Category: Gun Reform (Page 3 of 7)

via ThinkProgress

[Republican presidential candidate Ben] Carson — who is currently leading in some polls — started down this path after the UCC shooting in Oregon, where 13 people were killed. Carson argued that the victims should have attacked the shooter. (In fact, one heroically did.) He then went on to say that gun control is oppressive and that the Holocaust would have been less likely if the German Jews had been armed. The presidential candidate has a long history of comparing the United States to Nazi Germany.

In fact, Carson’s original statements were quickly censured by the Anti-Defamation League.

“The notion that Hitler’s gun-control policy contributed to the Holocaust is historically inaccurate,” Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL National Director, said in a statement. “The small number of personal firearms available to Germany’s Jews in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state. When they had weapons, Jews could symbolically resist, as they did in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and elsewhere, but they could not stop the Nazi genocide machine.”

But Ablow, who hosted a fundraiser for Carson at his Massachusetts home last month, rose to defend the candidate and rebut the ADL, suggesting that Jews should not have gone along with the Holocaust.

Granted, I was not there. Granted, hindsight is 20/20. But it turns out it was a bad idea for any Jew to have turned over a gun. It was a bad idea for any Jew to have boarded a train. It was a bad idea for any Jew to have passed through a gate into a camp. It was a bad idea for any Jew to do any work at any such camp. It was a bad idea for any Jew to not attempt to crush the skull or scratch out the eyes of any Nazi who turned his back for one moment.

Political reporters were speculating Saturday that the piece would be taken down.