Clayton Cramer, a historian, software engineer, gun enthusiast and early critic of Bellesiles, later argued that the reason "why historians swallowed "Arming America"'s preposterous claims so readily is that it fit into their political worldview so well... "Arming America" said things, and created a system of thought so comfortable for the vast majority of historians, that they didn’t even pause to consider the possibility that something wasn’t right." Historian Peter Charles Hoffer, an advocate of gun control, lent support to Cramer's charge when, in a 2004 examination of the Bellesiles case, he noted that influential members of the historical profession had "taken strong public stands on violence in our society and its relation to gun control." For instance, the academics solicited for blurbs by Bellesiles’ publisher Alfred A. Knopf "were ecstatic in part because the book knocked the gun lobby."