This weekend, the crack reporting team of Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea (the bloggers who broke the Fast & Furious scandal) revealed another scandal-to-be. Or perhaps we should say “scandal that should be” since chances are this one will get swept under the rug, its significance ignored.
They’re reporting that the NRA made a deal to save the ATF’s bacon. Mike writes:
Sipsey Street Irregulars can now confirm the broad outlines of a story first disclosed two days ago by National Gun Rights Examiner columnist David Codrea. Last week, a secret deal involving the National Rifle Association lobbying arm and brokered by politicians of both national political parties was struck in Washington DC that would save the ATF from the political and legal consequences of its own regulatory errors. In the process, this deal would broaden the language of the 1968 Gun Control Act regarding “sporting purposes” and allow ATF to extract itself from the potentially catastrophic political damage of enforcing its arbitrary ruling that makes every owner of a pistol grip 12 Gauge shotgun like the Mossberg Cruiser a felon in possession of a “destructive device” subject to the penalties of the National Firearms Act of 1934 — currently up to 10 years in federal prison and a quarter million dollar fine. …
As explained by sources here and in the nation’s capitol, the outlines of what one called “this cynical deal with the Devil” are as follows:
1. The ATF will be let off the hook by broadening the “sporting purposes” language and legislatively negating their own determination that millions of heretofore legal pistol-grip shotguns produced over the past decades by companies like Mossberg are “destructive devices.”
2. The NRA will get to claim credit for, as one source said, “riding in out of the storm on a white horse and claiming to have saved millions of firearm owners from federal prison, even though,” he added, “everybody in the room with an IQ above room temperature understands that politically and legally there is no (expletive deleted) way that ATF can enforce this ruling on anybody. They can’t and they won’t . . so” he concluded, “the NRA will claim to have saved their members from a boogeyman that never really existed.”
3. In return for allowing NRA to claim the credit, the Democrats demanded another ammunition import ban on “specialty ammunition,” to include tracers. Some sources agreed that this last “gimme” was a “throwaway,” in the words of one. “Look, their M.O. is to always demand more than they know they can get in to get the thing they really value. They’d like to get it but what they really covet is knocking a bigger hole in the Constitution by (widening the ‘sporting purposes’ language) . . . this deal will give them one big enough to drive Diane Feinstein’s limousine through.”
More at the link. It will be interesting to learn the details, including which politicians were involved in the deal. But in short, the ATF has (once again) inflicted damage on itself through its own incompetence and arbitrary rulemaking — and the National Rifle Association has stepped in to save that most despised anti-gun arm of the fedgov from itself. The deal has a price, which gun owners will pay in the long run.
Now of course news of yet another NRA sellout would hardly be news to anybody who’s been watching. (UPDATE: So far, after days of refusing to comment, the NRA’s Chris Cox denies everything, which may mean that the backroom deal has fallen apart.) That’s not my point.
I’m just here to observe that any organization that truly represented gun owners would never do anything to make the ATF look better or have a greater chance of survival. The ATF is the enemy of gun owners, always has been, and always will be. Making it “better” does us no favors.
Also, this reported backroom “fix” revolves around the obscene “sporting purposes” rule that that the ATF has used as one of its major tools against gun owners for decades and will continue to use as long as it can get away with it. And you remember where the “sporting purposes” rule came from, right?
Yeah. It came from Nazi law. It came via the Gun Control Act of 1968. Prior to 1968, no such thing as a “sporting purposes” test had appeared in U.S. federal law. “Sporting purposes” was imported along with much of the rest of the GCA by Sen. Thomas Dodd (D-CT) via a 1938 Nazi gun law that he brought with him after his experience as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. Aaron Zelman and Richard Stevens proved this conclusively when they laid out the text of the two laws side-by-side in Gun Control: Gateway to Tyranny.
The original (now late, lamented) Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership revealed the Nazi origins of GCA ’68 to the world. The texts are there for anyone to see. Why do so many “pro-gun” mainstreamers choose not to see them?
Any organization that claims to be pro-gun should want GCA ’68 gone. Not “improved.” Not “interpreted in a more favorable way.” Certainly not “broadened.” Any organization that claims to be pro-gun should also want the ATF thrown into the dustbin of history. Not rescued from itself. Not made more efficient or more popular.
The old JPFO, Aaron Zelman’s JPFO, was vocal in wanting both these obscenities banished, vanished, booted, and gone forever. Our brand new Zelman Partisans continues the tradition. We advocate and agitate for the principles on which Aaron based his mission. We’re a small voice — now. But we speak for the principles of individual rights. And we always will.
Banish, vanish, boot the ATF! In the meantime, go ahead and let it shoot itself in the foot with its long history of idiotic, unfair, catastrophic regulations. Let the entire bogus “sporting purposes” rule go … well, where it belongs. Don’t merely make obscene rulings on an obscene rule a little more favorable to us peasants in exchange for dirty political favors. Freedom isn’t a sport. Nor is it something to be compromised away in backroom political deals.
“We’re gonna have to get as organized as the mafia,”“We better stand up and kick these guys in the ass,” “We just can’t take it anymore [from] these crazy bastards.”“It’s like, here we go again, we’re right back where we were [before the Holocaust]. And the lessons of the past are we better stand up and kick these guys in the ass.”
