The blind to be allowed gun permits?
- Thread starter GDAD
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SifuPhil
R.I.P. With Us In Spirit Only
- Location
- Pennsylvania, USA
It seems that he twice received voluntary psych care, including meds, at the VA in the previous month, but that didn't get on the radar because he wasn't committed.
In Rhode Island he had called police from a motel room claiming that people were following him and using microwaves to harass him, and hearing voices. Again, no ticket filed so no effect on his security clearance.
He's just another one that slipped through the system. NOW Obama is calling for an evaluation of Federal vetting processes for civilian contractors.
As always, people focus on the gun control issue but they ignore the far larger problem of mental health.
Yes, I heard that Alexis was being treated with psychiatric drugs, don't know which ones specifically. Here's just some of the others...
The media likes to downplay the severe effects of these psychiatric drugs, because it is not in the best financial interests of the pharmaceutical companies, and in the end, it's all about the money...http://www.prisonplanet.com/media-buries-psychiatric-drug-connection-to-navy-shooter.html
Thanks Seabreeze; that is very frightening. I know that we can't blame the guns or the drugs alone. Why can't we figure out something besides drugs to solve these problems (some of which I believe are nutritional deficiencies; not all, of course). Taking guns away won't solve it all, either.
More stringent background checks; ok, but more than likely, our medical records will be open to just about anyone who requests them, and who hasn't been depressed at one time or another?? How many more 'illnesses' will be defined as mental problems, therefore limiting our access to guns even more??
I read recently that now PMS can be considered a mental illness - really?? Wellll; maybe some of the guys might agree on that one.........
More stringent background checks; ok, but more than likely, our medical records will be open to just about anyone who requests them, and who hasn't been depressed at one time or another?? How many more 'illnesses' will be defined as mental problems, therefore limiting our access to guns even more??
I read recently that now PMS can be considered a mental illness - really?? Wellll; maybe some of the guys might agree on that one.........
Jillaroo
Demented
- Location
- Mid North Coast NSW Australia
And the Doctors wonder why i am reluctant to take what they tell me i need, most times the side effects of the drugs are far worse than the ailment, it's mind boggling how they prescribe all these drugs instead of helping patients with their mental health problems. :what:mg:
mg:SifuPhil
R.I.P. With Us In Spirit Only
- Location
- Pennsylvania, USA
And the Doctors wonder why i am reluctant to take what they tell me i need, most times the side effects of the drugs are far worse than the ailment, it's mind boggling how they prescribe all these drugs instead of helping patients with their mental health problems. :what:
One possible reason, and I say this as a former psychiatry fan, is that their mode of psychological counseling doesn't work. From a financial viewpoint, it's also far more lucrative to listen to symptoms for 5 minutes and then prescribe a drug than it is to do one-on-one counseling for several hours at the least.
It's all about the money.
If you have a problem, don't cure it, just cover it up - that's the modern way. Treat symptoms, not root causes, and damn the consequences.
But changing this paradigm is next to impossible at this point - Big Pharma is truly a juggernaut. We also, to be fair, should consider the loss of true parenting skills during the last several decades; without real parental guidance and upbringing, leaving it to TV and the 'Net, we can't say that we're surprised by the results.
I understand ancient Rome experienced the same sort of decline ...
The gun debate is about the right to protect yourself, your family and your property if needed. As said repeatedly on this forum by different folks, including myself, it's not about being afraid, it's about being prepared, but somehow that statement is not being heard. There are too many examples to cite of people who saved their own lives in their homes by having guns. Many of those cases are the elderly and women. In events like hurricanes, etc., when people have no power or way to get around, there are gangs of criminals breaking into their homes and vehicles to steal what they can...that's when you need an equalizer to protect you and yours. The bad guys will get their guns on the streets.
My parents never had a gun in the house at all when I was growing up, so I also was not exposed to them until I was an adult. The vast majority of American gun owners are responsible citizens who do not care to depend on the government for protection, financial assistance, or anything else. They have worked hard, followed laws, and lived admirable lives.
It's insulting to hear people from other countries who have forfeited their gun owning privileges, speaking like gun owners are morons, looking for a gunfight at noon to settle a problem...or insinuating that they would wildly be waving their arms around, accidentally shooting all people in the general area. I respect their right to live in those areas, and it appears to me, that when they delight to jump on the anti-gun bandwagon at each and every incident, that they want the same regulations for the US...misery loves company is the feeling I get.
Yes, mental health is just one aspect of it. Another aspect is the falling apart of the traditional family and their values. There's nothing wrong with children being raised by a single parent who teaches responsibility, morals, accountability, self sufficiency, respect for other and their property, etc. BUT, there are lots of children with no father figures to look up to. Mothers are having 4 babies from 4 different fathers, living alone and still dating and partying, collecting welfare and food stamps instead of making an honest living. The kids are out on the streets, unsupervised, no mentors or role models, looking to steal from others and make babies of their own...not a good recipe for a successful society.
In addition, people fail to recognize that a lot of these shootings are in gun-free zones. The navy shooter could have quickly be stopped if another person in the building was carrying a weapon. The theater shooting in Colorado would have had a lot less victims, if it wasn't a gun-free zone. I would prefer having a responsible armed citizen that is trained and comfortable with his gun watching the movie with me, that would have helped tremendously. In fact a man on the news that was there, said he had a permit, but did not bring his gun into the movie due to the rules against it.
I just wish that navy shooter was blind, then it would be good discussion for this thread, maybe next time.
My parents never had a gun in the house at all when I was growing up, so I also was not exposed to them until I was an adult. The vast majority of American gun owners are responsible citizens who do not care to depend on the government for protection, financial assistance, or anything else. They have worked hard, followed laws, and lived admirable lives.
It's insulting to hear people from other countries who have forfeited their gun owning privileges, speaking like gun owners are morons, looking for a gunfight at noon to settle a problem...or insinuating that they would wildly be waving their arms around, accidentally shooting all people in the general area. I respect their right to live in those areas, and it appears to me, that when they delight to jump on the anti-gun bandwagon at each and every incident, that they want the same regulations for the US...misery loves company is the feeling I get.
Yes, mental health is just one aspect of it. Another aspect is the falling apart of the traditional family and their values. There's nothing wrong with children being raised by a single parent who teaches responsibility, morals, accountability, self sufficiency, respect for other and their property, etc. BUT, there are lots of children with no father figures to look up to. Mothers are having 4 babies from 4 different fathers, living alone and still dating and partying, collecting welfare and food stamps instead of making an honest living. The kids are out on the streets, unsupervised, no mentors or role models, looking to steal from others and make babies of their own...not a good recipe for a successful society.
In addition, people fail to recognize that a lot of these shootings are in gun-free zones. The navy shooter could have quickly be stopped if another person in the building was carrying a weapon. The theater shooting in Colorado would have had a lot less victims, if it wasn't a gun-free zone. I would prefer having a responsible armed citizen that is trained and comfortable with his gun watching the movie with me, that would have helped tremendously. In fact a man on the news that was there, said he had a permit, but did not bring his gun into the movie due to the rules against it.
I just wish that navy shooter was blind, then it would be good discussion for this thread, maybe next time.
Jackie22
Well-known Member
- Location
- Northeast Texas
I agree with this article.......
Another gun tragedy
By Fareed Zakaria
I wrote this just after the Newtown killings last year; seems to apply just as much today:
People point to three sets of causes when talking about events such as the Newtown, Conn., shootings. First, the psychology of the killer; second, the environment of violence in our popular culture; and, third, easy access to guns. Any one of these might explain a single shooting. What we should be trying to understand is not one single event but why we have so many of them. The number of deaths by firearms in the United States was 32,000 last year. Around 11,000 were gun homicides.
To understand how staggeringly high this number is, compare it to the rate in other rich countries. England and Wales have about 50 gun homicides a year — 3 percent of our rate per 100,000 people. Many people believe that America is simply a more violent, individualistic society. But again, the data clarify. For most crimes — theft, burglary, robbery, assault — the United States is within the range of other advanced countries. The category in which the U.S. rate is magnitudes higher is gun homicides.
The U.S. gun homicide rate is 30 times that of France or Australia, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, and 12 times higher than the average for other developed countries.
So what explains this difference? If psychology is the main cause, we should have 12 times as many psychologically disturbed people. But we don’t. The United States could do better, but we take mental disorders seriously and invest more in this area than do many peer countries.
Is America’s popular culture the cause? This is highly unlikely, as largely the same culture exists in other rich countries. Youth in England and Wales, for example, are exposed to virtually identical cultural influences as in the United States. Yet the rate of gun homicide there is a tiny fraction of ours. The Japanese are at the cutting edge of the world of video games. Yet their gun homicide rate is close to zero! Why? Britain has tough gun laws. Japan has perhaps the tightest regulation of guns in the industrialized world.
