Quote of the day—Adam Winkler

Where did Michaels Bellesiles go wrong?

Not when he took on the gun lovers. They’re used to being attacked. Not when he made a surprising discovery about an important facet of live in early America. Historians do that all the time. Bellesiles went wrong, where so many anti-gun people go wrong, by hoping that appearances are all that matter.

Adam Winkler
2011
Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America
[Bellesiles was the author of the completely discredited book Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture

Winkler is not known for being a friend of gun owners. I have been hesitant to purchase his book simply because I didn’t want money going to him. I had run out of Audible books I really wanted to listen to and this book was suggested as being of possible interest when I was looking for other books. In a moment of somewhat desperation for another book I purchased it.

I’m a little over 10% of the way through the book and I don’t really have much to complain about in terms of what I would suspect to be false or misleading. He appears to be factual and fair. If I find information to the contrary as I continue listening I’ll let you know.

You might question that assessment when I he uses the phrase “gun lovers” in the quote above. He also refers to “gun grabbers” so I give him a pass on the “gun lovers” language.—Joe]

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2 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Adam Winkler

  1. Actually, since Bellesiles has been so completely discredited for the book, the conclusions he wanted others to draw from it, and any integrity his colleagues and potential customers might have thought he had, I question whether the “surprising fact of life about early American life” he claimed to have discovered ever existed ,except in his lying, anti-human-rights-scheming mind.

    Believing in the existence of this “surprising fact” after historians discredited virtually everything about the book might be a big mark in the minus column for Mr. Winkler.

  2. My understanding of where Bellesiles “went wrong” is when he decided to create a pile of utter fiction and attempted to pass it off as historical research.

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