Obama, Guns And Nazi Dictatorship
BY Herschel Smith11 years, 7 months ago
Pathetic rag The Raw Story on Mike Huckabee on Obama and guns:
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) declared on Wednesday that President Barack Obama and gun control advocates are possibly planning on confiscating the nation’s privately owned firearms and imposing a Nazi Germany-like “dictatorship” in this country. According to Media Matters, Huckabee made the remarks in response to a caller on his radio show.
“I’m very concerned,” said the caller, “it seems like there’s so many people who have not read and do not understand how quickly Germany was turned into, it was a democracy, then turned into a dictatorship by everyone having to register their guns and then they went door to door and collected them.”
Rather than correct the caller that in 1938, the Nazi Party loosened gun regulations that had been imposed by the Versailles Treaty in the wake of World War One, lowered the age limit for gun ownership and de-regulated the possession of shotguns and rifles for everyone but Jews, Huckabee chose instead to stoke the caller’s fears.
“People do forget that,” said Huckabee. “And by the way, know that when you bring that up you get people who get crazy on us, and they’ll start saying, ‘Oh there you go comparing to the Nazis.’ And I understand the reaction, but it’s the truth. You cannot take people’s rights away if they’re resisting and if they have the means to resist, but once they’re disarmed and the people who are trying to take over have all the power, not just political, not just financial, but they have the physical power to domesticate us and to subjugate us to their will, there’s not a whole lot we can do about it other than just plan to die in the course of resistance.”
I’m delighted that Raw Story brought up this issue about correcting the record. No, not correcting Mike Huckabee, but correcting this unserious Harcourt study. The comprehensive study by Stephen Halbrook is much more honest, and points out that at least the following weapons features were banned for everyone: silencers, tactical lights on weapons, detachable high capacity magazines (more than five rounds) and telescoping stocks. Does this list sound familiar? Halbrook also remarks concerning Nazi gun control:
… the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 was consolidated by massive searches and seizures of firearms from political opponents, who were invariably described as “communists.” After five years of repression and eradication of dissidents, Hitler signed a new gun control law in 1938, which benefitted Nazi party members and entities, but denied firearm ownership to enemies of the state.
As I’ve said before, no one has ever claimed that Nazi gun regulations didn’t benefit the totalitarians in Nazi Germany. Someone always has the guns. The issue is who, and under what circumstances, and for what purpose?
That Harcourt would publish such an unserious study is embarrassing for him whether he knows it or not. It’s probably not possible for The Raw Story to be embarrassed about anything. But take careful note of the argument that is repeated in the silly article. It’s not really gun control if it only affected the Jews. Can you imagine a more racist, bigoted position than that?
Prior:
On April 4, 2013 at 2:02 pm, Chuck said:
It is rather telling that these people can just blithely state that “the Nazi Party loosened gun regulations…for everyone but Jews” without a trace of irony. Do they have any idea how that sounds? This just drives home that what passes for intellectual discourse on the left is totally devoid of any sense of history.
On April 4, 2013 at 2:03 pm, Herschel Smith said:
… or morality.
On April 5, 2013 at 7:03 pm, scott s. said:
Thanks for the links. The Halbrook study provides the context for the laws and gives examples of how they were used in furtherance of Nazi party/state political control efforts. The Harcourt article (don’t think I would call it a study) immediately dismisses Halbrook’s work through ad hominem argument:
“Neither Halbrook, nor Pierce are historians, and their ideological commitments are so flagrant—Halbrook as a pro-gun litigator and Pierce as a
pro-gun white supremacist—that neither can be trusted in these debates.”