Posted for educational purposes only.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42132-2000Nov19.html
LETTERS
Sunday, November 19, 2000; Page X11Shooting Straight
John Chambers's review (Book World, Oct. 29) questions Michael Bellesiles's premise in Arming America that sample estates of deceased persons indicate that only 14 percent of Americans owned firearms when the republic was founded. To test this method, I reviewed the inventories of Thomas Jefferson's three estates. They are very detailed, right down to the "2 sickles" valued at $1 and "cotton sheets $1.25." Not one firearm.
Yet Jefferson was a life-long firearm owner. He hunted as a boy and once won "a shilling threepence" in a shooting match. His papers indicate dozens of purchases of fowling pieces and pistols. "Let your gun be the constant companion of your walks," Jefferson wrote his nephew.
Why weren't Jefferson's firearms listed in his estates? He gave his Turkish pistols, with which "I never missed a squirrel at 30 yds.," to Dolly Madison's son. The rest are a mystery, but a pair of pocket pistols he bought in 1786 are on display at Monticello.
Bellesiles's thesis that gun ownership was unimportant to Americans who lived at the time the Second Amendment was adopted is welcomed by supporters of strict gun control. Yet whatever the merits of current proposals, Chambers's review is a welcome relief from writing history as ideology.
STEPHEN P. HALBROOK
Fairfax