The data in social science are rarely this clear. They strongly suggest that we have so much more gun violence than other countries because we have far more permissive laws than others regarding the sale and possession of guns. With 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States has 50 percent of the guns.
Another gun tragedy
By Fareed Zakaria
I wrote this just after the Newtown killings last year; seems to apply just as much today:
People point to three sets of causes when talking about events such as the Newtown, Conn., shootings. First, the psychology of the killer; second, the environment of violence in our popular culture; and, third, easy access to guns. Any one of these might explain a single shooting. What we should be trying to understand is not one single event but why we have so many of them. The number of deaths by firearms in the United States was 32,000 last year. Around 11,000 were gun homicides.
To understand how staggeringly high this number is, compare it to the rate in other rich countries. England and Wales have about 50 gun homicides a year — 3 percent of our rate per 100,000 people. Many people believe that America is simply a more violent, individualistic society. But again, the data clarify. For most crimes — theft, burglary, robbery, assault — the United States is within the range of other advanced countries. The category in which the U.S. rate is magnitudes higher is gun homicides.
The U.S. gun homicide rate is 30 times that of France or Australia, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, and 12 times higher than the average for other developed countries.
So what explains this difference? If psychology is the main cause, we should have 12 times as many psychologically disturbed people. But we don’t. The United States could do better, but we take mental disorders seriously and invest more in this area than do many peer countries.
Is America’s popular culture the cause? This is highly unlikely, as largely the same culture exists in other rich countries. Youth in England and Wales, for example, are exposed to virtually identical cultural influences as in the United States. Yet the rate of gun homicide there is a tiny fraction of ours. The Japanese are at the cutting edge of the world of video games. Yet their gun homicide rate is close to zero! Why? Britain has tough gun laws. Japan has perhaps the tightest regulation of guns in the industrialized world.
The data in social science are rarely this clear. They strongly suggest that we have so much more gun violence than other countries because we have far more permissive laws than others regarding the sale and possession of guns. With 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States has 50 percent of the guns.
SifuPhil
R.I.P. With Us In Spirit Only
- Location
- Pennsylvania, USA
SifuPhil
R.I.P. With Us In Spirit Only
- Location
- Pennsylvania, USA
I disagree that we take mental disorders seriously. All we do is throw pills at the afflicted.
England also has far more knifings and mob actions than the U.S. Japan has a much higher suicide rate.
The problem with numbers is that they can mean anything we wish them to.
What the writer does not realize, or chooses not to acknowledge, is that more gun control laws will NOT stop a criminal from getting a gun. It's only going to make it harder for the law-abiding masses.
Diwundrin, Your thoughts about the drugs are a lot like mine.
You asked a question, "Who exactly are people under the impression that they are protecting themselves from?"
I will try to anwer that in a way folks can understand.
A "NUTCASE" attacked a naval base.
We have had several "NUTCASES" attack schools,workplaces, places of entertainment where several people gathered.
Where were the "AUTHORITIES"(the only ones who should have guns)? Why did it take them so long to get there?
Where were the people who are supposed to protect us?
That is just one group I want to try to protect myself and family from.
As much as I hate to say it we have "people in authority" who rob, rape, beat up and kill people.
That is another group I want to try to protect myself from.
If I read history right Hitler achieved dominance over people by seeing that they were disarmed.
So I have to ask the question. Why do the "leaders" of my country seem so hell bent on keepimg us from having guns. Remember it started out with just handguns? Just asking.
That represents another group I want to try to protect myself from IF it ever comes to that.
Just a reminder our forefarthers fought trained soldiers who were sent here by the King to keep them suppressed for his gain and his purposes.
So in summing up, it is more than protection and the right to own arms. It is about trying to preserve an idea that some seem to seek destroy.
You asked a question, "Who exactly are people under the impression that they are protecting themselves from?"
I will try to anwer that in a way folks can understand.
A "NUTCASE" attacked a naval base.
We have had several "NUTCASES" attack schools,workplaces, places of entertainment where several people gathered.
Where were the "AUTHORITIES"(the only ones who should have guns)? Why did it take them so long to get there?
Where were the people who are supposed to protect us?
That is just one group I want to try to protect myself and family from.
As much as I hate to say it we have "people in authority" who rob, rape, beat up and kill people.
That is another group I want to try to protect myself from.
If I read history right Hitler achieved dominance over people by seeing that they were disarmed.
So I have to ask the question. Why do the "leaders" of my country seem so hell bent on keepimg us from having guns. Remember it started out with just handguns? Just asking.
That represents another group I want to try to protect myself from IF it ever comes to that.
Just a reminder our forefarthers fought trained soldiers who were sent here by the King to keep them suppressed for his gain and his purposes.
So in summing up, it is more than protection and the right to own arms. It is about trying to preserve an idea that some seem to seek destroy.
SifuPhil
R.I.P. With Us In Spirit Only
- Location
- Pennsylvania, USA
While I understand the desire to understand (!), the way I see it is that this is simply how things are. Knowing history in order not to repeat it doesn't help except in the planning stage - when the bad guy is in your face it's a little too late to think about social causes.
In other words, from my own personal perspective, I simply react. I don't care if the guy holding a gun to my head has had an abused childhood or is on welfare because he can't afford rent and crack both, or that society has failed him by discriminating against his race or creed or religion. All I'm going to be concerned about at that point is removing the immediate threat.
I really cannot answer that. To me it just seems common sense to want to protect yourself.
I don't think any sane person ever wanted it to be that way here, either ... but it is, and we have to deal with it as a people because the government only wants to take away our last line of defense, not solve the underlying problem.
We used to cross our fingers a lot here, too ... didn't work.
That's very true - it's a fact that the majority of people are good-hearted, honest and so on. It's just the minority that makes life miserable. And it only takes ONE to make YOUR life a living - or dying - Hell.
Here's the situation: bad economy has forced cut-backs in police departments. Some towns around here share a common police department among 3 or 4 towns - that's how bad it is. Now, those 3 or 4 towns may cover a 30-40 mile radius.
When the bad guys are kicking in your door or holding that gun against your head, you cannot expect the Boys in Blue to be there in time to save you.
And, as I believe I mentioned recently on this board, a cop could be standing 20 feet away from me and I could still pull the trigger or thrust the knife before he even knows what's going on. Cops are a RE-active force - that's what they were designed to be. They were never meant to be PRO-active - to be bodyguards. The numbers just don't work that way.
I think it's an accurate depiction.
How exactly would the cops handle it? Would they walk down the street frisking everyone who's wearing a HamBurglar mask?
Again, I think the majority of our cops are decent people who are just trying to enforce the law. The problems are that (1) the laws they are being tasked with enforcing are often unfair, discriminatory or capricious; (2) they are not given the proper tools nor allowed the freedom to get the job done, and (3) there are far more bad guys than cops.
I've always said that when you are a pacifist you are giving up your right to life, because you are going against eons of natural selection. Mankind was always meant to fight, whether Nature or each other. When you declare your pacifism you are putting out the sign that says:
ATTENTION PREDATORS: FREE MEAL HERE !!!
Just as you are striving to understand our violent ways, I'm trying to understand how a people can give up the responsibility of self-defense to someone else, someone who does not have their best interests at heart. No one will ever care about anyone as much as they care about themselves - that's human nature. Yes, there are stories of people sacrificing themselves for others but that's an outlier - that's an aberration. A normal, healthy person has themselves as #1. That's why I'm so puzzled about people that give up security for convenience and blind hope.
I would NEVER expect a cop to save me. I would only expect them to put down those cool tape outlines around my body and fill out all the paperwork. Basically they're undertakers with guns. Again, not their fault - they just cannot be everywhere at once.
My guns aren't an obsession, any more than my knives, my Oriental weapons or, heck, my collection of hair-balls from every cat I've ever owned. They are merely tools, tools that are meant to be utilized at the proper place and in the proper time.
Depending upon which "crunch" you are referring to, you might be a bit late looking for a weapon when you need one. That isn't the time to prepare - it's BEFORE anything happens. Just ask any prepper.
I've seen a similar mindset among hundreds of self-defense students I've taught - "Oh, well, if I get attacked I'm sure I'll kick the guy in the egg-sac or scratch his face or something - I don't have to put too much effort into this stuff."
No. You can't rely upon last-second plans because they are driven by fear, not by logic. There is a long and complex series of physical and mental changes that occur when a body is under extreme stress. The idea of planning and training is that you negate many of those factors, thus giving you a better chance of survival. A gun is just another factor in that survival planning.
