Turkish Gun Control caused the Armenian Genocide???

Now, the great Scholar Joe the Plumber has decided to parrot the nonsense about "Gun Control caused Genocide", but Matthew White doesn't get into the topic in his debunking of the nonsense. He does cover the topic, but doesn't mention how many people were killed by gun control

Matthew does say that the big massacres occurred in 1915, but there were rumblings before and after...with the period of 1915-18 generally included in the Death Tolls for World War One.

I am going to toss in that this one not only works on US historical ignorance, but also its ignorance of other countries. Armenia was in the South Caucasus region between Turkey and The Russian empire. When World War I broke out, the confrontation of the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire in the Caucasus and Persian Campaigns let to the Turkish government fearing the Armenians and viewing them with suspicion: especially since the Russian army contained a contingent of Armenian volunteers.

So, I get the feeling that gun control once again had little to do with the death toll in this genocide since the picture to this post is captioned:

Armenians defending the walls of Van in the spring of 1915. Scanned from the Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia Article on the Defense of Van (vol. 11, p. 273)

Somebody needs to tell those Armenians that they shouldn't have guns!

In fact, the defenders of Van were able to resist the Turks for over a month.

Also, it appears that the bulk of this genocide happened during the period of World War One. So, while the Armenians were being persecuted by the Turks and Kurds, they were allied with the Russians. In fact, it was the allegation of an alliance with the Russians which was used as a justification for the genocide.

This is what History.com says about the Genocide:

On April 24, 1915, the Armenian genocide began. That day, the Turkish government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals. After that, ordinary Armenians were turned out of their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water. Frequently, the marchers were stripped naked and forced to walk under the scorching sun until they dropped dead. People who stopped to rest were shot.

At the same time, the Young Turks created a “Special Organization,” which in turn organized “killing squads” or “butcher battalions” to carry out, as one officer put it, “the liquidation of the Christian elements.” These killing squads were often made up of murderers and other ex-convicts. They drowned people in rivers, threw them off cliffs, crucified them and burned them alive. In short order, the Turkish countryside was littered with Armenian corpses.

Records show that during this “Turkification”campaign government squads also kidnapped children, converted them to Islam and gave them to Turkish families. In some places, they raped women and forced them to join Turkish “harems” or serve as slaves. Muslim families moved into the homes of deported Armenians and seized their property.

In 1922, when the genocide was over, there were just 388,000 Armenians remaining in the Ottoman Empire.

There are quite a few problems with alleging that "gun control causes genocides" especially if the genocide occurs in war time. In this case, while the Armenians were being attacked by the Turks and Kurds, we don't know how much support they received from the Russians. Secondly, the argument presupposes that firearms are commonly owned items, we don't know how many Armenians actually owned firearms prior to the genocide and "gun control".

Of course, it garners sympathy to say that the Armenians were defenceless. They lose sympathy if it comes out that they actually were well armed and resisted the Turks.

But, like most of these genocides, it seems that any evidence either way is hard to find. Although, it seems that, like the Holocaust, there was resistance. It wasn't "gun control" that provided the potential for the Armenian genocide as much as the fact that it was an ethnic population caught between two warring empires.

This is not to say the genocide didn't happen or justify it, but that the claim that "gun control cause the Armenian Genocide" is yet another attempt to use one people's suffering for political gain at the cost of history.

The unasked question...

Unfortunately, this list still remains uncritically posted on the internet:

CONSIDER THIS… This is just part of the known tally …

* In 1929 the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, approximately 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
* In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915-1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
* Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill, and others, who were unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
* China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
* Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
* Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
* Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million “educated” people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

That places total victims who lost their lives because of gun control at approximately 56 million in the last century. Since we should learn from the mistakes of history, the next time someone talks in favor of gun control, find out which group of citizens they wish to have exterminated.

Despite the fact that "Genocide Expert" Matthew White says about it after debunking it:

this list is a pitifully weak argument against gun control, simply because most of the victims listed here did fight back. In fact, if there's a real lesson to be learned from this roster of oppressions, it's that sometimes a heavily armed and determined opposition is just swept up and crushed -- guns or no guns.

But, there is one question it raises--if gun control leads to genocide, why hasn't the United Kingdom seen any massive genocides? After all, the United Kingdom has had some form of gun control for the past two hundred or so years, with actual gun registration and licensing occurring in 1919.

Meet Matthew White!

I tend to cite to Matthew White for his interesting takes on certain subjects, in particular his attack of the astroturfed Genocide figures which have recently resurfaced here.

This is Matthew's description of himself:

The Long A: My academic credentials are pretty slim -- a couple of years of college and that's about it. I'm not a university professor or anything like that, and I currently earn my living as a librarian.

On the other hand, most of the information here is public knowledge, and you can easily confirm most of my facts with a minimum of research.

