Hitler and the Gun Nuts

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You’ve probably noticed that whenever someone talks about gun control, the wingnuts shriek that Hitler confiscated the guns! I’ve long been skeptical of that claim, but I never bothered to check it out. Well, there’s a historian named Bernard Harcourt who fact-checked the Hitler confiscated guns claim, and he says it’s bogus.

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. 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.

The 1938 law signed by Hitler that LaPierre mentions in his book basically does the opposite of what he says it did. “The 1938 revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as well as ammunition,” Harcourt wrote. Meanwhile, many more categories of people, including Nazi party members, were exempted from gun ownership regulations altogether, while the legal age of purchase was lowered from 20 to 18, and permit lengths were extended from one year to three years.

You mean, Wayne LaPierre lied? I’m shocked, shocked I tell you … For more, see ON GUN REGISTRATION, THE NRA, ADOLF HITLER, AND NAZI GUN LAWS: EXLPODING THE GUN CULTURE WARS by Bernard Harcourt.

It’s true that Jews and other people identified by the Reich as “problems” were not allowed to own guns. But another historian, Omer Bartov, pooh-poohs the idea that if the Jews had been armed they could have avoided the Holocaust. “Just imagine the Jews of Germany exercising the right to bear arms and fighting the SA, SS and the Wehrmacht. The [Russian] Red Army lost 7 million men fighting the Wehrmacht, despite its tanks and planes and artillery. The Jews with pistols and shotguns would have done better?”

By the same token, today’s “patriots” armed with assault weapons quickly could be rendered into a quivering pile of protoplasm by the U.S. military. One would have to be demented to think otherwise.

Bartov, of Brown University, continues,

“Their assertion that they need these guns to protect themselves from the government — as supposedly the Jews would have done against the Hitler regime — means not only that they are innocent of any knowledge and understanding of the past, but also that they are consciously or not imbued with the type of fascist or Bolshevik thinking that they can turn against a democratically elected government, indeed turn their guns on it, just because they don’t like its policies, its ideology, or the color, race and origin of its leaders.”

The fanciful notion that the Second Amendment arms citizens so they are perpetually prepared to overthrow the government (see example) is a gross distortion of history, of course. There is a credible argument to be made that the Second Amendment was written to make sure that the federal government could not deprive the states of their militias. And the reason the early Republic chose to maintain state militias was that some people of the time were nervous about maintaining a large standing regular army. But the Second Amendment obviously is concerned with arming a militia, and the first purpose of the militia was state and national defense.

The very first time state militias were called into federal service was to put down a tax rebellion in Pennsylvania, the Whiskey Rebellion. President George Washington actually put on a military uniform and rode at the head of the troops. If you listen to today’s Gun Nuts, the second amendment was written so that the whiskey rebels could defend themselves against George Washington’s militia. I don’t think so.

The NRA wants to register crazy people instead of guns. Considering this guy, this guy, and these guys —

The U.S. Government effectively dissolved, in either the Civil War or 1933, when it went off the gold standard. And because of that, “you don’t have to pay your taxes, pay off your house, you don’t really owe anybody anything, and by the way if you file the right documents, you can get as much as $20 million from the federal government.”

That’s right, the government actually owes you money. See, when it went off the gold standard, in order to maintain this false sense of legitimacy, the illuminati turned us all into “straw men.” Those capital letters on our birth certificates are our straw man names, and our Social Security numbers are just a way to keep track of us. The government then convinced some suckers in China and other countries to fork over their hard-earned Yuan for a stake in Americans’ future earning potential, anywhere from $600,000 to $20 million, per person. The so-called U.S. Government has been cashing in on you since the day you were born, somehow. And all you have to do to collect is file the right paperwork—and in the meantime, refuse to acknowledge the straw man.

I seriously think that gun nut extremism is some kind of mental pathology. So maybe we should take them up on the crazy people registry thing.

Because We Can’t Control Stupid …

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Veep Joe Biden says he will have recommendations for gun control measures this Tuesday. The Veep said yesterday that he’s seeing a lot of support for a universal background check law. No more gun show loophole. Limiting magazine capacity also appears to be popular.

