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
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  1. Son of Spengler Member
    Son of Spengler
    @SonofSpengler

    Kate Braestrup: Incidentally, should the Japanese-Americans being interned during WW2 have resisted violently?

    Good question.

    • #181
  2. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Man With the Axe: The Warsaw Ghetto uprising occurred in 1943. By this time the Jews were well aware of what fate lay in store for them if they were deported. Thousands were murdered right there in the street during the deportation.

    Right—agreed. Another note—the word “deportation” refers to two somewhat different things. First, there was the original deportation—the Jews penned up in the ghettos of Eastern Europe were not all Eastern European. That is, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto were not necessarily Polish, and certainly not from Warsaw (or Lodz, or wherever). They were “deported”  from the West and dumped in the ghettos as a temporary measure; as the Holocaust accelerated, they were “deported” again from the ghettos to the killing centers at Chelmno and Treblinka. These, by the way,  were not “concentration” camps, maintaining only a small group of Jewish prisoners who were tasked with much of the labor that mass murder and exploitation entails (e.g. extracting gold teeth from corpses).

    Anyway, yes,  the Jews in Warsaw finally knew what “deportation” meant. And those who fought back were extraordinarily brave and resourceful, though doomed. Every time I think about their story, I feel weirdly proud to be a member of the same species. I hope I’d be able to fight just the way they did.

    But what kept the Japanese (relatively) safe from mass murder wasn’t that they were armed and dangerous, but that they lived in a society that could be counted upon, for all its flaws, to maintain a basic level of decency. Some of them had sons fighting for the US–which also makes me proud. (If they still believed in America, how could I do otherwise?)

    The Jews in Germany thought they could count on their society to be civilized too. By the time it became obvious that Germany had completely gone off the rails, it was too late. The Jews of the Warsaw ghetto uprising all died. (They left behind records, however, which also kills me—how did they have sufficient faith in the resurrection of goodness to imagine that their records would be found and their memory honored? If they did not despair of humanity, how can I despair?)

    In real life, I can defend myself from one or two or maybe (if I have the right hardware in my hands) from a dozen outlaws. I can’t defend myself from my whole society. If the government were to be taken over by people with murderous intentions toward middle-aged Unitarians, and if my fellow-citizens would not stick up for me, I would not be able to save myself.

    What this means, to me anyway, is that the best way to prevent a Holocaust here in the United States is to insist upon and personally practice a disciplined adherence to our principles, including the principle that the rights of Americans cannot be denied or abridged on account of race or religion.

    • #182
  3. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Man With the Axe:

    iWe:

    Man With the Axe:Thought experiment:

    You have a person living in your home that you believe is psychotic with a high probability of committing a murder. You can’t get him out of the house for the foreseeable future.

    Question: Would you prefer to have a gun in your bedroom to protect yourself? Or would you worry even more that the psychotic might use the gun against you.?

    False premise. You carry.

    But even if you carry during the day your gun is in the bedroom with you at night, which is in fact the premise of my question.

    If we’re really talking about this seriously? My recommendation would be to get rid of the guns, and any other weapon that seems likely to be used. A person who is genuinely psychotic is ferociously strong, not amenable to persuasion, will not respond to pain and may not even recognize you. It’s terrifying, even when the psychosis is not accompanied by violence.

    Psychosis is, like everything else human beings do, socially-conditioned. That is, if he or she hallucinates, the content of her hallucinations will be recognizable culturally; the Virgin Mary for Catholic psychotics, the Buddha for Buddhist psychotics, and so on. If someone is tapping her phone or listening to her thoughts through her cereal spoon, that someone will be the CIA, not the KGB. And if the voices in her head tell her to pick up a gun and shoot the devil who only appears to be her family member (in this case, “she” is more likely to be “he,” since gender plays into this too) the fact that there is a gun in the house and he knows how to use it will not be lost on him.

    If this person is in your house with you, I am assuming we are talking about a loved one—your child, your spouse, your parent. I would further assume, then, that you want to save his/her life as well as your own. So staying awake all night with a gun in your lap doesn’t sound like much of an answer. Sadly, we don’t provide families with much that’s better—though knowing what I know, I would recommend getting yourself, all the weapons, and all vulnerable persons (and pets) out of the house. It’s not a great solution either. But there you are.

    • #183
  4. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    What is far more likely than murder is that the mentally-ill person will shoot himself. I was just talking to a buddy of mine who is in the National Guard, and had the recent experience of responding when one of his guardsmen (recently returned from a rough deployment) was seriously depressed. Because the guardsman had had training on the dangers of suicide, he requested that his comrades take away his guns. “I don’t feel like killing myself right now,” he assured them. “But because I am trained, I know how easy it would be to take the gun I am used to pointing at the enemy and turn it around.”

