Salon.com has an interesting piece on how the NRA and other pro-gun extremists use the image of Hitler to scare gun owners and discourage any sensible gun control discussions. The article is fairly long and covers many topics related to this particular tactic. The part that caught my eye is this:
Besides, Omer Bartov, a historian at Brown University who studies the Third Reich, notes that the Jews probably wouldn’t have had much success fighting back. “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?” he told Salon.
I’ve said this before in the context of state militias: Do you honestly think that a bunch of out-of-shape wannabes in camo pants could stop the U.S. military if it really was determined to “take over” the United States? The same argument applies to the NRA’s Hitler-Jews argument.
Apparently much of the extreme pro-gun crowd must have slept through all those World War II films they used to make us watch in high school history class.
-BCP