Also, frankly, very little history is undisputed fact anyway. Most history is debatable interpretation of fact. On these pages, I'm offering you my interpretations, but obviously you should study other interpretations before you make up your own mind.

Basically, I'm not out to convince you of anything, so you don't have to believe me if you don't want to. I created this page for my own benefit. Maintaining an online atlas gives my research structure and direction. It brings up questions that I can then seek answers to, and let's face it, questions are always better than answers. I would hope that you come away from this site with fascinating questions rather than smug answers. It's the only way to learn.

despite his slim academic credentials, he does say some interesting things:

Matthew White's Homepage

Did gun control cause the black death?

Does that seem like a stupid question? Not in the light of Unhinged's comment here:

And the million Irish starved by the UK during the "famine", that's OK too, as long as the govt has the monopoly on force, you're fine with that?

One problem with "pro-gun" arguments is that they have the unspoken assumption that people owned guns prior to the enactment of these laws (such as comparisons to England and Australia). The problem is that most of the time there wasn't wide spread gun ownership prior to the enactment of most "genocidal gun control laws". Additionally, they posit that societies' evils are caused by the lack of guns.

In the case of unhinged's comment, we are talking about the Irish Potato Famine which was caused by Phytophthora infestans, which is an oomycete that causes a disease commonly known as potato blight. The blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe, not just Ireland, during the 1840s; however, the impact and human cost in Ireland — where one-third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food—was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors. The blight was not directly caused by any evil act by the British Government.

Unless, of course, unhinged is hinting at the British Government's possible early use of biological warfare, which he doesn't provide evidence (APU).

I'm not sure how having a gun during a time when food crops were being ravaged by disease would be helpful anyway. Is he suggesting cannibalism?

The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. It is widely thought to have been an outbreak of plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% – 60% of Europe's population, reducing the world's population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in 1400. This has been seen as having created a series of religious, social and economic upheavals, which had profound effects on the course of European history. It took 150 years for Europe's population to recover. The plague returned at various times, killing more people, until it left Europe in the 19th century.

While this may seem silly, firearms were just becoming available in Europe when the Black Death broke out. The first and oldest picture of a firearm comes from Walter de Millimete's De Notabilitatibus Sapientis et Prudentia Regnum, 1326. The picture there shows a small cannon fixed to a table, firing an arrow with a shaft the size of the gunner's forearm. It is hard to believe that the inventor of firearms had cast a large cannon barrel for his first test. I think he probably first built a model of it, and that model would become a handgonne. The use of an arrow as a projectile doesn't seem too far fetched. After all, this was the kind of projectiles used for thousands of years. The earliest documented use of a handgonne was used at Tannenberg castle during its destruction in 1399.

I can't see why unhinged would not cite to this lack of firepower as a reason for the black death if he can see a connection between that and the Irish Potato Famine.

Stupidity about the Warsaw Ghetto, Jewish Resistance, and the War on the Eastern Front

I am going to start with Democommie's reponse:

Neither I or anyone else said that the jews of Warsaw weren't brave, resourceful and tenacious. They were, however, wiped out. Would they have died in any case? yes, probably--that's not at issue. You and your fellow gunzloonz repeatedly cite the jews of Warsaw (and Germany) as having been slaughtered after having their right to bear arms infringed. They were slaughtered--are you ready for this--because the average german, pole, russian, lithuanian, latvian, frenchman, rumanian, yugoslavian and other nationals in nazi occupied europe were either complicit in, or acquiescing to, the nazis' program of extermination of european jewry. Had the people in those countries not been willing to allow (or unable to stop) the depradations of Hitler and his murderous thugs it would not have happened the way it did.

I mentioned, in a previous comment, that the germans had engaged in a program of reprisals against the czechs, following the assassination by czech partisans working with the british SOE of Reinhard Hedrich. One of the reasons that the reprisals were not far worse was that the Germans depended upon the czech workers to help arm the reich's military. Czechs were not deemed "disposable", jews were--and too damned few objected to the plight of the jews.

Hiter was able to murder jews with impunity, not because of their lack of arms but because of their lack of support from their countrymen. Those brave souls who spoke truth to power and took common cause with the jews, against the nazis, were far too few in number.

Blaming the outlawing of the ownership of arms for the holocaust is a hideous lie.

Of course, that doesn't stop someone like unhinged making the comment that about Hitler's 20 Million Victims because of German gun control.

But as I pointed out, this happened during World War II. The fact that these victims died during War time should clue you in that Nazi gun control would not have been an issue.

Additionally, most of the Victims of Nazi Genocide were not Germans. The number of German Jews during the Holocaust is 142,000. Most Jewish victims of the Holocaust came from Eastern Europe, in particular, the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, and Romania. The number from those countries account for roughly 4.9 million of the Six Million total.

