I think the granddaddy of all useless books on guns is:
Michael A. Bellesiles, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (Alfred A. Knopf: 2000).
The author's (somewhat incredible) thesis was that firearm ownership in America prior to the Civil War was rare, and that it was government subsidization of the firearms industry that created reliable firearms available in mass quantities that the "gun culture" of America.
The author was a tenured history professor at Emory University, and the book won him the Bancroft prize for History....
...then all sorts of questions were raised about the scholarship that went into the work. Someone questioned him on the source of his data....which Bellesiles claimed that he couldn't find (claiming his notes had all been destroyed in a flood).
Then Emory itself launched an investigation into him, and the panel basically went nuclear on him, saying they were "deeply disturbed" (academic speak for: "***?") He resigned as soon as the report was announced. Columbia University itself rescinded his Bancroft prize as well. Then his publisher stopped printing the book.
He started fulminating about being the victim of an intellectual lynching, but anyone with half a brain could tell you that Columbia University and Emory's academic review board are hardly shock troops in the "vast right-wing conspiracy". He did bad work (presumably to make a political point,) and got called on it, that's all.
Anyway, the stupidest gun pr0n magazine has more intellectual weight than that book.
