At the fall 2001 Social Science History Association convention in Chicago, the Crime and J
Contrary to Kleck and Lott, Bellesiles insists that guns and America's "gun culture" are responsible for America's high rate of murder. In Belleville's opinion, relatively few Americans owned guns before the 1850s or know how to use, maintain, or repair them. As a result, he says, guns contributed little to the homicide rate, especially among Whites, Which was low everywhere, even in the South and on the frontier, where historians once assumed gun and murder went hand in hand. According to Bellesiles, these patterns changed dramatically after the Mexican War and especially after the Civil War, when gun ownership became widespread and cultural changes encouraged the use of handguns to command respect and resolve personal and political disputes. The result was an unprecedented wave of gun-related homicides that never truly abated. To this day, the United States has the highest homicide rate of any industrial democracy. Bellesile's low estimates of gun ownership in early America conflict, however, with those of every historian who has previously studied the subject and has thus far proven irreproducible. Every homicide statistic he presents is either misleading or wrong.
Given the influence of Kleck, Lott, Bellesiles and other partisan scholars on the debate over gun control and gun rights, we felt a need to pull together what social science historians have learned to date about the history of gun ownership and gun violence in America, and to consider what research methods and projects might increase our knowledge in the near future②.
Which of the following statements is TRUE about the public debate over gun ownership?
A.It has little influence on the forum sponsored by the Crime and Justice network.
B.Neither supporters nor opponents of gun control cite the works of scholars.
C.The works of mainstream social scientists have great impact on it.
D.Many social science historians have so far failed to take part in it.