The Ridiculous Hitler Comparisons
Salon
This week, people were shocked when the Drudge Report posted a giant picture of Hitler over a headline speculating that the White House will proceed with executive orders to limit access to firearms. The proposed orders are exceedingly tame, but Drudge’s reaction is actually a common conservative response to any invocation of gun control.
Unfortunately for LaPierre et al., the notion that Hitler confiscated
everyone’s guns is mostly bogus. And the ancillary claim that Jews could
have stopped the Holocaust with more guns doesn’t make any sense at all
if you think about it for more than a minute.
Proponents of the theory sometimes point to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising as evidence that, as Fox News’ Judge Andrew Napolitano put it,
“those able to hold onto their arms and their basic right to
self-defense were much more successful in resisting the Nazi genocide.”
But as the Tablet’s Michael Moynihan
points out, Napolitano’s history (curiously based on a citation of work
by French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson) is a bit off. In reality,
only about 20 Germans were killed, while some 13,000 Jews were
massacred. The remaining 50,000 who survived were promptly sent off to
concentration camps.
The definition of assault rifle comes from WW2 and means a rifle with select-fire and/or full automatic fire, and chambered in an intermediate rifle cartridge [eg: 7.62x39]. another side note, is that Hitler is the one who came up with the name, referring to the sturmgewer [storm rifle/assault rifle] stg44 in 1943/44. all of today's proposed gun control measures are based upon the laws that Hitler himself enacted in the late 1930's, right before he rounded up and murdered millions of unarmed innocent people. Stalin did the very same thing as well.
ReplyDeleteThe attack on the Warsaw Ghetto tied up significant numbers of German forces, weakening their number on the eastern front. Yes, the Weimar Republic started the removal of guns in private hands in Germany, so instead of an evil tyrant, you have a bunch of loony incompetents to model yourselves after.
ReplyDeleteWhere to begin? We could debate at length whether the structure of the German family, which was reflected in German culture, would have resulted in a widespread resistance to the Nazis. Likewise, we could argue as to whether to accept Stroop's report or that of the Polish resistance regarding the effectiveness of the ghetto uprising. What those debates make clear is that effective resistance requires two things: 1)the will to resist and 2) the means to resist. Each of them is worthless without the other. It is worth noting that a small, poorly trained and poorly armed group held off the Nazis for almost a month. A significant number of firearms owners in this country are anything but poorly trained as that group includes many current and former military and law enforcement personnel. Our history as a nation suggests a significant number have had a will to resist.
ReplyDeleteThe real problem, though, with the Salon article, is the premise that dying while passively accepting oppression, brutality and death is no different from dying while actively resisting. I find that premise morally repugnant, intellectually dishonest and ethically indefensible. For an author in this country, where so many died for the cause of liberty, to suggest such a thing is indicative of how little some have come to treasure liberty and the right to live and die as a free people.