “Publisher Stops History Book Publication,” January 7, 2003.
Now, I ordinarily wouldn't see much point to embarrassing these people by pointing out that they were taken in by this tenured conman--after all, many professional historians were. But when you tell the Supreme Court, "Trust us! We're experts on this subject of the Second Amendment and guns in early America," it doesn't say much when it turns out that they were snookered by one of the grossest, most obviously fraudulent history books that I have ever seen--and this is a topic on which they are claiming to be experts! (And a law professor, James Lindgren, and myself, who is nobody, ended up spotting and exposing the fraud.) So here's what you can do: find any published reviews by any of the fifteen historians above of Arming America and send them to me, pronto. Here's what I have so far:
From the dust jacket of Arming America: "We can hardly understand the context for the Second Amendment without first reading Arming America. No one previously has given us such an authoritative account of firearms in our history from the Colonial period through the Civil War." -- Don Higginbotham
From the yellow wraparound band on review copies of Arming America: "Arming America is a myth-busting tour de force. Michael Bellesiles moves to the front rank of American historians with this deeply researched, brilliantly argued, energetically written, and timely book. It is an instant classic, one of the very most important works of historical scholarship published in recent years. In future years it will be impossible to talk about the role of guns in our civic culture without coming to terms with this superb study." Peter S. Onuf
Highly favorable reviews of Arming America by Bogus appeared in Texas Law Review 79, no. 6 (May 2001): 1641-55; by Finkelman in Michigan Law Review 99, no. 6 (May 2001): 1500-19; by Anderson,“Guns, Rights and People,” Los Angeles Times Book Review, 17 September 2000, pp. 1-2.
Jack Rakove has an especially embarrassing part in the Arming America scandal. Bellesiles thanked him: "Jack Rakove kindly went through the second draft with a keen eye and improved every page he read." Michael A. Bellesiles, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 583. When William & Mary Quarterly asked four prominent historians to review the controversy (which historians had ignored, until the concerns of Lindgren and myself received significant popular press attention), Jack Rakove wrote the only one of the four articles reviewing the book that chose not to say anything particularly negative about it, while the other three historians politely observed that it Arming America was severely flawed. Jack N. Rakove, "Words, Deeds and Guns: Arming America and the Second Amendment" [Forum: Historians and Guns], William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 59, 2002, p. 205-10; Randolph Roth, “Guns, Gun Culture, and Homicide: The Relationship Between Firearms, the Uses of Firearms, and Interpersonal Violence,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 59(1):224-7; Gloria L. Main, “Many Things Forgotten: The Use of Probate Records in Arming America,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 59(1):205-16; Ira D. Gruber, “Of Arms and Men: Arming America and Military History,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 59(1):217-22. Subsequent investigation--after the full extent of the scandal had been widely publicized among non-historians--led to Bellesiles resigning a tenured position at Emory University. Stanley N. Katz, Hanna H. Gray, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Report of the Investigative Committee in the matter of Professor Michael Bellesiles,” July 10, 2002.
So do your part: help me find every review these fifteen historians wrote of Arming America!
UPDATE: Let me clarify that I can't hold Shalhope Constitutional Commentary (1999) paper against him. He operated based on what Bellesiles's 1996 Journal of American History paper claimed. While that paper, like Arming America, turned out to be fraudulent, it wasn't obviously and grossly so.
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