“A new video commentary released by the NRA references the Holocaust and other instances of persecution to advance the baseless claim that ‘the government is collecting more and more gun registration data which could be used against gun owners in the form of full confiscation,'” Timothy Johnson writes at the 501(c)(3) non-profit “progressive research and information center” known as mediamatters.org. “The NRA frequently uses the Holocaust to fearmonger about gun rights, and has on three recent occasions been rebuked by civil rights group Anti-Defamation League for misappropriating the history of the Holocaust.” In other words, Media Matters agrees with the ADL that gun registration has nothing to do with the Holocaust. Perhaps they didn’t read . . .
the recently published, exhaustively researched book Gun Control in the Third Reich. As my review pointed out . . .
It’s certainly true that Gun Control in the Third Reich doesn’t “crudely” argue that firearms restrictions lead to genocide. It makes the point by providing a sophisticated and detailed road map from one to the other, drawing on thousands of source materials. There can be no denying (now) that the Nazis’ systematic disarmament program capitalized on gun control laws passed by well-meaning liberals in the Weimar Republic. The Nazis used the previous government’s registration records to confiscate firearms and send their owners to concentration camps.
To say that Cheng’s wrong – that American gun registration couldn’t possibly lead to genocide – may not be the same as denying the Holocaust in its entirety. But it’s close enough. Because the Holocaust couldn’t have happened without civilian disarmament. Remembering that the Germans disarmed non-Jews at the same time (e.g., German WWI veterans and hunting club members), strangling the possibility of any effective (i.e. armed) resistance to the Nazi’s party’s fascist regime.
If that isn’t enough to make Media Matters take the matter of American gun registration seriously – and I seriously doubt that any appeal to logic, fact or reason will – here’s a quote about gun control from none other than Adolph Hitler:
“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so. Indeed I would go so far as to say that the underdog is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let’s not have any native militia or police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order.”
Source: April 11, 1942, “Hitler’s Table-Talk at the Fuehrer’s Headquarters 1941-1942”, Dr. Henry Picker, ed. (Athenaeum Verlag, Bonn, 1951).
And to those who claim that the Jews couldn’t have defended themselves against genocide by force of arms – in the same sense that American gun owners would be mincemeat for the might of a tyrannical army – I have two words: Warsaw Ghetto.