Oh, Shit! Michael Bellesiles is coming out with another book!

It's called 1877 and I wonder if it will get as much attention as Arming America!

An interesting article by Alexander Cockburn on Arming America here

With Bellesiles the stakes are higher because his subject addressed the issue of gun ownership in America and the Second Amendment. By the mid-1990s the battle was tilting decisively in favor of those arguing that the Second Amendment asserts the right of individual American citizens to own guns for self-defense and, if necessary, to counter government tyranny by means of armed popular resistance. (NB: the preceding sentence concludes with 22 words lifted from a piece by Chris Mooney in Lingua Franca.)...

So if the people weren't armed, and if even official militias were mostly a disheveled rabble without arms, the second amendment was really an antic fantasy, like feudal armor in the mock Tudor hall of a Bradford cotton millionaire.