    The part of his remarks that jumped out at me is “because I am trained.” In other words, training people to take care of themselves and their loved ones appropriately when it comes to guns and mental illness might really save some lives.

    • #184
  5. Man With the Axe Inactive
    Man With the Axe
    @ManWiththeAxe

    Kate Braestrup: I can’t defend myself from my whole society. If the government were to be taken over by people with murderous intentions toward middle-aged Unitarians, and if my fellow-citizens would not stick up for me, I would not be able to save myself. What this means, to me anyway, is that the best way to prevent a Holocaust here in the United States is to insist upon and personally practice a disciplined adherence to our principles, including the principle that the rights of Americans cannot be denied or abridged on account of race or religion.

    There are places where a small number of very bad men have taken over the government. North Korea comes to mind. Iraq under Saddam. If the people are armed they have a better chance of taking the government back.

    Even a unified majority are at a disadvantage against armed and determined evil, if they are not themselves armed.

    • #185
  6. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Man With the Axe: Even a unified majority are at a disadvantage against armed and determined evil, if they are not themselves armed

    As I understand it, at the height of the Soviet Union, only 10% of citizens were members of the Communist Party.

    This is always the problem with a willingness to hand more power to government — to risk that the most ruthless and wicked among us will find a way to take the reins. One might even suggest that the ends-justifies-the-means, Alinskyite, will-to-power Left is comprised of precisely the sort of persons we should fear — and have recently installed — at the highest positions in government, media, and academia.

    It makes me wonder if human nature makes it impossible for a free republic to be sustained and if all such exceptional experiments are ultimately doomed.

    • #186
  7. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Man With the Axe:

    Kate Braestrup: I can’t defend myself from my whole society. If the government were to be taken over by people with murderous intentions toward middle-aged Unitarians, and if my fellow-citizens would not stick up for me, I would not be able to save myself. What this means, to me anyway, is that the best way to prevent a Holocaust here in the United States is to insist upon and personally practice a disciplined adherence to our principles, including the principle that the rights of Americans cannot be denied or abridged on account of race or religion.

    There are places where a small number of very bad men have taken over the government. North Korea comes to mind. Iraq under Saddam. If the people are armed they have a better chance of taking the government back.

    Even a unified majority are at a disadvantage against armed and determined evil, if they are not themselves armed.

    Sure. But the Nazis—case in point, in the OP—did not forcibly take over the government. They were voted in. And then not voted out by that unified majority, armed or otherwise. Even once the seizure of power was complete, if the Nazis had had their hands full trying to cope with a German people refusing to go along with the persecution of the Jews—a whole nation of Sophie Scholls— that would have done the trick.

    For that matter, if the French had vigorously countered the German remilitarization of the Rhineland—the French army was numerically superior and had better weapons at that point—Hitler almost certainly would have lost that battle, and thus would not have been able to maintain the illusion that he was a military genius capable of rolling back the tenets of the hated Versailles Treaty without firing a shot…but perhaps that, too is another argument?

    When Saddam was deposed, everyone pretty swiftly got armed. The results were not exactly describable as “the people taking the government back.”

    Incidentally, I’m not arguing that there couldn’t be circumstances in which an armed and virtuous population might be able to defend itself against a rogue tyranny taking power within their own society. (Perhaps you might be able to name a few modern examples where it has actually happened?)  I’m just saying that the Holocaust was not one of those circumstances. Of all the elements in the complex interplay that eventually led to that catastrophe, the presence or absence of guns in the homes of German Jews has to be (IMHO) considered a virtual irrelevance.

    • #187
  8. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Western Chauvinist: It makes me wonder if human nature makes it impossible for a free republic to be sustained and if all such exceptional experiments are ultimately doomed.

    I don’t know where you get the 10% figure, Western Chauv? The number of Nazi party members in Germany was relatively small when they first took power; afterward, it was necessary to be a party member in order to get ahead in various professions. My strong suspicion is that the same would be true in Communist Russia.

    It may be that a free republic is contrary to human nature, but… so far, so good. Two hundred and forty years is nothing to sneeze at.

    It is always—always!—tempting to skip principle and modify the process in order to get what seems to be a better result, and presidents of both parties have done it, with less or more justification (e.g. Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, Reagan’s Iran-Contra affair, Roosevelt allowing the internment of the Japanese-Americans). The lefties may be the most egregious sinners at the moment, but no matter how saintly is the person in power, all the rest of us must nonetheless be vigilant on this score.

    • #188
  9. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Western Chauvinist: As I understand it, at the height of the Soviet Union, only 10% of citizens were members of the Communist Party.

    I learned something new. Thanks.  I initially questioned this, but Conservapedia agrees with you.

    • #189
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