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Twelve Million Cold, Dead Hands
On Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson sat for an interview on CNN with Wolf Blitzer (the relevant exchange begins at 6:48):
Carson’s views were quickly highlighted (and distorted) by liberal media, with headlines such as:
- “Ben Carson Says Guns May Have Stopped Holocaust” [BBC]
- “Ben Carson Suggests Holocaust Would Have Been Less Likely If Jews Were Armed” [ABC]
- “Ben Carson Blames Holocaust On Gun Control” [Huffington Post]
- “Ben Carson Says Holocaust Would Have Been ‘Greatly Diminished’ if Jews Had Guns” [TIME]
- “Ben Carson Suggests Holocaust Might Have Been Stopped If Jewish People Had Guns” [The Independent]
- “Ben Carson Says Gun Control To Blame For Holocaust” [Telegraph]
The Anti-Defamation League also weighed in. “Ben Carson has a right to his views on gun control, but the notion that Hitler’s gun-control policy contributed to the Holocaust is historically inaccurate,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, National Director of the organization. “The small number of personal firearms available to Germany’s Jews in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state.”
Maybe not. But I once met a German Holocaust survivor who said that his biggest regret was that he complied with the law when Jewish gun ownership was outlawed. Never, he said, would he go unarmed again.
Survivors who migrated to Palestine shared this sentiment. Syrian Arab attacks on Jewish settlements prompted the formation of the Jewish self-defense league, or Haganah, which evolved into the modern-day Israel Defense Forces. Palestinian Jews would seek peace, but if necessary, they would defend themselves — with guns. This ethos is central to the modern State of Israel.
Today Israel finds itself in a new wave of Palestinian Arab terrorism. Hour by hour, there is news across the country of murders and attempted murders with guns, with stones, with firebombs, with knives, with screwdrivers, with vegetable peelers. In many cases, security personnel with guns were nearby and were able to respond quickly. In others, responses were longer in coming.
It’s important to note, though, that Israeli notions of self-defense have been collective rather than individual. To own a gun for self-defense, Jewish Israelis must meet strict permitting requirements, which include a demonstration of need. Anyone granted a permit is allowed only a single firearm. So it’s noteworthy that Israeli attitudes may be changing. Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem — who tackled a terrorist himself earlier this year — is encouraging Jewish residents of his city with permits to carry their weapons all the time. “One advantage that Israel has is that there are quite a few ex-members of military units with operational combat experience…. Possessing weapons increases the confidence of residents, who know that in addition to police there are many people who are not afraid to intervene. If we look at the statistics in Jerusalem and elsewhere, we see that aside from the police, civilians carrying weapons have foiled terror attacks. They will increase the likelihood of fast intervention.”
This proactive approach security has a respectable pedigree in Jewish history and theology. “If one comes to kill you, arise and kill him first,” exhorts the Talmud (BT Sanhedrin 72a), and gives examples of rabbis who did just that (BT Berakhot 58a). The rabbinic tradition understands — as did the authors of the Declaration of Independence — that we are all born with God-given rights to life and liberty. And moreover, that those rights are meaningless without the further right to forcibly resist those who seek to murder or enslave us. None of us, Jew or gentile, is required to be a victim.
Ben Carson, in his defense of gun rights, appears to understand this well. Unfortunately, the elites at the heights of journalism, government, and culture — our President among them — appear not to. Perhaps someday they will learn. In the meantime, those of us who truly value freedom will continue to cling to our guns and defend our right to keep them. Because without them, the phrase “Never again” is not much more than an empty slogan.
Published in Guns, History
Hitler would have responded to hand gun-armed Jewish resistors with bombs.
The first town would have sent the Nazis on their way, but not the second.
Guns are merely a nuisance to modern governments.
Fighting and dying in the ghetto is better than going meekly to the gas chambers.
Many of the Jews, if armed, could have taken to the forests and become resistance fighters. Some did.
If the Jews were like the current day Israelis, armed and trained, it would be interesting to see how the Nazis would have done against them in 1933. The Arabs thought they could replicate the Nazi slaughter when they attacked in 1948. They were surprised, though, weren’t they?
Somebody should inform the leftwing of that, then, because they obviously consider them far more than a nuisance.
