Actually the "busting" was done firstly by Ira Gruber of Rice University.

He states, "Arming America" is a very frustrating book. The subject and its implications aare important. But Bellesiles's scholarship does not justice to his subject......to portray the Civil War as the catalyst for a national gun culture is a biased reading of sources and careless uses of evidence and context.

The scholarship is faulted on trying to establish the Civil War period as the base for the US gun culture.

This does not denegrate the evidence presented on Colonial gun ownership as developed from probate records.

The fault is in the overstatement and timing, not in the sourceword developed.

According to the William and Mary Quarterly three essays by James Lindgren of Northwestern and others atacked SOME of the sources and found flaws or gaps in the material. Thus the charge was leveled that scholarly incompetence, of being so blinded by the light that he rode roughshod over anything that didn't propel him toward the light."

There was a rush to judgement on both sides of the gun control argument. This was unfortunate because some valid research on what was actually going on during the pre-revolutionary period has been lost in the conclusion that were reached.

The facts still remain that individual gun ownership was not common during the period of the Revolutionary War. There can be no question that muskets had no accuracy worth mention and the State of Massachusetts owned the guns and munitions that the Minuetmen used.

Thus there is no basis in historical use for individual ownership of weapons under the Bill of Rights. Individual ownership of weapons is based on custom from the expansion into the West.

Publius