FOR THE SECOND TIME NOW, Michael Bellesiles, a historian at Emory University, is being accused of having relied on missing or nonexistent records for evidence in his Bancroft prize-winning book “Arming America.” And, for the second time, Bellesiles’s protestations and explanations have failed to vindicate his book, which sought to refute the “myth” of widespread gun ownership in antebellum America. Elementary fact-checking has destroyed the credibility of Bellesiles’s story of how he discovered various 18th century Vermont court records others say don’t exist.

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