Hitler imposed
gun control on Jews. This is a matter of record. The thought of
a bunch of Jews owning guns really upset him. The man was intolerant
of Jews with guns.
Drudge ran
a photo of Hitler and Stalin right above this headline: White
House Threatens ‘Executive Orders’ on Gun Control.
Leftists in
the print media went ballistic. Why, the very outrage of implying
such a connection between tyranny and gun control! That guy Drudge:
he is a disgrace! Read this
article.
Then the Left-wing
Salon published an article insisting that Hitler was not
really against the private ownership of guns. Not really. It just
sort of seems that way when you look at the historical record.
Did Hitler
prohibit Jews from owning them? Well, yes, he did. Was this significant?
In no way. In fact, it’s irrelevant. Why? Because the
Jews were already a target. So, gun control had nothing to
do with it. Gun control was peripheral. Ignore gun control.
Besides, the
writer continued, the Left-wing Weimar Republic – whose leaders
held views close to Salon’s on gun control – was the real
culprit. It disarmed people. Don’t blame Hitler. The idea
that Hitler disarmed Germans is a myth. Pay no attention to it.
University
of Chicago law professor Bernard Harcourt explored this myth in
depth in a 2004 article published in the Fordham Law Review.
As it turns out, the Weimar Republic, the German government that
immediately preceded Hitler’s, actually had tougher gun laws than
the Nazi regime. After its defeat in World War I, and agreeing
to the harsh surrender terms laid out in the Treaty of Versailles,
the German legislature in 1919 passed a law that effectively banned
all private firearm possession, leading the government to confiscate
guns already in circulation.
So, we learn
that because the Weimar Republic was hated by voters for having
signed the Treaty of surrender (which the military that had started
the war and lost it had refused to sign), the Weimar government
was hated. So, it banned guns. But this in no way should be regarded
as an act of an unpopular government that was trying to keep power.
No, no, no.
The author
did let this cat out of the bag: gun registration was part of a
program of gun control. “In 1928, the Reichstag relaxed the
regulation a bit, but put in place a strict registration regime
that required citizens to acquire separate permits to own guns,
sell them or carry them.
As everyone
with any knowledge of German history in the 1920s knows, the Nazis
ignored this law. In 1933, they took over. They suppressed all dissent.
How? Because they were armed, while the rest of the population
wasn’t. Is there cause and effect here? Salon does
not mention this causal sequence. It’s clearly irrelevant, assuming
you are a gun control promoter along Weimar lines.
You want to
see the logic of these people. Follow this line of reasoning. This
is the best that the author can come up with.
The law did
prohibit Jews and other persecuted classes from owning guns, but
this should not be an indictment of gun control in general. Does
the fact that Nazis forced Jews into horrendous ghettos indict
urban planning? Should we eliminate all police officers because
the Nazis used police officers to oppress and kill the Jews? What
about public works — Hitler loved public works projects? Of course
not.
Drudge has
more readers than any other journalist. His headlines shape the
reading habits of tens of millions of readers. He runs links like
these:
This sort of
thing outrages obscure journalists on the Left, whose outlets have
little influence. One of them even mounted a campaign not to link
to Drudge’s site to show the hated image of Hitler and Stalin. He
linked to some other site, which had lifted it from Drudge’s
site. “Also, don’t link to Drudge – link to twitpic,” the Washington
Post’s James Downie added.
There! That will show him!
It really is
amusing. Leftist journalism has not only lost its mojo, it has lost
its sense of reality. To understand the Left’s position on
gun control, watch this.