In other words, from my own personal perspective, I simply react. I don't care if the guy holding a gun to my head has had an abused childhood or is on welfare because he can't afford rent and crack both, or that society has failed him by discriminating against his race or creed or religion. All I'm going to be concerned about at that point is removing the immediate threat.
I really cannot answer that. To me it just seems common sense to want to protect yourself.
I don't think any sane person ever wanted it to be that way here, either ... but it is, and we have to deal with it as a people because the government only wants to take away our last line of defense, not solve the underlying problem.
We used to cross our fingers a lot here, too ... didn't work.
That's very true - it's a fact that the majority of people are good-hearted, honest and so on. It's just the minority that makes life miserable. And it only takes ONE to make YOUR life a living - or dying - Hell.
Here's the situation: bad economy has forced cut-backs in police departments. Some towns around here share a common police department among 3 or 4 towns - that's how bad it is. Now, those 3 or 4 towns may cover a 30-40 mile radius.
When the bad guys are kicking in your door or holding that gun against your head, you cannot expect the Boys in Blue to be there in time to save you.
And, as I believe I mentioned recently on this board, a cop could be standing 20 feet away from me and I could still pull the trigger or thrust the knife before he even knows what's going on. Cops are a RE-active force - that's what they were designed to be. They were never meant to be PRO-active - to be bodyguards. The numbers just don't work that way.
To be blunt SeaBreeze that scenario doesn't paint a pretty picture of society as you see it.
I think it's an accurate depiction.
How exactly would the cops handle it? Would they walk down the street frisking everyone who's wearing a HamBurglar mask?
Again, I think the majority of our cops are decent people who are just trying to enforce the law. The problems are that (1) the laws they are being tasked with enforcing are often unfair, discriminatory or capricious; (2) they are not given the proper tools nor allowed the freedom to get the job done, and (3) there are far more bad guys than cops.
I've always said that when you are a pacifist you are giving up your right to life, because you are going against eons of natural selection. Mankind was always meant to fight, whether Nature or each other. When you declare your pacifism you are putting out the sign that says:
ATTENTION PREDATORS: FREE MEAL HERE !!!
Just as you are striving to understand our violent ways, I'm trying to understand how a people can give up the responsibility of self-defense to someone else, someone who does not have their best interests at heart. No one will ever care about anyone as much as they care about themselves - that's human nature. Yes, there are stories of people sacrificing themselves for others but that's an outlier - that's an aberration. A normal, healthy person has themselves as #1. That's why I'm so puzzled about people that give up security for convenience and blind hope.
I would NEVER expect a cop to save me. I would only expect them to put down those cool tape outlines around my body and fill out all the paperwork. Basically they're undertakers with guns. Again, not their fault - they just cannot be everywhere at once.
I'm not an anti-gun nut. When it comes to the crunch I won't be competing with Warri for that olive branch to wave, I'll be heading for exactly where I know I can get a spare gun at short notice, but when it comes to only discussing how guns became such a big part of a lifestyle, well, I'm just plain addictedly fascinated with that. Sorry.
My guns aren't an obsession, any more than my knives, my Oriental weapons or, heck, my collection of hair-balls from every cat I've ever owned. They are merely tools, tools that are meant to be utilized at the proper place and in the proper time.
Depending upon which "crunch" you are referring to, you might be a bit late looking for a weapon when you need one. That isn't the time to prepare - it's BEFORE anything happens. Just ask any prepper.
I've seen a similar mindset among hundreds of self-defense students I've taught - "Oh, well, if I get attacked I'm sure I'll kick the guy in the egg-sac or scratch his face or something - I don't have to put too much effort into this stuff."
No. You can't rely upon last-second plans because they are driven by fear, not by logic. There is a long and complex series of physical and mental changes that occur when a body is under extreme stress. The idea of planning and training is that you negate many of those factors, thus giving you a better chance of survival. A gun is just another factor in that survival planning.
Diwundrin
Well-known Member
- Location
- Nth Coast NSW Australia
This is why our gun crime as escalated over the last decade or so. The cops were hamstrung by some brainsnap to hold anti corruption crusades and weed out the effective ones.
The bent cops weren't a problem to the populace, they were our best defence against the gangs. They weren't bothering Joe Bloggs in the burbs, they were kicking the proverbial out of those who really were bothering poor Joe.
They were the ones who knew exactly who was up to what if only so they could keep track of their kickbacks. They didn't need to ask the public or whistleblowers for help in finding organised crime leaders, they were working for 'em.
They kept them under a kind of control because if they didn't they knew their job, and it's associated brown envelopes, was goooorrrrn.
It all worked out in the balance. We could safely walk the streets at night, drunken vandalizing kids were suitably roughed up and bailed out by traumatized parents from the lockup in the morning. A 'round' with a big cranky sergeant assured that only the most criminally dedicated and stupid ever turned up there twice.
Crims weren't game to get caught with a gun on them or they'd make page 3 next day in the 'suicides' list.
We referred to the 'criminal class' with good reason, they were a group apart. The only contact with them was through gambling or such, they weren't the kid next door or the drug dealer up the road back then. They were keeping their murders and mayhem 'in house' and everything was 'sweet'.
That didn't last long when the force was 'cleaned up'. It got away from them fast.
Now brainless hoons in tricked up cars are firing a few rounds into other hoons relatives houses. The drive bys are so far confined to M.Eastern gangs and a few Asian Tongs but it's going to spread. Their good ole machete rumbles are going to be shootouts in no time. The tough old bent cops would have sorted them out, but these days the crooks have no fear of them and fire lawyers at them.
There are a couple of bent cops that became legends of a kind. They were our dark heroes. Probably the last of them was a murderous bastard with an endearing sense of humour and a lethally practical view of how things were and should be.
He was caught up in the crusade and ended up in jail for offing more than a couple of lowlife's that nobody missed. We missed him though, because there was no trouble on the streets in Roger the Dodger's patch. But there sure is now.
He didn't get long, and when he got out he partnered up with another murderer, a professional hit man, also inexplicably 'likeable' and they did a touring show together. They'd tell the yarns about the good old days and the crooks they'd known and what they'd gotten up to and the 'funny' things that had happened. The venue would be packed with people only to anxious to hear about it. From the clips I've seen it looked a very entertaining evening. We're strange like that.
But of course the civil liberties lawyers got all that 'corruption' changed. They were losing too many court cases, so instead of punishing the crims we started holding the cops responsible for the crime rate. The criminals had all the rights and the cops got sued for sneezing on them.
When we wonder why they don't show up we should also wonder why they'd bother. They're on a hiding to nothing. If they catch a robber he'll sue them for infringing his rights to make a living or something equally ridiculous. If they belt a bloke on meth who's doing his level best to kill them they are charged with brutality. No wonder we never seem to have enough of them, it doesn't have much to offer as a career.
I see your point about not expecting them to be there when we need them. But we never did expect that. We're used to living in somewhat isolated places and cop shops were seldom close. We always expected to look after ourselves. The cops were for catching them, not guarding us from them.
We didn't expect to be mugged in our own homes either. Some always were, occasionally, but we didn't expect it, and so never felt that more than a handy vase or similar was necessary precaution. We didn't really make a considered decision not to get a gun. We simply didn't even think of it. It didn't occur to us to take that road.
It's not about me being prone to pacifism, you just haven't seen me in a really bad mood! I know people who would fall about laughing at that one.
We love a stoush as much as anyone, it's a matter of, for want of better word, Tradition? Habit? that we don't (or didn't) think 'gun' as the first option. Physical violence yes, guns no. That's how it is/was. It's not better or worse, just different.
The nearest police to here are a good 10 minutes away if they get a running start, and if more than one or two is needed then we're looking at 35 mins, minimum. No, I'm in no way relying on anyone at all to protect me. I'm taking my chances that society, at least around here, isn't quite that bad yet and if it is, and I'm picked then that's life.
Odds are they want cash or a TV, not me, but if they do then I'll try and mark 'em up at least but I'm under no illusion that I can fight my way out, armed or not. That kind of thinking is natural to the fit and healthy but attitudes and expectations have to change with our physical limitations.
It's not entirely due to a mental attitude, at my level a gun wouldn't be an equalizer, it would be a temptation, and a present for them to take and perhaps use on someone else. I never kid myself about my combat capabilities.
So add hamstrung cops and the rights of psychos to the list of causes. We have those already so we're on the same track.
No problem with your other conclusions, they're just a tad simplified and a bit skewed to the US view of things.
We don't see it as relinquishing a right to carry arms, we never saw that as a constitutional 'thing' and it doesn't mean the same to us as to you. It never did, we not losing anything we took for granted and as yet, can't see the need for it.
