Talk:Michael A. Bellesiles

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Can someone please discuss how it affected the gun control debate? How people have used it to argue their claims? That it 'ignited passions' tells me absolutely nothing. 1:41, Nov 10, 2005.

Anyone know whether Arming America was published in October 2003? Moriori 20:12, Nov 29, 2003 (UTC)

I've reverted the same anonymous user's changes as they're still the same posting of a press release by Bellesiles's new publisher. In addition to violating copyright, those changes are the start of an edit war, with one anonymous user simply blowing away the combined efforts of various wikipedians on an article.

I've also tried to NPOV the original article. While I share the original article's viewpoint that Bellesiles's work is intentionally deceptive and thoroughly discredited on most of the important points, he certainly deserves a defense of his work in an article on him. I suspect that the short paragraph about his daughter changing her name still retains too much of the ripped-off press release, and hope that someone will fact-check and paraphrase it.

-Ben

1 it is NOT a press release and DOES NOT VIOLATE COPYRIGHT RULES
2 Quotes
3 DFL
4 What happened to him?

[edit] it is NOT a press release and DOES NOT VIOLATE COPYRIGHT RULES

Furthermore Arming America has never had its thesis discredited. The best you can say is that 1 table and 3 paragraphs in the first chapter weren't sourced right. So take your "Moonie Times" gun nut propaganda somewhere else.

Look, I don't want this article to turn into an Edit war. Your replacing the entire article, which has been honed through a dozen revisions is deeply disrespectful to everyone who's worked on it. The article absolutely needs NPOV help from someone who can articulate Bellesiles's defense, but that's not the same as gutting the criticisms made of Bellesiles.

It's obvious that you disagree with those criticisms, but they must be part of the article. Even if you belive them to be wrong or trivial, they are the reason that Michael Bellesiles is a controversial figure, and probably the reason there's a Wikipedia article on him. They need to remain.

In particular, whatever you keep posting omits the link to James Lindgren's detailed study of Arming America. I think you'd agree that Lindgren's criticisms are impartial and well removed from the "gun nut propaganda", as he's since gone on to be one of the biggest critics of John Lott's work on concealed-carry laws (see your article "Inequitable Penalties", though it doesn't mention Lindgren by name).

Please, don't just go blowing away the original article. Add the quotes by Bellesiles. Add rebuttals of the criticism. Remove obviously non-NPOV language like "the discredited book" (I already started doing that before you blew it away). But don't censor the article!

I'm going to wait a bit before reverting the article to the last version, trying to stay cool.

-Ben

It's not up to Wikipedia to say that one side in a controversy has been "discredited". We can only say that:

Mr. So and So of X organization says that Y's views have been discredited.

But on such a hot issue as gun control, gun rights, gun ownership, or other Second Amendment issues -- it's better to cast the controversy in terms of two opposing points of views (POV).

Let's just say that:

Prof. Bellesilis claimed that firearms were rare in early America, based on statistics he compiled
His university pressured him to resign, because it disagreed with the way he compiled or interpreted the statistics

I think everyone would agree that the professor DID make that claim: i.e., his book DOES SAY that few colonials had guns (a lot less than modern historions have assumed). Note that this does not mean he was RIGHT about this: we are only agreeing THAT HE MADE THIS CLAIM.

I think we can also agree that the university DID pressure him to resign (or face dismissal) over this issue. Note that this does not mean they were RIGHT to do so.

--Uncle Ed 15:16, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Quotes

"violated basic norms of acceptable scholarly conduct. ... the judgment to rescind the Bancroft Prize was based solely on the evaluation of the questionable scholarship of the work and had nothing to do with the book's content or the author's point of view" [1]