Clayton Cramer

Clayton E. Cramer is an American historian, author, gun enthusiast, and software engineer. He played an important early role in documenting errors in the book Arming America by Michael A. Bellesiles, a book that was later proven to be based on fraudulent research. His work was cited by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas in United States v. Emerson, 46 F.Supp.2d 598 (N.D.Tex. 1999). His research also informed the Supreme Court decision in the seminal Second Amendment cases District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago. He holds an MA in history from Sonoma State University. He currently resides in Horseshoe Bend, Idaho, near Boise.

In 1996, while working on his master's thesis, Cramer read a paper by Bellesiles on early gun laws, published in the Journal of American History. This paper formed a basis for Bellesiles' later book, Arming America. Cramer's thesis "examined the development of concealed weapon laws in the early Republic", and he was struck by how Bellesiles' paper contradicted his own knowledge of gun availability in early America. However, at the time, Cramer attributed the contradiction to Bellesiles having picked differing sources from those that Cramer himself knew well.

Cramer was later sent an early review copy of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture. Upon reading it, Cramer immediately noted significant discrepancies with what he knew of American history, particularly at the time of the American Revolution. He began checking facts and discovered that many of Bellesiles' citations and quotes did not match the historical record. "I sat down with a list of bizarre, amazing claims that Bellesiles had made, and started chasing down the citations at Sonoma State University’s library. I found quotations out of context that completely reversed the author’s original intent. I found dates changed. I found the text of statutes changed — and the changes completely reversed the meaning of the law. It took me twelve hours of hunting before I found a citation that was completely correct."

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