I mean, come now.

And in this instance, Bellesilies was absolutely right. Washington’s papers and letters demonstrate he had a very jaundiced view of the militias of his day. He considered them ineffective, ill-trained, ill-disciplined, and unreliable in protracted campaigns.

And Bellesiles was most certainly correct; Geo Washington had a very jaundiced view of the militias in his day. Washington’s papers indicate he found the militias ill-trained, ill-disciplined and unreliable during protracted campaigns.

But, again, this is so much deflection away from the issue of Lott, who continues to be gainfully employed, despite a record of fraud and general weirdness.

Of course, the federal court was hardly swayed by Bellesiles. Bellesiles was a single footnote out of many dozen.

At least Bellesiles is real, live person. How many times have gun advocates cited Theodore Fiddleman in cases before the court?

I see. How devious of Bellesiles to specifically write his work wasn’t intended to support or not support public policy—when he actually had that very intention.

Thank goodness for mindreading.

So while Lott has done some crappy work, I don’t see federal circuit courts being swayed by his “research”. It took the farg’n Supreme Court to overrule Bellesiles’ B.S.

Just another aspect of the fraud. Does anyone seriously believe we’d even have heard of Bellesiles, if he’d written on the frequency of butter churn ownership? That he’d have gotten the Bancroft prize? Been seized upon as support for anti-gun court rulings?

That book was meant to undercut the individual rights interpretation of the 2nd amendment, by lending the impression that there was no culture of firearms ownership in this country until after the Civil war. And if he’d had no ax to grind, why didn’t he just write the truth, instead of making things up?

OTOH, Lott continues to provide “expert” testimony to legislatures on behalf of proposed CCW and gun-related legislation.

Of course, this doesn’t even touch the very creepy practices of Lott creating fictonal personas to praise his research and his marked tendency to attack and malign those who point out his errors.

Bellesiles’ work was intended to portray a history of American firearm usage—as such, it had no public policy implications. Yet, Lott continues to be cited as an authority on matters of public policy.

The chief difference between the cases, it seems to me, is that the problems with Lott’s research were fairly subtle, and the errors were at the margins. If his behavior had been a bit better, you could call it nothing more than an innocent mistake.

Bellesiles was off by a huge factor in his numbers, and engaged in forms of fraud understandable to anyone who’s minimally literate: Invented sources, changing quotes to agree with his thesis, using quotes out of context to imply the opposite of what the source was actually saying. From the moment his book was published, there was no real question that the fraud was deliberate.