You might have heard there was another school shooting yesterday, in California. The shooter, a 16-year-old, had a 12-guage shotgun. One student was severely wounded but is still alive as of this morning. Another student and a science teacher were slightly injured. The science teacher was able to talk the boy into putting down his gun.

There is speculation, but no confirmation that I’ve seen, that the school had an armed guard.

We’ll never know, but it’s possible that if the young man had been carrying an AR-15 semi-auto military rifle with a 30-round magazine instead of the 12-guage, there would have been many more casualties. This is assuming the shooter had a standard or even a pump-action shotgun — meaning he would have to do something between rounds to make the gun work — and not one of the newer auto-loading types.

There’s a push to start using the phrase “gun safety” instead of “gun control,” in an effort to win over some of the second amendment absolutists. The theory is that the absolutists are afraid of the word “control” but are likely to feel all warm and fuzzy about “safety.” I suppose it won’t hurt, but remember who you are dealing with. Don’t expect it to work.

In other wingnut news, we see that algebra is a liberal plot. Fox News host Eric Bolling learned that students are being asked to solve distributive property problems in algebra class and assumed this was some kind of socialism. One does wonder if this crew is bright enough to find their own butts.

Even More on Why We Need Gun Control

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This fellow, James Yeager, is CEO of Tactical Response, a Tennessee-based company that specializes in firearms and tactical training. I understand he is responding to the news that the Obama Administration might issue some executive orders regarding firearm sale regulation.

The face of gun rights advocacy. Are we taking notes, America?

via/via

Guns as Sacred Objects

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A gun buyback in Tucson, held on the 2nd anniversary of the Tucson mass shooting, has drawn objections from an NRA lobbyist. Why? Because the 206 guns bought by the Tucson police department are going to be destroyed.

Apparently there’s a law in Arizona that says if a firearm is abandoned and recovered by police, the police are required to re-sell the firearm to a licensed gun dealer. In Arizona, apparently, destroying a firearm is some kind of sacrilege.

I say someone should publish photographs of an assault rifle submerged in urine, and watch the Right freak out.

They’re freaking out already because Veep Joe Biden said something about executive orders and guns, and now visions of Hitler and Stalin are dancing in their paranoid little heads. There’s not a whole lot the executive can do without Congress — the Constitution worshipers don’t seem to read the thing much — but what little he could do could be a help. He could for example, beef up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and modernize the agency’s ability to track firearm sales.

He could not, however, unilaterally close the gun show loophole or reverse the law that prevents the Centers for Disease Control the National Institutes of Health from merely researching gun violence. Apparently, such research is sacrilege.

There’s a lot of talk about somehow tracking gun sales to people with mental health issues. Yep, nothing like a Crazy People Registry to further stigmatize psychiatric illness and stop people from seeking help. Also, how far would such tracking go? Would it be limited to people diagnosed with psychosis or extend to things like mood disorders or hyperactivity? You could be talking about more than half of all Americans, depending on criteria.

Truly, often the only difference between someone diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder and someone considered “sane” is that only the former sought help and is getting treatment. For example, if we extend the tracking to people with personality disorders or paranoid delusions, the entire staff of the National Rifle Association would be included. The glitch would be that such people rarely are officially diagnosed until they face some kind of criminal charge and the court can order a psychiatric evaluation.

Seriously, I suspect that if you checked, most of the mass shooters going back many years had no prior diagnosis of mental illness.

I’d be the first one to say that someone diagnosed with psychosis shouldn’t be able to purchase firearms. But I also think that someone who already has an arsenal of assault weapons in his basement ought to be cut off from buying more also. And the severely psychotic often aren’t mentally organized enough to make a ham sandwich or find matching shoes, so correctly filling out a background check form would be quite a hurdle for them. Another argument for closing the gun show loophole.