Our culture sprang from a penal colony. We're a very pragmatic lot, any laws we don't consider worth keeping we simply ignore, so if and when we want guns, believe me, we'll have 'em. We just won't be wearing them in holsters and carrying pink one in purses. The cops and government know that. That's why they're actually getting off their backsides to do something about it while they still can and before we, like you, feel we have to.
I think I covered the expectation of others coming to our personal defence. We don't. We do expect (hope) that the law will be enough to keep the muggers restricted to hammers and those who go postal being armed only with axes.
We are doing okay though, if you're right that there are more crooks than cops there, it's not quite that bad here... yet.
Oh, and that 'crunch' thing? ... the circle the wagons, Mad Max type collapse of society crunch, not random incidents. And I wouldn't be making my stand on my own here, this old pacifist would be only too happy to snap off a few shots to defend the family 'fort'.
But that's fantasy stuff. I won't be around long enough to worry about that being necessary, hopefully none of us will.
SifuPhil
R.I.P. With Us In Spirit Only
- Location
- Pennsylvania, USA
Well-spoken, m'Lady.
I didn't mean to imply that YOU were a pacifist - I have a bad habit of substituting "you" when I really mean a theoretical person. My apologies and I'll try to be careful about that in the future, okay, Wimpy? :highly_amused:
The way I perceive things here the "older" generation grew up in a time much like your present one, where the worst home invasion they could expect would be the mother-in-law popping in unannounced. Unfortunately that has changed, and although it's still a rare occurrence out in the Heartland (the middle of the country), in the big cities on both coasts it's becoming an epidemic.
I used to tell my students that you could move up to the mountains and be safe from the crazies; about 20 years ago I changed that to "You can never move far enough - trouble will find you".
So what have we come up with here so far? That Americans are gun-crazy homicidal maniacs with a death wish? Well, yeah ... but only a small percentage. Unfortunately they get all the press. The rest of us just want to feel safe, and presently we do not, in part because of all that media coverage. We ARE a paranoid lot, though, so we believe whatever the news tells us, further mucking up the landscape.
Is it a conspiracy on the part of the arms manufacturers? I doubt it. I'm more inclined to think the way a few others here do, that it's just a slow decline of social values. It's the ham-strung cops AND the money-hungry lawyers AND the paid-off judges AND the lack of parenting AND all the other seemingly small but actually highly important signals that cross our bow every minute of every day that most people laugh off but when put all together create a toxic brew of trouble.
I have no desire to harm anyone, so in that sense I strive to be a pacifist. But the difference is that I will NOT hesitate to take someone out if they threaten or attack me or mine, consequences be damned.
I'd love to hear the stories about your rough-and-tumble legendary cops. Growing up I remember the cops in NY - usually Irish and always big as a house. You wouldn't DARE spit on the ground if they were within a few blocks of you, because despite their size they had some sort of leprechaun magic that allowed them to teleport instantly to your side, no matter how fast you ran. You'd then receive the obligatory cuff upside the head and the quick, friendly lecture, then a pat on the head and a kick in the butt and you'd be on your way, terrified but much wiser. It was a respect for law - THEIR law - that we learned.
But it was only years later that I learned how they treated the REAL criminals - usually with their blackjacks and billy-clubs. But hey - crime was just a dim vision for most people, not in-your-face like it is now. People left their doors open even overnight, young kids could play outside until all hours and you knew your neighbors. Ever since all that disappeared it's become a new world, and that's the world I base my actions on - not the one that I grew up in and would like to see once again.
And part of that reality for me is that the bad guys have guns, so I base my defense upon having at LEAST the same. One of these days I'm going to order that flamethrower kit, though, and THEN we'll see ....
I didn't mean to imply that YOU were a pacifist - I have a bad habit of substituting "you" when I really mean a theoretical person. My apologies and I'll try to be careful about that in the future, okay, Wimpy? :highly_amused:
The way I perceive things here the "older" generation grew up in a time much like your present one, where the worst home invasion they could expect would be the mother-in-law popping in unannounced. Unfortunately that has changed, and although it's still a rare occurrence out in the Heartland (the middle of the country), in the big cities on both coasts it's becoming an epidemic.
I used to tell my students that you could move up to the mountains and be safe from the crazies; about 20 years ago I changed that to "You can never move far enough - trouble will find you".
So what have we come up with here so far? That Americans are gun-crazy homicidal maniacs with a death wish? Well, yeah ... but only a small percentage. Unfortunately they get all the press. The rest of us just want to feel safe, and presently we do not, in part because of all that media coverage. We ARE a paranoid lot, though, so we believe whatever the news tells us, further mucking up the landscape.
Is it a conspiracy on the part of the arms manufacturers? I doubt it. I'm more inclined to think the way a few others here do, that it's just a slow decline of social values. It's the ham-strung cops AND the money-hungry lawyers AND the paid-off judges AND the lack of parenting AND all the other seemingly small but actually highly important signals that cross our bow every minute of every day that most people laugh off but when put all together create a toxic brew of trouble.
I have no desire to harm anyone, so in that sense I strive to be a pacifist. But the difference is that I will NOT hesitate to take someone out if they threaten or attack me or mine, consequences be damned.
I'd love to hear the stories about your rough-and-tumble legendary cops. Growing up I remember the cops in NY - usually Irish and always big as a house. You wouldn't DARE spit on the ground if they were within a few blocks of you, because despite their size they had some sort of leprechaun magic that allowed them to teleport instantly to your side, no matter how fast you ran. You'd then receive the obligatory cuff upside the head and the quick, friendly lecture, then a pat on the head and a kick in the butt and you'd be on your way, terrified but much wiser. It was a respect for law - THEIR law - that we learned.
But it was only years later that I learned how they treated the REAL criminals - usually with their blackjacks and billy-clubs. But hey - crime was just a dim vision for most people, not in-your-face like it is now. People left their doors open even overnight, young kids could play outside until all hours and you knew your neighbors. Ever since all that disappeared it's become a new world, and that's the world I base my actions on - not the one that I grew up in and would like to see once again.
And part of that reality for me is that the bad guys have guns, so I base my defense upon having at LEAST the same. One of these days I'm going to order that flamethrower kit, though, and THEN we'll see ....
Jackie22
Well-known Member
- Location
- Northeast Texas
Government is not trying to take away ALL guns...that's just one of the fear factors the NRA keep alive.
The statistics prove that Gun CONTROL works.
I think the paranoia in this country is preventing ANY kind of preventive measures from happening...how very sad for all of us.
The statistics prove that Gun CONTROL works.
I think the paranoia in this country is preventing ANY kind of preventive measures from happening...how very sad for all of us.
rkunsaw
Well-known Member
- Location
- Clarksville, Arkansas,USA
I believe you are wrong about statistics Jackie. Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws it the country and the highest gun related murder rates.
I've been an NRA member since 1970. The NRA didn't start as a political organization and politics is still not its primary purpose. It became involved in politics in response to those who are trying to take away our guns.
The goal of the anti gun crowd is indeed to take away ALL our guns. Just like many other rights, they can;t get by with taking them all at once so they try chipping away at them bit by bit.
I've been an NRA member since 1970. The NRA didn't start as a political organization and politics is still not its primary purpose. It became involved in politics in response to those who are trying to take away our guns.
The goal of the anti gun crowd is indeed to take away ALL our guns. Just like many other rights, they can;t get by with taking them all at once so they try chipping away at them bit by bit.
Warrigal
SF VIP
- Location
- Sydney, Australia
Coming in late to clear my name. My lap top is at the cleaners.
I'm not trying to tell Americans what to do about guns either but I too am desperately trying to understand the thinking. I am perplexed as to why the glaring comparisons with other civilised countries cited by Jackie22 are not ringing alarm bells. I don't understand why this is not seen as a major social problem and why there is not popular clamour for a well thought out and sustained policy to improve the situation.
Talk of burly policemen of yore won't do it and in a country where there are already more guns than people, I can't see that even more guns is going to help at all.
In a democracy, nothing will happen unless the people want it. When the people do make up their mind to act, nothing can stop them. It appears to me that there is no will to change the situation with respect to the number of gun deaths including mass shootings, accidents and suicides and I'm wondering how many more will have to occur before thinking begins to change.
I have a few ideas why it is so difficult to change things and like Diwundrin I recognise that differences between countries are rooted in history and geography. By dialoguing I hope that the differences in thinking and cultures on different continents may be better understood. If talking about my culture seems like giving a lecture then I apologise but I read somewhere this quote
I'm not trying to tell Americans what to do about guns either but I too am desperately trying to understand the thinking. I am perplexed as to why the glaring comparisons with other civilised countries cited by Jackie22 are not ringing alarm bells. I don't understand why this is not seen as a major social problem and why there is not popular clamour for a well thought out and sustained policy to improve the situation.
