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ARMED AMERICA: THE STORY OF HOW AND WHY GUNS BECAME AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE

By Clayton E. Cramer, Nelson Current, $26.99, 320 pages

In 1996, Michael Bellesiles published a paper in the Journal of American History. The thesis: Early Americans rarely owned firearms, and manufacturer marketing and activist lobbying created today's gun culture. Four years later, Mr. Bellesiles turned the paper into a book, "Arming America."

The claim, obviously, was false. When researchers discovered he'd (at best) grossly misinterpreted document after document -- and even claimed to review records destroyed decades earlier -- he resigned his job as an Emory University professor. Columbia University revoked the Bancroft Prize it had awarded Mr. Bellesiles and asked for the award money back.

One good thing came from all this, though. The initially positive reaction to "Arming America" stunned gun-rights supporter, historian and blogger Clayton Cramer. He decided to set the record straight, and the result is the thorough and well written "Armed America."

The new thesis: Guns are "as American as apple pie." Three sections, covering Colonial, revolutionary and early republican America, show just how that happened.

Mr. Cramer writes in a clear if dry style, patiently cataloguing example after example of guns' historical prevalence. The book weighs in at a tidy 243 pages (excluding the bibliography and footnotes, but including the helpful gun-terms glossary) yet demands some effort and concentration.

It will surprise even pro-gun readers how pervasive firearms were in Colonial days. By law, white men liable for militia service often had to own guns, but they were far from the only demographic that chose to. Well before the Declaration of Independence, women had guns. Free and even slave blacks had guns. Soon after contact with whites, American Indians became dependent on firearms for hunting.

Widespread gun possession led to control efforts then as today. Governments could ban black gun possession, but seldom with complete success; "grand juries in South Carolina complained that masters were bringing guns to church, as the law required, then handing them to slaves to hold during services."