NRO Weekend, October 14-15, 2000
Put a Muzzle on It
How Michael Bellesiles misses his mark, over and over again.

By James Swan, Ph.D. and author of In Defense of Hunting

EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to the questionable data and arguments in the recently released (and acclaimed) Arming America, this is the second review of the book to appear on NRO. Reviewer James Swan's criticism of the book differs from that of NRO's original reviewer, Clayton Cramer, by taking particular exception to the way muzzle-loading is portrayed in this history.

Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, by Michael A. Bellesiles

mory University professor of history Michael Bellesiles has delivered Arming of America: The Origins of A National Gun Culture. It is an account of gun ownership in America from Columbus' arrival to the Civil War era. His major thesis is that contrary to what many believe, there were few guns, largely of poor quality, in the United States up until the Civil War. Following the Civil War, guns were more plentiful and the NRA was created. He asserts that since then the NRA has created a myth about the place of firearms in American history that supports a "gun culture," which is at the root of much of our violence, including school shootings.

Scholars of history debate the merits of Bellesiles's research methods and conclusions. He has used probate records, court documents, wills, journals, and early magazines as primary sources. I am not a historian, but I do know something about weapons and psychology. A building is as strong as its foundation. The same is true for a book. He is writing about weapons and their uses. When it comes to the understanding of weapons and the psychological issues associated with hunting and violence, however, the author's hyperbole, inflammatory language, and serious inaccuracies make this "scholarly" work nothing but a misleading anti-gun, anti-hunting rant.

In the first chapter, Bellesiles states as a core building block of his thesis: "Most people have no idea how difficult it is to use and care for a black-powder muzzle-loading musket, nor how haphazard and dangerous these weapons can be when fired. One indication can be found in records of any of the many states that set aside a separate deer season for muzzle-loaders.

During New York's l994 season, for instance, only 3.5 percent of the licensed hunters using muzzle-loaders bagged their deer. Far more deer — 19,430 to be exact — were killed by archers." This assertion is fraught with error and deception. As many as seven million people each year use muzzle-loading weapons in the U.S., some traditional and some modern. Many use them for target shooting and historical recreations. A growing number, well over one million, use them for hunting. To equate a modern in-line muzzle-loader with a Revolutionary War firearm is like trying to say that a Ford Model T and a modern Ferrari are the same car. It shows a total lack of familiarity with the technology, but let's go with his statement as is.

I cannot cite safety statistics for firearms in the l700's. However, we do have the stats on hunting accidents involving modern muzzle-loaders; the total in both Canada and the U.S. in 1996 and in 1997 was 21 according to the Hunter Education Association. There were four fatal accidents in 1996 and two in l997. At least half of these fatalities were due to falling out of tree stands, which is hardly related to the safety of the weapon. According to the National Safety Council, ping-pong, tennis, and golf are far more dangerous than hunting with muzzle-loaders.

Muzzle-loader shooting tournaments involving thousands of people are held every year in the U.S., according to John Miller, vice president of the National Muzzleloading Rifle Association. Miller says there has not been a firearms-related injury of any kind at a shooting competition in the last ten years. He is aware of only one serious accident involving muzzle-loaders in reenactments during the same period; it involved a person firing a patch that hit another person at close range in a simulated battle.

Bellesiles suggests we check on state deer-hunting statistics to see how ineffective muzzle-loaders are. I did. Forty-seven states now have special black-powder seasons. The International Blackpowder Hunting Association has compiled statistics of success for 36 states that have special muzzle-loader-only deer seasons. (Some states do not separate out black-powder success.) For l996-97, the national average rate of success for muzzle-loader hunters for those 36 states with special seasons was about 30 percent, ten times the level Bellesiles cites as his example. This does not include deer taken by hunters using black-powder rifles in regular deer season, which is substantial. Nation-wide, the success rate for archers is about 20 percent and rifle hunters 40 percent, recognizing that success rates vary from state to state, as well as year to year due to weather conditions, etc.

The potency of the muzzle-loader's effectiveness as a hunting weapon becomes even more significant when one realizes that in many states the muzzle-loader-only season is one week to ten days, often falling after all other deer seasons are completed and there are fewer deer in the woods to shoot. Archery seasons in many places last two or more months. General rifle seasons in many states last two weeks or more.

Bellesiles cites l994 statistics for the success of New York deer hunters, where archers killed 19,430 deer while only 3.5 of the licensed muzzle-loader hunters to support his claim about the effectiveness of muzzle-loaders. (He does not say what the percentages or gross kills were for both.) It seems curious that a book published in 2000 would base such an important point on citing hunting statistics for one state, New York, and one year, 1994. It turns out that 1994 was an anomaly for New York when muzzle-loader hunters had an unusually low annual kill.