Talk of burly policemen of yore won't do it and in a country where there are already more guns than people, I can't see that even more guns is going to help at all.
In a democracy, nothing will happen unless the people want it. When the people do make up their mind to act, nothing can stop them. It appears to me that there is no will to change the situation with respect to the number of gun deaths including mass shootings, accidents and suicides and I'm wondering how many more will have to occur before thinking begins to change.
I have a few ideas why it is so difficult to change things and like Diwundrin I recognise that differences between countries are rooted in history and geography. By dialoguing I hope that the differences in thinking and cultures on different continents may be better understood. If talking about my culture seems like giving a lecture then I apologise but I read somewhere this quote
If this were not true then why bother thinking at all?
SifuPhil
R.I.P. With Us In Spirit Only
- Location
- Pennsylvania, USA
That's in a pure Democracy.
We are NOT a pure Democracy. We are a Frankenstein Republic/Democracy, as is evidenced by the fact that although we as a people WANT a good economy, affordable education and healthcare, etc. we do not get it. Throw in the rampant political bribe system and old-boy networks and you have something that in theory should work but in practice is a failure.
And that's all the politics I'm going to speak because I'm really not fond of the subject.
Warrigal
SF VIP
- Location
- Sydney, Australia
That's a cop out Phil. Votes for women and civil rights campaigns are examples of the people putting pressure on governments to change things. Ditto collective action by workers to achieve improvements to working conditions. You don't have to wait for a utopian democracy for the people to exert their will. In some cases, all they have to do is turn up and vote.
rkunsaw
Well-known Member
- Location
- Clarksville, Arkansas,USA
Chicago, home of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. Too bad they don't have gang control laws. Or maybe someone forgot to tell them that criminals don't obey laws.
http://news.yahoo.com/boy-3-among-13-injured-chicago-park-shooting-081123625.html
http://news.yahoo.com/boy-3-among-13-injured-chicago-park-shooting-081123625.html
Jackie22
Well-known Member
- Location
- Northeast Texas
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]ahhh Chicago.....this is another talking point of the NRA.....Chicago, ran by Democrats, does have tough gun laws, but if you want to buy guns all you have to do is go ten miles because the rest of Illinois has some of the most lenient gun laws in the country.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
[/FONT]
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/08/where-chicagos-guns-
Dallas, that is ran by Republicans, has a higher murder rate than Chicago, which is:
http://www.areaconnect.com/crime/compare.htm?c1=chicago&s1=IL&c2=dallas&s2=TX [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]......funny they never mention Dallas...lol[/FONT]
Jambi
Genie in training
- Location
- NW United States
No question gun control works, just ask any Jewish survivor..............
Helga Weiss, a Czech Jewish girl, was sent with her parents to the concentration camp at Terezin, a few days after her 12th birthday in 1941. She kept a diary, in words and pictures, and when she and her mother were sent on to Auschwitz in 1944, her uncle hid the diary in a brick wall for safekeeping. These are some of the pictures from her diary, which has only now been published
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...-diary-nazi-camps#/?picture=404433920&index=8
Banning guns works, which is why New York, DC, and Chicago cops need guns.Washington DC’s low murder rate of 80.6 per 100,000 is due to strict gun control, and Arlington, VA’s high murder rate of 1.6 per 100,000 is due to the lack of gun control.
The Night of the Broken Glass (Kristallnacht) - the infamous Nazi rampage against Germany's Jews - took place in November 1938. It was preceded by the confiscation of firearms from the Jewish victims. On Nov. 8, The New York Times reported from Berlin, "Berlin Police Head Announces 'Disarming' of Jews," explaining:
"The Berlin Police President, Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, announced that as a result of a police activity in the last few weeks the entire Jewish population of Berlin had been 'disarmed' with the confiscation of 2,569 hand weapons, 1,702 firearms and 20,000 rounds of ammunition. Any Jews still found in possession of weapons without valid licenses are threatened with the severest punishment."2
On the evening of Nov. 9, Adolph Hitler, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and other Nazi chiefs planned the attack. Orders went out to Nazi security forces: "All Jewish stores are to be destroyed immediately. Jewish synagogues are to be set on fire . The Führer wishes that the police does not intervene. All Jews are to be disarmed. In the event of resistance they are to be shot immediately."3
All hell broke loose on Nov. 10: "Nazis Smash, Loot and Burn Jewish Shops and Temples," a headline read. "One of the first legal measures issued was an order by Heinrich Himmler, commander of all German police, forbidding Jews to possess any weapons whatever and imposing a penalty of twenty years confinement in a concentration camp upon every Jew found in possession of a weapon hereafter."4 Thousands of Jews were taken away.
Searches of Jewish homes were calculated to seize firearms and assets and to arrest adult males. The American Consulate in Stuttgart was flooded with Jews begging for visas: "Men in whose homes old, rusty revolvers had been found during the last few days cried aloud that they did not dare ever again return to their places of residence or business. In fact, it was a mass of seething, panic-stricken humanity."5
Himmler, head of the Nazi terror police, would become an architect of the Holocaust, which consumed 6 million Jews. It was self-evident that the Jews must be disarmed before the extermination could begin.
Finding out which Jews had firearms was not too difficult. The liberal Weimar Republic passed a Firearm Law in 1928 requiring extensive police records on gun owners. Hitler signed a further gun control law in early 1938.
Other European countries also had laws requiring police records to be kept on persons who possessed firearms. When the Nazis took over Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1939, it was a simple matter to identify gun owners. Many of them disappeared in the middle of the night along with political opponents.
Imagine that you are sitting in a movie house in Germany in May 1940. The German Weekly Newsreel comes on to show you the attack on Holland, Belgium and France. The minute Wehrmacht troops and tanks cross the Dutch border, the film shows German soldiers nailing up a poster about 2-ft. by 3-ft. in size. It is entitled "Regulations on Arms Possession in the Occupied Zone" ("Verordnung über Waffenbesitz im besetzen Gebiet").6 The camera scans the top of the double-columned poster, written in German on the left and Flemish on the right, with an eagle and swastika in the middle. It commands that all firearms be surrendered to the German commander within 24 hours. The full text is not in view, but similar posters threatened the death penalty for violation.
The film shows artillery and infantry rolling through the streets as happy citizens wave. It then switches to scenes of onslaughts against Dutch and Belgian soldiers and Hitler's message that this great war would instate the 1000-year Reich. A patriotic song mixed with the images and music of artillery barrages, Luftwaffe bombings and tank assaults compose the grand finale.
France soon fell, and the same posters threatening the death penalty for possession of a firearm went up everywhere. You can see one today in Paris at the Museum of the Order of the Liberation (Musée de l'Ordre de la Libération). A photograph of the poster is reproduced here, including a translation in the sidebar.
There was a fallacy to the threat. No blank existed on the poster to write in the time and date of posting so one would know when the 24-hour "waiting period" began or ended. Perhaps the Nazis would shoot someone who was an hour late. Indeed, gun owners even without guns were dangerous because they knew how to use guns and tended to be resourceful, independent-minded persons. A Swiss manual on armed resistance stated with such experiences in mind:
"Should you be so trusting and turn over your weapons you will be put on a 'black list' in spite of everything. The enemy will always need hostages or forced laborers later on (read: 'work slaves') and will gladly make use of the 'black lists.' You see once again that you cannot escape his net and had better die fighting. After the deadline, raids coupled with house searches and street checks will be conducted."7
Commented The New York Times about the interrelated rights that the Nazis destroyed wherever they went:
"Military orders now forbid the French to do things which the German people have not been allowed to do since Hitler came to power. To own radio senders or to listen to foreign broadcasts, to organize public meetings and distribute pamphlets, to disseminate anti-German news in any form, to retain possession of firearms - all these things are prohibited for the subjugated people of France ."8
While the Nazis made good on the threat to execute persons in possession of firearms, the gun control decree was not entirely successful. Partisans launched armed attacks. But resistance was hampered by the lack of civilian arms possession.