Anyhoo — I highly recommend this opinion column by Eric Gorovitz of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

Rather than join widespread calls from across the political spectrum for tightly regulating access to military-style assault weapons, the NRA called for the further mobilization of arms. …

… We can see clearly where this new rhetoric leads. If we must arm the schools to keep our kids safe, how can we extend the “cordon” to protect them when they go to the movies, unless we post armed guards in every theater? How will we keep the “monsters and predators” from the neighborhood playground, without an armed guard atop every slide? Once we’ve secured the theaters and parks, can we leave our children unprotected as they walk, innocently exposed to lurking evil, from one newly-protected haven to another? If we want to keep our children safe, and the only way to do that is by saturating their environments with firearms, how can we leave any place without the benefit of such protection? The armed schools proposal provides a terrifying glimpse into the NRA’s vision for America. …

… The gun lobby’s reverence for the Second Amendment has constricted its commitment to other constitutional principles. LaPierre lamented, without elaboration, “our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill,” prompting cries of foul from dedicated mental health advocates concerned with both the constitutional and the rhetorical implications of such a position. Gun lobby supporters launched an online petition calling for the deportation of British CNN commentator Piers Morgan, on the ironic ground that his commentary constitutes an “effort to undermine Bill of Rights.” In the last week, the gun lobby has revealed spectacular intolerance of the freedom of expression protected by the First Amendment, when guns are at issue.

These developments have shown that in the gun lobby’s America armed guards monitor our movements, the government maintains a database of perceived undesirables, and voices of dissent are eliminated. The gun lobby’s vision for the future has emerged from the shadows and declared itself the new home of American fascism.

Or, they can do what Stalin did and get everyone who disagrees with them added to the Crazy People Registry. The threat of being locked up for “treatment” ought to silence the resistance to the NRA once and for all.

Why We Need Gun Control

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I agree with John Cole — this video demonstrates why we need gun control, especially when you realize the interviewee is the sort of person who insists on having unfettered access to all firearms.

I want to comment on one thing, which is that comparing the number of people murdered by firearms every year in Great Britain versus the U.S. is not necessarily useful, given the difference in population. So, FYI, according to Wikipedia, the rate of firearm-related deaths per 100,000 people is .25 — note the decimal point — in the UK and 10.2 in the U.S. For homicides with guns, the rate is 3.7 in the U.S. and .04 in the U.K. I doubt blood is running in the streets of Newcastle upon Tyne. Maybe somebody should explain to Alex Jones that “28 Days Later” is fiction.

It’s true that violent crime rates have been dropping for the past several years, but rates of violent crime peaked in the mid-1960s and have been going down ever since. I doubt there is a correlation with guns, one way or another. Some are attributing this decrease in crime to the switch to unleaded gasoline.

Go to Balloon Juice to see the second half of the interview. Then this Alex Jones person issued a follow-up video in which he ranted about being threatened by mafia “cops” who work for Bloomberg. He thinks the mafia cops were going to murder him and then blame crackheads.

Also, perhaps Jones needs to be checked for rabies.

Behold the Stupid

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The teevee pundits are guessing what the House Republicans will do about the upcoming debt ceiling fight. But there is no point in speculating; we know, in general, what they will do. They will do the most damnfool stupid thing that could possibly be done, whatever that is.

Alex Pareene writes,

“Leverage” only works against rational people. A large number of House Republicans aren’t just “nihilists,” willing to blow up the economy to get what they want, they’re plain morons who have impossible and horrible goals and no clue whatsoever how to reach them.

Yeah, pretty much. At The Atlantic, Molly Ball interviews recently retired Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio, and even he admits there’s way too much stupid among the House Republicans.

