Armed America: The Remarkable Story of How And Why Guns Became As American As Apple Pie

by Clayton E. Cramer

In this true story of our nation's love affair with firearms, Clayton E. Cramer debunks the myths and takes readers along a winding historical trail full of surprising revelations and riveting anecdotes, explaining the roots of America's gun culture.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

300 pages, Hardcover

First published January 16, 2007

Reviews

[Tom Darrow · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers the topic of gun use from the 1600s through about 1850. It is broken down into three sections... before the Revolution, the Revolution itself and the period of the early republic. Each section has a very different feel and relies on different source material, which weakens the overall continuity of the book.

The first section, on the colonial era, focuses on colonists using guns for hunting and protection against native Americans and relies heavily on wills as source material. The author also spends a chapter or two on how guns were sold to Native Americans and how the colonies both benefited from those sales and tried to control/restrict them.

The second section, on the Revolution, is somewhat dry. Three chapters are devoted to the quantities of guns available at the start of the Revolution. About 50 pages are broken down by individual colony, looking at advertisements, government documents, etc. that all basically show that guns were plentiful in the US at the start of the Revolution. He could easily have made that point in half the space and been just as convincing.

The third section, focused on the Early Republic, shows that guns were still plentiful and a part of American life. Several of these chapters are devoted to debunking another author's work, so it doesn't really seem like its own book.

Generally speaking, his thesis is somewhat unclear. "How" and "why" guns became as American as apple pie are touched on tangentially, but not directly.

People who are interested in this period or gun culture in American would be interested in this book, but I feel like it easily could have been published as several smaller articles.

[Valzebub · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a short book, but it was a slog to get through. There are sections that are absolutely fascinating and really help you understand the environment the second amendment was written in and the ideas the framers of the Bill of Rights were trying to enshrine and why they viewed the right to bear arms as so important as to be number two in their list. And then there are extremely lengthy and boring chapters examining the availability of firearms in colonial days that just seem to drag on and on.

This took me way longer to get through than I anticipated and I had to put it down at multiple points and read something else. Overall I'm glad I put in the time.

[Fred · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book providing firm evidence for the ubiquity of guns in the time of the early American republic. Much of the evidence is presented in a very matter-of-fact manner. Also of use is his treatment of attitudes by observers and gun owners during these periods. While some of his interpretations of the evidence may be generous to his side, they do not seem out of reasonable possibility. I find I agree with most of the assumptions he makes after considering other contexts he provides from other examples in the colonies. Also provides insight into the lack of respect that developed on the frontier, post revolution, for life.

[LecturerRich · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is really more of an academic treatise but it is very readable and enlightening

[Anthony A · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a necessary response to fraudster Michael Bellesiles' tendentious Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, where Bellesiles deliberately misinterpreted historical data to claim that guns weren't common in early America. Clayton Cramer was one of the historians who uncovered Bellesiles' fraud, and wrote this book to set the record straight.

However, this book isn't just a refutation of Bellesiles. It's also an entertaining slice of early American history in its own right. Just like other books which focus on foods, this book is a "vertical history" (though shorter than many) focusing on guns over a 200-plus year slice of American history. To show that guns were common throughout the period, Cramer covers a wide variety of conflicts, from Indian wars to slave revolts to political conflict within the colonies to interpersonal conflicts between the colonists. This results in a rather broad coverage of social and political history of a period that normally gets glossed over - most school history skips from 1622 (when the Indians bailed out the Plymouth colonists) to 1756 (when the French and Indian Wars started) with just a paragraph or two reciting who established each colony and why. Due to the focus of this book, it doesn't provide broad coverage of the history of that time, but it does a lot more than most. The book also continues into the Revolutionary War, where one gets a better sense of the logistics of the war (for the battle buff, the period is otherwise well-covered, of course) as Cramer tracks down how the Continental Army and its supporting militias armed themselves. The last part of the book tracks guns through the Early Republic period, and doesn't shy away from noticing that much use of the militia away from the frontier was in chasing down escaped and rebelling slaves, but shows that militias, and guns, had far more uses than those.

Given the circumstances surrounding the writing of this book, it's understandable that it refers back to Bellesiles' book (and earlier paper) to specifically contradict the claims made. However, this would be a stronger book if all the material referring to Bellesiles and "Arming America" were tucked away in a foreword or afterword, leaving the history to stand on its own, and allowing those who are interested in the controversy to look it all up in one place without interrupting the narrative flow of this fascinating history.

[Rachel]

Whatever politically-correct "historians" choose to say, America's history is filled with guns. Good book.

[Natalie Leppard]

**read for work**