Michael Bellisles is a “scholar” who wrote a book called Arming America that had a novel thesis — Bellisles claimed that there were very few guns owned by private citizens in the United States prior to the middle of the 19th century. Bellisles’ book was well-reviewed and praised, largely for the ammunition it apparently provided for gun control advocates.
Despite winning a prestigious award, however, gun nuts on the Internet began dissecting the book almost immediately and what they found was damning enough that professional historians took a second look at the book and found systemtic, egregious errors.
The main issue left to resolve is whether or not Bellisles was simply incompetent at conducting historical research or whether the book was an intentional fraud. Given how thorough the factual errors are in the book, it was difficult to believe Bellisles was not intentionally fraudulent.
Bellisles this week inadvertently confirmed that his book is almost certainly fraudulent in an example of just how hard it is to pull of a lie — and all because of e-mail.
James Lindgren is a respected scholar who began looking into Bellisles’ book and carried on an e-mail correspondence with Bellisles beginning in 2000. The problem for Bellisles is that answered questions that Lindgren had about how Bellisles has conducted his research. But today, Bellisles is telling a completely different story — in just two years, his claims about he collected data he used in his book has gone through numerous changes to the point where he was either lying in 2000 or is lying today (or he was lying in both cases).
So Bellisles, apparently as a last resort, accused Lindgren of fraud. Bellisles claimed that he did not write the e-mails that Lindgren has produced and which have been referenced in articles about the controversy.
Big mistake. Aside from the obvious problem of how or why Lindgren would fake the e-mails, Bellisles appeared on a radio show with Lindgren on January 16, 2001 and acknowledged writing the e-mails as well as defended the statements in the e-mails which Bellisles now claims he never wrote.
For example, one issue is that in one of the e-mails Bellisles claims to have done research on some records at the National Archives. The problem is that the records at issue aren’t in the National Archives. In the radio interview, Bellisles repeats the substance of the e-mail, “[I] did in fact, ah, look at them at the National Archives.”
But now he’s denying that he ever wrote the e-mail at all!
Emory University, where Bellisles is a professor, has already initiated an investigation which will almost certainly lead to his termination. This latest episode just puts the final nail in the coffin.
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