The more I think about this this afternoon, I’m becoming persuaded to that possibility.
Hitler needed a certain amount of popular support and acquiescence. He was always on edge about it.
Once you start bombing your own cities, people get killed. These are not only the ones you want to kill. That can have repercussions you wouldn’t want to risk. It was much easier for Hitler to keep enough people on his side by doing it in the orderly way he did, and timing it the way he did. Private guns would have interfered with his formula. To what degree and even in what direction is hard to say, because when you start shooting people everything changes. That can backfire on you just as much as the bombing of cities can backfire.
One of the reasons that an armed populace is not necessarily going to lose against their country’s regular army is that once the carnage starts the army, or parts of it, might very well change sides. The more civilians the army is forced to kill the less likely they are to maintain discipline. It is not hard to imagine a division commander finally saying “enough is enough” and turning his men against the powers that be.
But that’s why it is a joke to me, this entire “gun control” issue. It is about how the rich elite government types view the people in the cities and towns across America. It’s a we-them issue. They don’t want us to have guns.
They have plenty of means of killing off American citizens any time they want to–chemicals, germs, you name it. The entire military is at their disposal–plus National Guards and state and local police. Believe me, they are well armed.
The “gun control” issue doesn’t really affect them.
And actually, viewing Nazi Germany from that point of view sends me back to my original opinion. Hand guns would have helped many Jews as individuals, but it probably would not have stopped the determined Nazis from conducting the Holocaust.
It wouldn’t any more than Israel depends only on hand guns to protect its citizens from the terrorists. Hand guns are only some of the many weapons at their disposal for self-defense.
A military force can be defeated only by a superior military force.
Marci,
You are focusing on who will win. The question to me is, how do we get them not to start the fight in the first place. We do this by making it clear that the cost of the fight to them is not worth it.
Oh, but those other methods are so messy and dangerous. You can’t target your oppression so carefully when you have to resort to means like that. The left fears private guns, because as long as the people can use them to defend themselves, they can’t give us the health care we deserve.
We agree on that point.
Yes.
And yes.
Even the crazed terrorists and psychopath shooters are avoiding places with armed guards.
The story of the Waco, Texas, siege changed my view of government forever.
They will win at any cost.
Sigh.
Well stated.
But with Waco there was a great cost that the left may not want to incur again.
On the other hand, our American leftists may not be as easily deterred as the Soviet and Nazi totalitarians were. But we really don’t know for sure how bad they will turn out to be.
One additional point on this. The Nazis weren’t exactly broadcasting that they were rounding up and killing all the Jews. Imagine if each attempt at taking a Jew into custody turned into a firefight. That would make it much tougher to keep what they were doing secret, both within Germany and without.
Right. Good point.
Yes, that’s a good point. It wasn’t a deep, dark secret, either, but it’s much easier for people to acquiesce and mind their own business if it’s made to look like normal policing operations.
I’ve been considering this point perhaps more than I should, but depending on the reason the army is called out against its own citizens they might not even make it that far. Not to mention that unless officially mobilized, National Guard units are under the command of their state’s governor, who might order them out to protect the citizens of the state.
Related.
In fact, the Nazis went to great lengths to keep it a secret as long as possible, by having the victims write post-dated post cards telling their friends back home how nice it was at the “relocation camp.”
I disagree. I think Carson used the reality (not analogy) of what happened ably. His question back to Blitzer, “You think there’s a reason they (Nazis) took the guns first?”, was spot-on.
The Nazis wanted their targets defenseless. We don’t have to extend “gun safety” measures (the new Orwellian doublespeak for gun grabbing) to an intent to commit genocide in America. That might (hopefully) be a false analogy.
But leaving Americans defenseless is precisely what would happen if the gun grabbers had their way. We shouldn’t pussyfoot around that reality.
I’ve already told about the citizen resistance a direct-current high-voltage powerline that was making its way from North Dakota to Minneapolis-St Paul in the mid-late 1970s.
The Minnesota governor ordered state police out to protect the powerline workers. That made some front page photos, but the protesters tried to escalate the issue to provoke the governor to call out the National Guard, which would draw even more attention to the issue and hopefully draw more sympathy for the protesters.
The governor didn’t take the bait.