Country	Pre-war Jewish Population	Estimated Murdered
Austria	185,000	50,000
Belgium	66,000	25,000
Bohemia/Moravia	118,000	78,000
Bulgaria	50,000	0
Denmark	8,000	60
Estonia	4,500	2,000
Finland	2,000	7
France	350,000	77,000
Germany	565,000	142,000
Greece	75,000	65,000
Hungary	825,000	550,000
Italy	44,500	7,500
Latvia	91,500	70,000
Lithuania	168,000	140,000
Luxembourg	3,500	1,000
Netherlands	140,000	100,000
Norway	1,700	762
Poland	3,300,000	3,000,000
Romania	609,000	270,000
Slovakia	89,000	71,000
Soviet Union	3,020,000	1,000,000
Yugoslavia	78,000	60,000
Total:	9,793,700	5,709,329

Unhinged never cites a source for his 20 Million victims of Hitler, but...

Consider that approximately 4 million of that number were prisoners from the Soviet Red Army--If you know anything about Stalingrad and the campaign on the Eastern Front, you could hardly say the Soviets were captured without a fight. Additionally, The Soviet Union and Poland has strong Partisan resistance movements during the Nazi occupation.

In fact, your 20 million figure probably includes a fair amount of Soviet Civilians. The Cambridge History of the Soviet Union give the following tally of deaths under German occupation: 13.7M, including:

• "killed in hot or cold blood": 7.4M, incl.
• "taken to Germany and worked to death": 2.2M
• "died of overwork, hunger and disease": 4.1M

As I said, these were civilians in a very active and hotly contested war zone: Bomb and artillery shells are not very discriminating in who they kill. Not to mention guns aren't very helpful against starvation and disease.

The problem is that not only was there resistance to Hitler in these areas, but there was incredibly strong resistance to Hitler on the Eastern Front.

As I said, this happened during World War II, I don't think people had any difficulty getting guns if they needed them.

For additional estimates see:

• Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945 (New York: Bantam Books, 1986) 403.
• Abraham Edelheit and Hershel Edelheit, History of the Holocaust: A Handbook and Dictionary (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994) 266.
• Israel Gutman (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York: Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1990) 1799.
• Raul Hilberg, Destruction of European Jews (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1985) 1220.

Gun control and Genocides

A tip of the hat to Matthew White who compiled this list (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/gunsorxp.htm) with some additions from me.

There's an old saying: "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions", so wouldn't it be really ironic if a law created with the purpose of cutting back on the number of murders actually had the opposite effect?

Of course, there's another old saying: "Yew-juice is sovereign against snake-bite", which goes to show you that sometimes old sayings are just plain stupid. Sometimes good intentions turn out just fine, and sometimes laws don't have ironic outcomes.

But among the advocates of irony, the leading cause of 56 million needless deaths would seem to be gun control. Here's an account ledger that is reposted at several sites:

CONSIDER THIS... This is just part of the known tally ...

* In 1929 the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, approximately 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
* In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915-1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
* Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill, and others, who were unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
* China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
* Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
* Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
* Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million "educated" people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

That places total victims who lost their lives because of gun control at approximately 56 million in the last century. Since we should learn from the mistakes of history, the next time someone talks in favor of gun control, find out which group of citizens they wish to have exterminated.

Why fifty-six million? Mere coincidence? Well, the precise calculations follow, but if I were of a more cynical bent, I might suggest that they just made it all up to prove a point. After all, 56 million is without a doubt the perfect random number. Since a million doesn't mean much anymore, you'll want to crank it up the next level and accuse your enemies of something in the ten millions. Of course, it would be even better to accuse them of a hundred million, but usually, that's out of reach. A number as high as that needs a lot of buttressing, so you'll have to settle for a number a tad lower and lot more accessible. Fortunately, if you can push your number up over the halfway mark, you can imply a hundred million without actually having it. Anything over 50 million will do. Well, truthfully, 51 isn't enough. Your first instinct upon seeing 51 is to round it down to 50, so you need to tack on a second digit large enough to resist the rounding-down. You need to push it at least as close to 60 as to 50 -- let's say 55. Of course, numbers ending in 0s and 5s always look like ballpark guesstimates, so let's add 1 to it, and it'll look more precise.

We see now that 56 million is the lowest number that implies both accuracy and a hundred. As I said, the perfect random number.

If we're being cynical.

But since we're not being cynical, let's take the accusations at face value and see how the numbers add up. After all, comparative genocide is one of Matthew White's hobbies.