In 1941, U.S. Attorney General Robert Jackson called on Congress to enact national registration of all firearms.9 Given events in Europe, Congress recoiled, and legislation was introduced to protect the Second Amendment. Rep. Edwin Arthur Hall explained: "Before the advent of Hitler or Stalin, who took power from the German and Russian people, measures were thrust upon the free legislatures of those countries to deprive the people of the possession and use of firearms, so that they could not resist the encroachments of such diabolical and vitriolic state police organizations as the Gestapo, the OGPU, and the Cheka."10
Rep. John W. Patman added: "The people have a right to keep arms; therefore, if we should have some Executive who attempted to set himself up as dictator or king, the people can organize themselves together and, with the arms and ammunition they have, they can properly protect themselves ."11
Only two months before the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress enacted legislation to authorize the President to requisition broad categories of property with military uses from the private sector on payment of fair compensation, but also provided:
"Nothing contained in this Act shall be construed:
"(1) to authorize the requisitioning or require the registration of any firearms possessed by any individual for his personal protection or sport (and the possession of which is not prohibited or the registration of which is not required by existing law), [or]
"(2) to impair or infringe in any manner the right of any individual to keep and bear arms ."12 At the time of the Nazi attack on Jews known as Night of the Broken Glass, Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi SS and Police, ordered Jews disarmed. People's Observer (Völkische Beobachter), November 10, 1938.
Meanwhile Hitler unleashed killing squads called the Einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe and Russia. As Raul Hilberg observes, "The killers were well armed . The victims were unarmed."13 The Einsatzgruppen executed 2 million people between fall 1939 and summer 1942. Their tasks included arrest of the politically unreliable, confiscation of weapons and extermination.14
Typical executions were that of a Jewish woman "for being found without a Jewish badge and for refusing to move into the ghetto" and another woman "for sniping." Persons found in possession of firearms were shot on the spot. Yet reports of sniping and partisan activity increased.15
Armed citizens were hurting the Nazis, who took the sternest measures. The Nazis imposed the death penalty on a Pole or Jew: "If he is in unlawful possession of firearms, or if he has credible information that a Pole or a Jew is in unlawful possession of such objects, and fails to notify the authorities forthwith."16
Given the above facts, it is not difficult to understand why the National Rifle Association opposed gun registration at the time and still does. The American Rifleman for February 1942 reported:
"From Berlin on January 6th the German official radio broadcast - 'The German military commander for Belgium and Northern France announced yesterday that the population would be given a last opportunity to surrender firearms without penalty up to January 20th and after that date anyone found in possession of arms would be executed.'
"So the Nazi invaders set a deadline similar to that announced months ago in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, in Norway, in Romania, in Yugoslavia, in Greece.
"How often have we read the familiar dispatches 'Gestapo agents accompanied by Nazi troopers swooped down on shops and homes and confiscated all privately owned firearms!'
"What an aid and comfort to the invaders and to their Fifth Column cohorts have been the convenient registration lists of privately owned firearms - lists readily available for the copying or stealing at the Town Hall in most European cities.
"What a constant worry and danger to the Hun and his Quislings have been the privately owned firearms in the homes of those few citizens who have 'neglected' to register their guns!"17 Resistance to Nazi oppression was hampered by the lack of civilian arms possession. One of the most notable exceptions was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, which began with a few incredibly brave Jews armed with handguns. They were able to temporarily stop deportations of Jews to Nazi extermination camps.
During the war years the Rifleman regularly included pleas for American sportsmen to "Send a gun to defend a British home. British civilians, faced with the threat of invasion, desperately need arms for the defense of their homes."18 Indeed, The New York Times carried the same solicitations. After two decades of gun control, British citizens now desperately needed rifles and pistols in their homes, and they received the gifts with great appreciation. Organized into the Home Guard, armed citizens were now ready to resist the expected Nazi onslaught.
With so many men and guns sent abroad to fight the war, America still needed defending from expected invasions on the East and West coasts, domestic sabotage, and Fifth Column activity. Sportsmen and gun clubs responded by bringing their private arms and volunteering for the state protective forces.19
Switzerland was the only country in Europe, indeed in the world, where every man had a military rifle in his home. Nazi invasion plans acknowledged the dissuasive nature of this armed populace, as I have detailed in my book Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II (Rockville Center, New York: Sarpedon Publishers, 1998).
Out of all the acts of armed citizen resisters in the war, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 is difficult to surpass in its heroism. Beginning with just a few handguns, armed Jews put a temporary stop to the deportations to extermination camps, frightened the Nazis out of the ghetto, stood off assaults for days on end, and escaped to the forests to continue the struggle. What if there had been two, three, many Warsaw Ghetto Uprisings? 20
The NRA trained hundreds of thousands of Americans in rifle marksmanship during World War II. President Harry Truman wrote that NRA's firearms training programs "materially aided our war effort" and that he hoped "the splendid program which the National Rifle Association has followed during the past three-quarters of a century will be continued."21 By helping defeat the Nazi and Fascist terror regimes, the NRA helped end the Holocaust, slave labor and the severest oppression.
Those tiny pacifist organizations of the era that called for gun registration and confiscation contributed nothing to winning the war or to stopping the genocide. Their counterparts today have nothing to offer that would enable citizens to resist genocide.
Individual criminals wreak their carnage on individuals or small numbers of people. As this century has shown, terrorist governments have the capacity to commit genocide against millions of people, provided that the people are unarmed. Schemes to confiscate firearms kept by peaceable citizens have historically been associated with some of the world's most insidious tyrannies. Given this reality, it is not surprising that law-abiding gun owners oppose being objects of registration.
Notes:
1. Interview with Bill Clinton, "Good Morning America," June 4, 1999
2. The New York Times, Nov. 9, 1938, 24.
3. Gerald Schawb, The Day the Holocaust Began (New York: Praeger, 1990), 22.
4. The New York Times, Nov. 11, 1938, 1, 4.
5. The Holocaust, Vol. 3, The Crystal Night Pogrom, John Mendelsohn, ed. (New York: Garland, 1982), 183-84.
6. Die Deutsche Wochenschau, No. 506, 15 May 1940, UfA, Ton-Woche.
7. Major H. Von Dach, Total Resistance (Boulder: Paladin Press, 1965), 169. Earlier published as Dach, Der Totale Widerstand (Biel: SUOV, 2nd ed., 1958).
8. The New York Times, July 2, 1940, 20.
9. The New York Times, Jan. 4, 1941, 7.
10. 87 Congressional Record, 77th Cong., 1st Sess., 6778 (Aug. 5, 1941).
11. Id. At 7102 (Aug. 13, 1941).
12. Property Requisition Act, P.L. 274, 77th Cong., 1st Sess., Ch. 445, 55 Stat., pt. 1, 742 (oct. 16, 1941). See. Halbrook, "Congress Interprets the Second Amendment," 62 Tennessee Law Review 597, 618-31 (Spring 1995).
13. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Homes and Meir, 1985), 341, 318, 297.
14. Yitzhak Arad et al. eds., The Einsatzgruppen Reports (New York: Holocaust Library, 1989), ii.
15. Id. At 233, 306, 257-58, 352-53, 368.
16. Reichsgesetzblatt, I, 759 (4 Dec. 1941).
17. The Nazi Deadline, The American Rifleman, February1942, at 7.
18. The American Rifleman, Nov. 1940.
19. E.g., Report of the Adjutant General for 1945, at 23-24 (Richmond, Va., 1946); U.S. Home Defense Forces Study 58-59 (Office of Ass't. Sec. Of Defense 1981).
20. See Rotem (Kazik), Simha, Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 118-119; David I. Caplan, "Weapons Control Laws: Gateways to Victim Oppression and Genocide," in To Be a Victim: Encounters with Crime and Injustice, eds. Diane Sank and David I. Caplan (New York: Plenum Press, 1991), 310.
Yes, I realize it could NEVER happen to us, and it only happens in other places. I guess I just have a bad habit of trying to stand up for other people's right to life.
We have all heard of the Holocaust. When someone mentions the word "Auschwitz" a shiver runs down our spine. "Too gross," we say, "I don't want to cry." So though we know that it was our people that this happened to, that it was our aunts, uncles, and grandparents that this happened to, we leave the subject alone. "It is too disturbing. It will give me nightmares."
But can we just leave it alone? We know about it but we don't talk about it. Perhaps we've even listened to a Holocaust survivor speak. We know that the Holocaust was infinitely more horrible than we can imagine. But does everyone know this? The deniers have become more vocal within the last decade. Their ideas are becoming more mainstream as they show up in ads of college newspapers, on official looking web sites, and even in some classrooms. Who speaks up against these false ideas? Who speaks up against the people who say it never happened? Who speaks up against those that say it is a Jewish conspiracy attempting to gain pity? Not many - for it is too disturbing to discuss.
For over six decades, the experiences that we find too difficult to even think about, have been haunting the survivors. For over six decades, the survivors have been trying to educate the world about the Holocaust. For over six decades, the survivors have been remembering and saying the Kaddish for the victims. Sadly, these men and women are now in their seventies and eighties and will not be able to continue the struggle for much longer. These survivors have fought for life when there was only death, fought for good when there was only evil, and fought for the future when there was only the past. Their struggles have not only become part of our history but have shaped and prepared our future.