I don’t know what their objective is. If it was to deny the speakership to Boehner and hand it to Mrs. Pelosi, I don’t know how their cause would have been furthered. If it’s to force the vote to a second ballot to make some demands, well, who the hell do these people think they are? Twelve out of 233, and they’re making demands? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

I have to say that handing the speakership to Nancy Pelosi as a strategy among the baggers (assuming it was a strategy; they may be too stupid to comprehend the meaning of “consequence”) reminds me of the “progressives” who wanted Mitt Romney to win to punish President Obama and “send a message.” Stupid is not exclusive to the Right. But the Stupid Caucus among House Republicans is taking Stupid to new levels. For example …

You look at the very beginning of the last Congress, H.R. 1, the omnibus, there were hundreds of amendments from the stupid to the sublime. One was offered to defund the president’s teleprompter. Another was to defund the electrical upgrades needed to bring the White House up to code. But Boehner’s deal was, OK, go for it, let people participate. There was an expectation that, given the opportunity to improve the bill, they would then vote for the bill. But beginning with that bill there have been 20 to 50 members who will make adjustments to the bill that guarantee you’re not going to get one Democrat to vote for it, and then they still vote against the bill themselves and deny Boehner the 218 votes he needs to bargain with.

Some of what LaTourette says in the interview is bull, but one gets the impression that even he is disgusted with the degree of Stupid among House Republicans.

Back to Alex Pareene, who describes the failed “coup” against John Boehner:

If, say, Eric Cantor had actually wanted the job, he could’ve organized the coup and succeeded. But Eric Cantor didn’t want the job. The bigger problem, then, was a lack of intelligence. The crazy caucus failed spectacularly at all aspects of the attempted conspiracy, from planning to execution. They waited until the last minute to approach potential allies, failed to count their own votes correctly, and didn’t even all figure out who they were supposed to vote for instead. Their plan was apparently to embarrass Boehner into resigning, in favor of … someone to be decided later. Candidates voted for by plotters included departing Rep. Allen West and former Comptroller David Walker, who are basically the opposites of one another.

For more stupid, see “GOP Rep: ‘It’s About Time’ We Had Another Government Shut Down’.” For a ray of hope, see Josh Marshall, “A Losing Game.”

“Good” Guys With Guns

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Big hat tip to Kay at Balloon Juice, for “Good guys and bad guys and real life.” She links to an NPR program that points out the fallacy behind “stand your ground” laws.

Hoekstra recently decided to analyze national crime statistics to see what happens in states that pass stand your ground laws. He found the laws are having a measurable effect on the homicide rate.

“Our study finds that, that homicides go up by 7 to 9 percent in states that pass the laws, relative to states that didn’t pass the laws over the same time period,” he says.

As to whether the laws reduce crime — by creating a deterrence for criminals — he says, “we find no evidence of any deterrence effect over that same time period.”

Hoekstra obtained this result by comparing the homicide rate in states before and after they passed the laws. He also compared states with the laws to states without the laws.

Still, based on the available data, it appears that crafters of these laws sought to give good guys more latitude to defend themselves against bad guys. But what Hoekstra’s data suggest is that in real-life conflicts, both sides think of the other guy as the bad guy. Both believe the law gives them the right to shoot.

In a separate analysis of death certificates before and after stand your ground laws were passed in different states, economists at Georgia State University also found that states that passed the laws ended up with a higher homicide rate.

That study also tracked the increased homicides by race. In contrast to the narrative established by the Trayvon Martin shooting — many people believe black men are more likely to be the victims of stand your ground laws — this analysis found the additional deaths caused by the laws were largely concentrated among white men.

“The imperfect but growing evidence seems to suggest that the consequences of adopting stand your ground laws are pernicious, in that they may lead to a greater number of homicides — thus going against the notion that they are serving some sort of protective function for society,” he says.

The part about the additional deaths being mostly of white men makes sense, since the redneck yahoos who think a trip to Home Depot requires carrying a concealed weapon mostly stay in the company of other redneck yahoos. Hmmm …

See also “More Guns = More Killing” by Elisabeth Rosenthal:

I recently visited some Latin American countries that mesh with the N.R.A.’s vision of the promised land, where guards with guns grace every office lobby, storefront, A.T.M., restaurant and gas station. It has not made those countries safer or saner.

Despite the ubiquitous presence of “good guys” with guns, countries like Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia and Venezuela have some of the highest homicide rates in the world.

