Contrary to what Bellesiles calls popular "mythology," gun violence isn't deeply ingrained in American society or an essential part of our national character. In colonial times, muskets were clumsy to shoot and in short supply. Native American tribes were not conquered by gunpowder, but by Europeans forming alliances with opposing tribes. And the Redcoats were not felled by hundreds of patriot snipers welding muskets. Bellesiles relates that Brits searching the Wild West for shootouts found their Americans uncouth and drunk, rather than trigger-happy.

It's assertions like this that make Charlton Heston and his NRA cronies apoplectic. As far as they're concerned, Bellesiles is just another liberal undermining the Second Amendment. Not that Heston has read "Arming America." If he did, he'd realize the book was, in fact, a 578-page love letter to firearms. Salon interviewed Bellesiles by telephone about his peculiar position.

Do you have a political agenda or are you just into guns?

I am into guns. I am also a historian trying to uncover an aspect of American history. That's what historians are supposed to do. I'm not agenda driven. I'm not trying to convince anyone to take a policy position. I am fascinated by firearms and I'm very interested in their history.

You're in charge of the Center for the Study of Violence at Emory University in Atlanta. What's that?

An undergraduate program. What has long fascinated me as a historian is the discontinuity between modern violence and historical violence. We think the way we live now is the way it's always been and that's not the case at all. On a relative scale, the America Revolution was a very nonviolent event. Those who study murder found that murder rates in early America up until the 1920s were remarkably low. Compared to New York circa 1840, Paris was a far more dangerous place to live.

I was disappointed to learn in your book that Billy the Kid only shot three people.

The numbers attached to his name are outrageous. The only true serial killer that we know of from the Wild West is John Wesley Harding. He was employed by large ranchers to get rid of small ranchers. Butch Cassidy almost never carried a gun and he never shot anyone -- except for maybe that final event down in Bolivia.

What's it like having Charlton Heston gunning for you?

I wrote him an open letter because he wrote an editorial in Guns & Ammo attacking my research from a very postmodern perspective: Evidence doesn't matter. He said I had too much time on my hands. I pointed out that I write history and what use people make of it is their business, not mine.

He ended his attack with these words: "Just for the sake of debate, let's say the colonists didn't own many firearms. So what? It's irrelevant! Very few had printing presses, television stations or Internet access either. By the same 'logic,' would that make freedom of the press or freedom of speech any less important to our way of life?"

No, of course not. Framed that way. There is no relationship at all between gun ownership in the 18th and 19th centuries and today. And the reason it matters to Charlton Heston is because the NRA has long associated itself with an imagined history of America in which those who love freedom always owned firearms. And if that imagined history is demonstrated not to hold, they have to be doing what they should be doing -- which is basing their current political position on current political necessity instead of on an imagined past.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"