Well, right off the bat I can see that whoever compiled this tally has a different definition of defenseless than mine. I wouldn't declare the largest military machine on the planet "unable to defend itself", but by adding 20 million from the Soviet Union, this list does. After all, Stalin's most infamous terror fell heavily on the Soviet Army, culling tens of thousand of officers, and executing three out of five marshals, 15 out of 16 army commanders, 60 out of 67 corps commanders and 136 out of 199 division commanders. In one bloody year, the majority of the officer corps was led away quietly and shot. It may be one of life's great mysteries as to why the Red Army allowed itself to be gutted that way, but obviously, lack of firepower can't be the reason.

I am not sure that the assumption that Turkey's institution of "gun control" would have helped the Armenians either. One problem with "pro-gun" arguments is that they have the unspoken assumption that people owned guns prior to the enactment of these laws (such as comparisons to England and Australia). Usually, there wasn't wide spread gun ownership prior to the enactment of these laws, which is likely in the case of the Armenian genocide. Additionally, this happened during the First World War. The Armenians who were in the Ottoman Empire (which is now called Turkey) army were disarmed, but again, this sounds like what happened in the Soviet union.

The Third Reich did not need gun control (in 1938 or at any time for that matter) to maintain their power. The success of Nazi programs (restoring the economy, dispelling socio-political chaos) and the misappropriation of justice by the apparatus of terror (the Gestapo) assured the compliance of the German people. Arguing otherwise assumes a resistance to Nazi rule that did not exist. Further, supposing the existance of an armed resistance also requires the acceptance that the German people would have rallied to the rebellion. This argument requires a total suspension of disbelief given everything we know about 1930s Germany. Why then did the Nazis introduce this program? As with most of their actions (including the formation of the Third Reich itself), they desired to effect a facade of legalism around the exercise of naked power. It is unreasonable to treat this as a normal part of lawful governance, as the rule of law had been entirely demolished in the Third Reich. Any direct quotations, of which there are several, that pronounce some beneficence to the Weapons Law should be considered in the same manner as all other Nazi pronouncements - absolute lies.

A more farfetched question is the hypothetical proposition of armed Jewish resistance. First, they were not commonly armed even prior to the 1928 Law. Second, Jews had seen pogroms before and had survived them, though not without suffering. They would expect that this one would, as had the past ones, eventually subside and permit a return to normalcy. Many considered themselves "patriotic Germans" for their service in the first World War. These simply were not people prepared to stage violent resistance. Nor were they alone in this mode of appeasement. The defiance of "never again" is not so much a warning to potential oppressors as it is a challenge to Jews to reject the passive response to pogrom. Third, it hardly seems conceivable that armed resistance by Jews (or any other target group) would have led to any weakening of Nazi rule, let alone a full scale popular rebellion; on the contrary, it seems more likely it would have strengthened the support the Nazis already had. Their foul lies about Jewish perfidy would have been given a grain of substance. To project backward and speculate thus is to fail to learn the lesson history has so painfully provided.

Just a few steps down, we can trim another 20 million from our total. Take a look at China, 1935. Picture, if you will, a long, peaceful line of naive little natives queueing up to dump their guns into an industrial smelter, while off to the side, a bureaucrat with a clipboard checks their names off the list. That's the image this list would like to create. The problem is, in 1935 China was in the midst of the Age of Warlords. Even if you know nothing about Chinese history, just the name "Age of Warlords" should tip you off. It was a pistol packer's paradise, a lawless Wild West where all power flowed from the barrel of a gun.

But it's not just the ready availability of guns in China that contradicts the Big Tally. No, it's just as important what everyone was doing with all those guns -- fighting for supremacy, fighting against the Communists, fighting the Japanese. In other words, gun control or not, everyone who had a side to take had already taken sides. Everyone who wanted a gun already had a gun. The enemies of the state who were killed after 1949 weren't defenseless; they were just plain beaten.

This is what I call the Cold-Dead-Hands Test. If the only way to get someone's gun is to pry it from their cold, dead hands (literally or figuratively), that's not gun control. When Grant disarmed the Confederates at Appomattox, that wasn't gun control; that was taking prisoners. When the Soviets disarmed the remnants of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad, that wasn't gun control either. Mao didn't come to power in China by tricking the populace into surrendering their arms. He pummeled his well-armed opponents in a stand-up fight. There's a big difference between unable to fight back, and fighting back but losing.

It's just as hard to label the Cambodians defenseless when you remember that they had just spent five years and a half million lives trying to stop the Khmer Rouge. It's also hard to call the Guatemalans defenseless when it took a 30-year civil war to rack up their body count. Even most of the victims of Hitler went down kicking and screaming. The majority of the Jews and Gypsies were hunted down in countries like Poland and Russia that had been overrun in open battle, and if they were lacking guns, it certainly wasn't German laws that created the situation.

Frankly, this list is a pitifully weak argument against gun control, simply because most of the victims listed here did fight back. In fact, if there's a real lesson to be learned from this roster of oppressions, it's that sometimes a heavily armed and determined opposition is just swept up and crushed -- guns or no guns.