“A society that is relying on guys with guns to stop violence is a sign of a society where institutions have broken down,” said Rebecca Peters, former director of the International Action Network on Small Arms. “It’s shocking to hear anyone in the United States considering a solution that would make it seem more like Colombia.”

As guns proliferate, legally and illegally, innocent people often seem more terrorized than protected.

The gun nuts say they have to have unfettered freedom to carry all kinds of firearms in order to be able to fight against tyranny. Liam Maddon, an Iraq War vet, wrote,

The Second Amendment stopped giving the insurrectionists among us a chance as soon as military technology advanced beyond the rifle. No modern Shays’ Rebellion is viable, militarily speaking, unless the Second Amendment is read to protect an individual’s right to bear surface-to-air missiles, personally owned Abrams tanks and state-sanctioned depleted uranium artillery. Who in their right mind would want to live in a place that gave access to these things to any person, no matter how law abiding or responsible?

Even if you would prefer that much more dangerous world, it doesn’t exist, thankfully. Because no group of armed citizens is on par with U.S. military power, the “guns guard our freedom” argument is hollow and insane. The “guns guard our freedom” perspective is the bedrock of the anti–gun control movement, and until we speak to it with respect and honesty, we will not sway the disenchanted and angry among us who feel the pain of the mothers in Newtown but fear, rightly or wrongly, the Orwellian implications of disarming. Frankly, arguments to anyone else is preaching to the choir.

The terrible irony is that the real power to be feared doesn’t come from guns; it comes from money. Steve M points out that

The gun lobby is part of the vast right-wing conspiracy. The NRA has long been in bed with the pro-plutocrat lobbyists of ALEC. I’m not sure there’s a conscious strategy at work here, but is it really surprising that plutocracy advocates want to hollow out America’s middle class and create a class structure more like those in Latin America (where U.S. corporations have traditionally found cheap, willing workers), while their pro-gun allies want us seeing one another as (literally) mortal enemies, while we lose focus on what the plutocrats are doing to us economically?

Is it unreasonable to see these as two aspects of the Third World-ization of America?

It is not at all unreasonable, I say.

1/3/13

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Al-Jazeera is buying Current TV, and Time-Warner announced it is dropping Current TV. Just one more reason I’m happy I don’t subscribe to Time-Warner.

I run into Al-Jazeera reporting a lot when I’m checking out news from Asia. I believe Al-Jazeera does a better job covering the problems with Tibetan Buddhism in China than any western news service I can think of. Certainly there’s no hint in their Asian reporting that they have any kind of jihadist agenda, although try telling that to Pam Geller.

It will be interesting to see what Al-Jazeera does with Current. More news, less opinion?

The Scrooge Party

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So the House passed the Senate’s “fiscal cliff” bill, with the support of most House Democrats but less than half of House Republicans. But seemingly in a fit of pique, yesterday the House flushed an appropriations bill for Sandy victims down the toilet.

If we were living in a Dickens novel, the GOP would send Tiny Tim to the workhouses without his crutch.

As to the deal itself, Paul Krugman says it’s not terrible, but …

Well, the CBO estimates cumulative potential GDP over the next decade at $208 trillion.So the difference between what Obama got and what he arguably should have gotten is around 0.1 percent of potential GDP. That’s not crucial, to say the least.

And on the principle of the thing, you could say that Democrats held their ground on the essentials — no cuts in benefits — while Republicans have just voted for a tax increase for the first time in decades.

So why the bad taste in progressives’ mouths? It has less to do with where Obama ended up than with how he got there. He kept drawing lines in the sand, then erasing them and retreating to a new position. And his evident desire to have a deal before hitting the essentially innocuous fiscal cliff bodes very badly for the confrontation looming in a few weeks over the debt ceiling.

If Obama stands his ground in that confrontation, this deal won’t look bad in retrospect. If he doesn’t, yesterday will be seen as the day he began throwing away his presidency and the hopes of everyone who supported him.

See also Michael Lind, “Right-Wing Dreams of Demented Utopias.”