The survivors are leaving us, the younger generation, with a legacy of great worth. We are left with a struggle - not an easy one, for struggles never are - but certainly a worthy one. We have been given the duty to fight for our rights and our future as well as the duty to fight against ignorance and bigotry. We represent the future as well as the past. We are to remember and to never forget.
It is on the twenty-seventh day of the Jewish month of Nissan that a special day has been devoted to the remembering of the Holocaust, called Yom Hashoah. Please spend at least a few moments to remember the victims.
Suggested Reading
GRAPHIC IN NATURE: This is what we condone when we surrender our right to protect ourselves and our neighbors from draconian evil.
http://www.photos.nazis.dk/
The Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of six million Jews during the Nazi genocide - in 1933 nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Nazi Germany during World War 2. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed.
The number of children killed during the Holocaust is not fathomable and full statistics for the tragic fate of children who died will never be known. Estimates range as high as 1.5 million murdered children. This figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of institutionalized handicapped children.
In his book Sheltering The Jews the Holocaust historian Mordecai Paldiel later wrote:
"Never before in history had children been singled out for destruction for no other reason than having been born. Children, of course, were no match for the Nazis' mighty and sophisticated killing machine .."
My Nazi death camp childhood diary – in picturesThe number of children killed during the Holocaust is not fathomable and full statistics for the tragic fate of children who died will never be known. Estimates range as high as 1.5 million murdered children. This figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of institutionalized handicapped children.
In his book Sheltering The Jews the Holocaust historian Mordecai Paldiel later wrote:
"Never before in history had children been singled out for destruction for no other reason than having been born. Children, of course, were no match for the Nazis' mighty and sophisticated killing machine .."
Helga Weiss, a Czech Jewish girl, was sent with her parents to the concentration camp at Terezin, a few days after her 12th birthday in 1941. She kept a diary, in words and pictures, and when she and her mother were sent on to Auschwitz in 1944, her uncle hid the diary in a brick wall for safekeeping. These are some of the pictures from her diary, which has only now been published
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...-diary-nazi-camps#/?picture=404433920&index=8
Banning guns works, which is why New York, DC, and Chicago cops need guns.Washington DC’s low murder rate of 80.6 per 100,000 is due to strict gun control, and Arlington, VA’s high murder rate of 1.6 per 100,000 is due to the lack of gun control.
The Night of the Broken Glass (Kristallnacht) - the infamous Nazi rampage against Germany's Jews - took place in November 1938. It was preceded by the confiscation of firearms from the Jewish victims. On Nov. 8, The New York Times reported from Berlin, "Berlin Police Head Announces 'Disarming' of Jews," explaining:
"The Berlin Police President, Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, announced that as a result of a police activity in the last few weeks the entire Jewish population of Berlin had been 'disarmed' with the confiscation of 2,569 hand weapons, 1,702 firearms and 20,000 rounds of ammunition. Any Jews still found in possession of weapons without valid licenses are threatened with the severest punishment."2
On the evening of Nov. 9, Adolph Hitler, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and other Nazi chiefs planned the attack. Orders went out to Nazi security forces: "All Jewish stores are to be destroyed immediately. Jewish synagogues are to be set on fire . The Führer wishes that the police does not intervene. All Jews are to be disarmed. In the event of resistance they are to be shot immediately."3
All hell broke loose on Nov. 10: "Nazis Smash, Loot and Burn Jewish Shops and Temples," a headline read. "One of the first legal measures issued was an order by Heinrich Himmler, commander of all German police, forbidding Jews to possess any weapons whatever and imposing a penalty of twenty years confinement in a concentration camp upon every Jew found in possession of a weapon hereafter."4 Thousands of Jews were taken away.
Searches of Jewish homes were calculated to seize firearms and assets and to arrest adult males. The American Consulate in Stuttgart was flooded with Jews begging for visas: "Men in whose homes old, rusty revolvers had been found during the last few days cried aloud that they did not dare ever again return to their places of residence or business. In fact, it was a mass of seething, panic-stricken humanity."5
Himmler, head of the Nazi terror police, would become an architect of the Holocaust, which consumed 6 million Jews. It was self-evident that the Jews must be disarmed before the extermination could begin.
Finding out which Jews had firearms was not too difficult. The liberal Weimar Republic passed a Firearm Law in 1928 requiring extensive police records on gun owners. Hitler signed a further gun control law in early 1938.
Other European countries also had laws requiring police records to be kept on persons who possessed firearms. When the Nazis took over Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1939, it was a simple matter to identify gun owners. Many of them disappeared in the middle of the night along with political opponents.
Imagine that you are sitting in a movie house in Germany in May 1940. The German Weekly Newsreel comes on to show you the attack on Holland, Belgium and France. The minute Wehrmacht troops and tanks cross the Dutch border, the film shows German soldiers nailing up a poster about 2-ft. by 3-ft. in size. It is entitled "Regulations on Arms Possession in the Occupied Zone" ("Verordnung über Waffenbesitz im besetzen Gebiet").6 The camera scans the top of the double-columned poster, written in German on the left and Flemish on the right, with an eagle and swastika in the middle. It commands that all firearms be surrendered to the German commander within 24 hours. The full text is not in view, but similar posters threatened the death penalty for violation.
The film shows artillery and infantry rolling through the streets as happy citizens wave. It then switches to scenes of onslaughts against Dutch and Belgian soldiers and Hitler's message that this great war would instate the 1000-year Reich. A patriotic song mixed with the images and music of artillery barrages, Luftwaffe bombings and tank assaults compose the grand finale.
France soon fell, and the same posters threatening the death penalty for possession of a firearm went up everywhere. You can see one today in Paris at the Museum of the Order of the Liberation (Musée de l'Ordre de la Libération). A photograph of the poster is reproduced here, including a translation in the sidebar.
There was a fallacy to the threat. No blank existed on the poster to write in the time and date of posting so one would know when the 24-hour "waiting period" began or ended. Perhaps the Nazis would shoot someone who was an hour late. Indeed, gun owners even without guns were dangerous because they knew how to use guns and tended to be resourceful, independent-minded persons. A Swiss manual on armed resistance stated with such experiences in mind:
"Should you be so trusting and turn over your weapons you will be put on a 'black list' in spite of everything. The enemy will always need hostages or forced laborers later on (read: 'work slaves') and will gladly make use of the 'black lists.' You see once again that you cannot escape his net and had better die fighting. After the deadline, raids coupled with house searches and street checks will be conducted."7
Commented The New York Times about the interrelated rights that the Nazis destroyed wherever they went:
"Military orders now forbid the French to do things which the German people have not been allowed to do since Hitler came to power. To own radio senders or to listen to foreign broadcasts, to organize public meetings and distribute pamphlets, to disseminate anti-German news in any form, to retain possession of firearms - all these things are prohibited for the subjugated people of France ."8
While the Nazis made good on the threat to execute persons in possession of firearms, the gun control decree was not entirely successful. Partisans launched armed attacks. But resistance was hampered by the lack of civilian arms possession.
In 1941, U.S. Attorney General Robert Jackson called on Congress to enact national registration of all firearms.9 Given events in Europe, Congress recoiled, and legislation was introduced to protect the Second Amendment. Rep. Edwin Arthur Hall explained: "Before the advent of Hitler or Stalin, who took power from the German and Russian people, measures were thrust upon the free legislatures of those countries to deprive the people of the possession and use of firearms, so that they could not resist the encroachments of such diabolical and vitriolic state police organizations as the Gestapo, the OGPU, and the Cheka."10
Rep. John W. Patman added: "The people have a right to keep arms; therefore, if we should have some Executive who attempted to set himself up as dictator or king, the people can organize themselves together and, with the arms and ammunition they have, they can properly protect themselves ."11
Only two months before the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress enacted legislation to authorize the President to requisition broad categories of property with military uses from the private sector on payment of fair compensation, but also provided:
"Nothing contained in this Act shall be construed:
"(1) to authorize the requisitioning or require the registration of any firearms possessed by any individual for his personal protection or sport (and the possession of which is not prohibited or the registration of which is not required by existing law), [or]
"(2) to impair or infringe in any manner the right of any individual to keep and bear arms ."12 At the time of the Nazi attack on Jews known as Night of the Broken Glass, Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi SS and Police, ordered Jews disarmed. People's Observer (Völkische Beobachter), November 10, 1938.
