Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, by Michael A. Bellesiles, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 640 pages, $30 Five months before the publication of Arming America, without seeing the text, The New York Times endorsed its author's claim that few guns, let alone a gun culture, existed in America prior to the Civil War. This was just the beginning of the media blitz that would greet the book. A glowing treatment by Garry Wills adorned the cover of The New... (GunPolicy.org)