Spiking the Gun Myth. The New York Times reviews Daniel Bellesiles’ Arming America, which deflates the myths evoked by current gun advocates about the early role of the gun in American life. Excerpt from the book:

The gun is so central to American

identity that the nation’s history has

been meticulously reconstructed to

promote the necessity of a heavily

armed American public. In the classic

telling, arms ownership has always

been near universal, and American

liberty was won and maintained by

the actions of privately armed

citizens. The gun culture has been

read from the present into the past.

Franklin Orth, executive vice

president of the NRA, told a Senate

subcommittee in 1968, ‘There is a

very special relationship between a

man and his gun — an atavistic

relation with its deep roots in

prehistory, when the primitive man’s

personal weapon, so often his only

effective defense and food provider,

was nearly as precious to him as his

own limbs.’ What, then, of the man

who does not have such a special

relationship with his gun? What kind

of man is he? And even more

frightening, what if we discover that

early American men did not have that

special bond with their guns?”