Meanwhile Hitler unleashed killing squads called the Einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe and Russia. As Raul Hilberg observes, "The killers were well armed . The victims were unarmed."13 The Einsatzgruppen executed 2 million people between fall 1939 and summer 1942. Their tasks included arrest of the politically unreliable, confiscation of weapons and extermination.14
Typical executions were that of a Jewish woman "for being found without a Jewish badge and for refusing to move into the ghetto" and another woman "for sniping." Persons found in possession of firearms were shot on the spot. Yet reports of sniping and partisan activity increased.15
Armed citizens were hurting the Nazis, who took the sternest measures. The Nazis imposed the death penalty on a Pole or Jew: "If he is in unlawful possession of firearms, or if he has credible information that a Pole or a Jew is in unlawful possession of such objects, and fails to notify the authorities forthwith."16
Given the above facts, it is not difficult to understand why the National Rifle Association opposed gun registration at the time and still does. The American Rifleman for February 1942 reported:
"From Berlin on January 6th the German official radio broadcast - 'The German military commander for Belgium and Northern France announced yesterday that the population would be given a last opportunity to surrender firearms without penalty up to January 20th and after that date anyone found in possession of arms would be executed.'
"So the Nazi invaders set a deadline similar to that announced months ago in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, in Norway, in Romania, in Yugoslavia, in Greece.
"How often have we read the familiar dispatches 'Gestapo agents accompanied by Nazi troopers swooped down on shops and homes and confiscated all privately owned firearms!'
"What an aid and comfort to the invaders and to their Fifth Column cohorts have been the convenient registration lists of privately owned firearms - lists readily available for the copying or stealing at the Town Hall in most European cities.
"What a constant worry and danger to the Hun and his Quislings have been the privately owned firearms in the homes of those few citizens who have 'neglected' to register their guns!"17 Resistance to Nazi oppression was hampered by the lack of civilian arms possession. One of the most notable exceptions was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, which began with a few incredibly brave Jews armed with handguns. They were able to temporarily stop deportations of Jews to Nazi extermination camps.
During the war years the Rifleman regularly included pleas for American sportsmen to "Send a gun to defend a British home. British civilians, faced with the threat of invasion, desperately need arms for the defense of their homes."18 Indeed, The New York Times carried the same solicitations. After two decades of gun control, British citizens now desperately needed rifles and pistols in their homes, and they received the gifts with great appreciation. Organized into the Home Guard, armed citizens were now ready to resist the expected Nazi onslaught.
With so many men and guns sent abroad to fight the war, America still needed defending from expected invasions on the East and West coasts, domestic sabotage, and Fifth Column activity. Sportsmen and gun clubs responded by bringing their private arms and volunteering for the state protective forces.19
Switzerland was the only country in Europe, indeed in the world, where every man had a military rifle in his home. Nazi invasion plans acknowledged the dissuasive nature of this armed populace, as I have detailed in my book Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II (Rockville Center, New York: Sarpedon Publishers, 1998).
Out of all the acts of armed citizen resisters in the war, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 is difficult to surpass in its heroism. Beginning with just a few handguns, armed Jews put a temporary stop to the deportations to extermination camps, frightened the Nazis out of the ghetto, stood off assaults for days on end, and escaped to the forests to continue the struggle. What if there had been two, three, many Warsaw Ghetto Uprisings? 20
The NRA trained hundreds of thousands of Americans in rifle marksmanship during World War II. President Harry Truman wrote that NRA's firearms training programs "materially aided our war effort" and that he hoped "the splendid program which the National Rifle Association has followed during the past three-quarters of a century will be continued."21 By helping defeat the Nazi and Fascist terror regimes, the NRA helped end the Holocaust, slave labor and the severest oppression.
Those tiny pacifist organizations of the era that called for gun registration and confiscation contributed nothing to winning the war or to stopping the genocide. Their counterparts today have nothing to offer that would enable citizens to resist genocide.
Individual criminals wreak their carnage on individuals or small numbers of people. As this century has shown, terrorist governments have the capacity to commit genocide against millions of people, provided that the people are unarmed. Schemes to confiscate firearms kept by peaceable citizens have historically been associated with some of the world's most insidious tyrannies. Given this reality, it is not surprising that law-abiding gun owners oppose being objects of registration.
Notes:
1. Interview with Bill Clinton, "Good Morning America," June 4, 1999
2. The New York Times, Nov. 9, 1938, 24.
3. Gerald Schawb, The Day the Holocaust Began (New York: Praeger, 1990), 22.
4. The New York Times, Nov. 11, 1938, 1, 4.
5. The Holocaust, Vol. 3, The Crystal Night Pogrom, John Mendelsohn, ed. (New York: Garland, 1982), 183-84.
6. Die Deutsche Wochenschau, No. 506, 15 May 1940, UfA, Ton-Woche.
7. Major H. Von Dach, Total Resistance (Boulder: Paladin Press, 1965), 169. Earlier published as Dach, Der Totale Widerstand (Biel: SUOV, 2nd ed., 1958).
8. The New York Times, July 2, 1940, 20.
9. The New York Times, Jan. 4, 1941, 7.
10. 87 Congressional Record, 77th Cong., 1st Sess., 6778 (Aug. 5, 1941).
11. Id. At 7102 (Aug. 13, 1941).
12. Property Requisition Act, P.L. 274, 77th Cong., 1st Sess., Ch. 445, 55 Stat., pt. 1, 742 (oct. 16, 1941). See. Halbrook, "Congress Interprets the Second Amendment," 62 Tennessee Law Review 597, 618-31 (Spring 1995).
13. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Homes and Meir, 1985), 341, 318, 297.
14. Yitzhak Arad et al. eds., The Einsatzgruppen Reports (New York: Holocaust Library, 1989), ii.
15. Id. At 233, 306, 257-58, 352-53, 368.
16. Reichsgesetzblatt, I, 759 (4 Dec. 1941).
17. The Nazi Deadline, The American Rifleman, February1942, at 7.
18. The American Rifleman, Nov. 1940.
19. E.g., Report of the Adjutant General for 1945, at 23-24 (Richmond, Va., 1946); U.S. Home Defense Forces Study 58-59 (Office of Ass't. Sec. Of Defense 1981).
20. See Rotem (Kazik), Simha, Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 118-119; David I. Caplan, "Weapons Control Laws: Gateways to Victim Oppression and Genocide," in To Be a Victim: Encounters with Crime and Injustice, eds. Diane Sank and David I. Caplan (New York: Plenum Press, 1991), 310.
Yes, I realize it could NEVER happen to us, and it only happens in other places. I guess I just have a bad habit of trying to stand up for other people's right to life.
We have all heard of the Holocaust. When someone mentions the word "Auschwitz" a shiver runs down our spine. "Too gross," we say, "I don't want to cry." So though we know that it was our people that this happened to, that it was our aunts, uncles, and grandparents that this happened to, we leave the subject alone. "It is too disturbing. It will give me nightmares."
But can we just leave it alone? We know about it but we don't talk about it. Perhaps we've even listened to a Holocaust survivor speak. We know that the Holocaust was infinitely more horrible than we can imagine. But does everyone know this? The deniers have become more vocal within the last decade. Their ideas are becoming more mainstream as they show up in ads of college newspapers, on official looking web sites, and even in some classrooms. Who speaks up against these false ideas? Who speaks up against the people who say it never happened? Who speaks up against those that say it is a Jewish conspiracy attempting to gain pity? Not many - for it is too disturbing to discuss.
For over six decades, the experiences that we find too difficult to even think about, have been haunting the survivors. For over six decades, the survivors have been trying to educate the world about the Holocaust. For over six decades, the survivors have been remembering and saying the Kaddish for the victims. Sadly, these men and women are now in their seventies and eighties and will not be able to continue the struggle for much longer. These survivors have fought for life when there was only death, fought for good when there was only evil, and fought for the future when there was only the past. Their struggles have not only become part of our history but have shaped and prepared our future.
The survivors are leaving us, the younger generation, with a legacy of great worth. We are left with a struggle - not an easy one, for struggles never are - but certainly a worthy one. We have been given the duty to fight for our rights and our future as well as the duty to fight against ignorance and bigotry. We represent the future as well as the past. We are to remember and to never forget.
It is on the twenty-seventh day of the Jewish month of Nissan that a special day has been devoted to the remembering of the Holocaust, called Yom Hashoah. Please spend at least a few moments to remember the victims.
Suggested Reading
GRAPHIC IN NATURE: This is what we condone when we surrender our right to protect ourselves and our neighbors from draconian evil.
http://www.photos.nazis.dk/
Jambi
Genie in training
- Location
- NW United States
Gosh, where does heroin come from? Overseas?
Very convenient to ignore that we cannot close our eyes and wish something out of existance.