The protesters didn’t completely refrain from violence, but they were more effective in the public eye when they directed it against objects, such as powerline towers. When one of the protesters fired a rifle in the direction of one of the workers, he was hunted down, arrested, and convicted. Public support for the protesters evaporated.
Except for GWB, most people are smart enough not to engage in preemptive violence. Abraham Lincoln went to extraordinary lengths not to be the one to fire the first shot in the Civil War.
I realize you are probably referring to his rhetoric and doctrine, but I don’t remember any cases where GWB actually followed up on that basis. Afghanistan was for harboring the organization that attacked us. The situation in Iraq was where we had a conditional ceasefire in a war and the conditions were violated, so the war resumed. Am I forgetting another war in there?
Yes.
If someone is pointing a gun at you and preparing to shoot, I don’t think it is “preemptive violence” to shoot first. Al Qaeda had declared war on us, officially and formally.
I think it changed government’s view of the use of force forever, as well.
The Waco siege and the Philadelphia bombing of the Move group were events that put the government’s use of force into stark relief.
The Waco siege, in retrospect, seems to be a case of the government getting itself into a position in which, to save face, it had to “destroy the village in order to save it.” It was so stupid, pointless, and unnecessary. But Janet Reno, who, if memory serves, had very recently assumed the role of attorney general, had something to prove, I suppose.
The Move group deserved to be attacked, as they were shooting at cops and keeping children in horrendous living conditions. But unfortunately for the mayor (a black man, Wilson Goode) the incendiary bomb got out of control and burned down an entire city block and killed a bunch of people in the Move houses. If I’m not mistaken, Mumia abu-Jamal was part of the Move group.
The upshot of all this is that the government is much less likely to use extreme force because it knows how it can backfire, and the public’s memory on such things is long.
If anything, Carson dramatically understated the case.
There were places and times during the Holocaust when there was 1 armed soldier for thousands of civilians.
Admittedly, the Jewish mindset at the time was to avoid any resistance, but still… a few armed hotheads could have made a real difference.
Please note: historians have said that the energy the Germans poured into prosecuting the holocaust (including 100-500k people!) made a real difference to the war outcome. Imagine if an armed resistance had multiplied that cost.
The question is NOT: can an armed populace defeat a professional army?
Instead, the question is: Can an armed populace greatly frustrate the genocidal intentions of its enemies?
The question answers itself. When the SS rounded people up, door to door, they did not do it with bombs or tanks. Nor could they – they did not want to destroy the buildings. They did it by requiring the Jews to show up at a collection point, or, worst case, sending officers. Refusing to come, and staying armed at all times would have changed everything.
As I said at the top, however: the mindset did not really make that possible. That Jewish “victim” mindset is something that I, SoS, Annika, and countless other Jews on Ricochet react to viscerally.
I really don’t like arguing with people who are way better prepared than I am.
So I shall go down in defeat here, but I disagree with you, iWe. Strongly.
I just can’t accept that the Jews by themselves, without Eisenhower and Patton, could have stopped it.
My father-in-law and husband were in a terrible car accident when my husband was a little kid. My father-in-law told the story of this accident every day throughout his retirement. He was on a dark back road late at night when he suddenly realized that the oncoming headlights were on a car in his lane. He swerved just in time to avoid certain death. It became a bit of advice I raised my kids with: “It’s your incredulousness that will get you killed every time. Believe what you see.”
None of us can appreciate what was happening in Germany from the point of view of the Jews who experienced it. These were educated people. They were civilized. They really could not believe what they were seeing.
That’s the part of “Never again” that matters. That is what we still need to learn.
For those of us who have read Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and “Enemies of the State”, we know history validates Bens words. He is right. I like Ben more and more as I learn more of him and learn of his thoughts.
I wouldn’t declare it impossible, but the key point is this: whether or not they would have lost, they would have gone down fighting instead of just passively accepting it. Fighting might also have had further consequences; if the Jews had fought back from the start it would have been much more difficult for the Nazis to hide their actions.
Me, too. Too bad he doesn’t have any executive or even legislative experience in government. We already tried that once and it didn’t work well.(*) But if Carson ends up being the nominee, I’ll vote for him.
(*) Unless you count voting “present” as legislative experience.