The archery deer season in New York is essentially two months long, and allows hunters to take deer of either sex. It begins earlier when there is more cover for concealment and deer are not yet spooked by hunters. The muzzle-loader season lasts for two one-week periods: a limited season just prior to rifle season in the north only, and a single, one-week season in mid-December following the major rifle season in most of the state. Each state adjusts seasons and bag limits according to research on herd size. According to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, in l994 muzzle-loader hunters were only allowed to shoot bucks because a severe winter the previous year had reduced herd size. (Archers could shoot either sex.) Further, the muzzle-loader season comes largely after the main rifle season — mid-December — when thousands of deer (especially bucks) have been shot. Held at such a late date, muzzle-loader success is also linked with weather conditions, which apparently were harsh that year. He does not give a statistic on the percentage of success of archers for l994, just the raw number of deer killed. In l999, in New York the success rate for archers was about 20 percent, and the success rate for muzzle-loaders was about 25 percent, when they could hunt both sexes in the two one-week exclusively muzzle-loader seasons.  He also fails to note, incidentally, that in 1994 there were roughly ten times as many deer-hunting archers in New York as those using muzzle-loaders.

Bellesiles insists that traditional muzzle-loaders were extremely inaccurate (6-10 yards effective range, at most) and had no sights. Black-powder weapons were developed in the early l300's in Europe. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, by 1472 tournaments were held where marksmen using muzzle-loaders shot at distances up to a distance of 500 yards. The bulls-eye was five-feet wide.

By the early 1500's sights and rifled barrels were common in Europe, even though Bellesiles states that most of the guns of Colonial America had no sight. According to the National Muzzleloading Rifle Association, the most typical firearm owned by a colonial settler was a "smoothbore fowler." Such a gun could be used to shoot birdshot or lead balls for large game. Contrary to what Bellesiles asserts, people can be good shots with sightless weapons. Shot-gunners and instinctive archers shoot without any sights, often with extraordinary accuracy. Modern recreations of the Colonial Era smoothbore fowler are perfectly capable of hitting targets at 200 yards or more. One need only read Zen In The Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel to understand how one becomes a marksman with a sightless weapon. The issue of sights has no relevance to the utility of the weapon whatsoever.

By lumping modern black-powder weapons with 300-year-old ones, Bellesiles shows little understanding of weaponry. The modern in-line and percussion muzzle-loaders are a considerable improvement over the early flintlock design. Modern black-powder rifles use sights, often telescopic sights, and get groups of 2" or less at 200 yards. In black-powder weapons tournaments held around the U.S. one favorite target for traditional flintlocks is to shoot at the blade of an ax. Hitting it splits the lead ball in half, thus hitting two clay targets, one on each side. Other contests involve hitting targets up to 200 yards, where the bulls-eye is only 2 inches in diameter.

One could say that lumping modern weapons with traditional flintlocks comes up with an unfair statistic when talking about weapons of 1700's, which the author could have done, but did not. So, let's look at Pennsylvania, which does have a special deer season for primitive flintlock rifles only. In l999, Pennsylvania traditionalists killed 13,949 deer. Pennsylvania sold a total of 106,090 muzzle-loader licenses for l999, which includes all types of muzzle-loaders, so the primitive technologists in Pennsylvania seemingly did better than the national average for success with black-powder. Also, there were no reported accidental injuries from primitive muzzle-loaders in Pennsylvania in l999. Further, the Pennsylvania Game Commission reports that since a special muzzle-loader season was created in l982 there have been 27 accidents total for all types of muzzle-loaders, with four of them fatalities.

Bellesiles delights in listing accounts of battles where many shots are fired and few are hit or killed, using these data to support his claim that muzzle-loaders of the Colonial Era were inaccurate. If guns could shoot up to 500 yards with some accuracy, how could this be? True, flintlocks are slow to load, aim and fire compared to a modern center-fire rifle, so people could duck. However, even if his data are valid, they do not necessarily have anything to do with the accuracy of the guns, or even the non-warfare accuracy of the shooters.

There is a psychological issue here he totally avoids. As Clint Eastwood told us in The Unforgiven, "It's a helluva thing to kill a man." As recently as World War II, General S.L.A. Marshall reports in his book Men Against Fire that Army psychologists found that 70-80% of trained Army troops will not willingly kill an enemy. In battle, despite training, many either do not shoot, or do not try to hit their enemy.

Like Bellesiles, they missed badly.