GREAT idea Harv! Really, kudos! Excellent plan. That attitude is certainly needed as the following video demonstrates. It was filmed a couple of weeks ago on March 22nd. A group of 20 people attempted to storm a Synagogue in London. The worshipers were using chairs, a mop and makeshift wooden clubs fashioned out of furniture pieces to repel their attackers. Perhaps it was a honest mistake, I’m sure “Synagogue” is often mistaken for “Fight Club”. Not sure of the frequency the cry “Kill the Jews” being heard in a fight club, but I don’t frequent fight clubs. Nor am I sure of the statistics on prayer books ripped up in a fight club. Perhaps I need to get out more?
The Jerusalem Post quoted a member of the synagogue who said he heard the men shouting “we will kill you” as they assaulted worshipers and ripped prayer books.
But circumstances have improved. This year those under attack are using chair parts and mops and brooms. Last year in a Jerusalem seminary when students were attacked by a group of peaceful Palestinians throwing rocks at the students during the supper the weapons at hand were chairs, boiling water and the prime defensive weapons appears to have been a pot of cholent, the traditional meat stew. So I guess we should be thankful for small favors, right?
Why the snarky attitude? Because Mr. Tough Weinstein who calls for Jews to fight back condemns them to having cholent as their primary weapon. You see, Mr. Weinstein doesn’t believe Jews or anyone else should be armed and be given a fair chance to defend themselves or their family from the peaceful elements of their area who hurl rocks at them.
“I never want to have a gun,” Weinstein told Stern. “I don’t think we need guns in this country, and I hate it, and I think the NRA is a disaster area.”
Stern asked Weinstein what he would use to defend his family if he were living during the Holocaust, considering both he and Weinstein are Jewish.
Weinstein said there was a justification for using a gun “when you’re marching a half of a million people into Auschwitz.”
Reality apparently escapes Mr. Weinstein. The disconnect between his obamaunicorn stew ideology and the reality of what happens to people who are left at the mercy of those who have none.
Perhaps the illustrious Mr. Weinstein can provide copious amounts of his obamaunicorn stew to the next Synagogue to be attacked prior to the attack, to hurl at their assailants?
Then again perhaps Mr. Weinstein has a reason for keeping people that may be physically smaller and weaker defenseless?
We just got word yesterday that New Jersey governor Chris Christie has finally signed a pardon for Shaneen Allen, who was arrested in October 2013 for carrying her legally-owned pistol from Pennsylvania to New Jersey.
All we have to say is, “what took him so long?”
Allen says she wasn’t aware that her legally-purchased, legally-concealed firearm was not legal to carry in New Jersey. During a routine traffic stop, she dutifully informed the officer that she had what she thought was a legally-carried pistol in her car.
She was then arrested and charged with unlawful possession of a weapon and hollow-point bullets which were in the gun – a second-degree felony in New Jersey, which holds a minimum sentence of three-years in prison.
Make no mistake. This young, single mother was punished for being honest, and doing what she felt was the right thing. “The judge tried to tell me that telling the truth messed me up, my life up and the cop said the same thing. Me opening my mouth and speaking out he said I’m one out of ten people that spoke up and was honest and that got me in trouble.”
Initially, the prosecutor in the case was going to throw the book at this young lady. Then – after a considerable amount of blowback, which included a comparison to the slap on the wrist received by NFL’s Ray Rice for cold-cocking his now-wife in an elevator in Atlantic City – the prosecutor decided to revisit his decision.
Through all of this Christie stayed silent. It’s well known the porcine tyrant supports the state’s absurd gun control laws, and now that he’s thinking about advancing his political career and implanting his corpulent fourth point of contact in the White House, it sure wouldn’t look good for him to stand idly by while the appointed prosecutorial swine raked a woman over the coals for a victimless crime.
Good for Ms. Allen! I’m glad she was cleared of both the gun possession charge and the related ammunition charge.
At the same time, that cynical part of me wants to flip Christie that international body language sign that tells him what I really think of this opportunistic move! He’s responsible for what I’m fairly sure was a year and a half of Allen’s life spent stressing over whether or not she would go to prison, whether or not she would wind up with a criminal record, whether or not she would be forever branded as a felon and have her life ruined!
He could have done this a long time ago, but hey… aren’t elections coming up soon?
A few days ago I received a fundraising letter from JPFO signed by someone named Kasey Goodman, who is apparently the organization’s “senior operations manager.”
I am a lifetime member of JPFO, and prior to having been a writer for the organization, I was an ardent supporter of its mission as “America’s most aggressive defender of firearms ownership.”
I stopped writing for JPFO in October. This was in large part due to time constraints. I have a full time job, as well as a part time job, and coming up with a column every week was difficult, especially with all the business travel I do.
At the same time, I wanted to see what course my beloved organization would take under the leadership of the Second Amendment Foundation. I had been through the sale of a Second Amendment rights group to SAF previously when Founder and Executive Director Angel Shamaya sold KeepandBearArms.com to Alan Gottlieb. And while I continued working for KABA for a while after the sale, my last Army deployment ended my work there.
No one can deny that KABA is a mere shell of what it was under the dynamic, passionate leadership of Angel Shamaya. There’s no original content. A number of groups, organizations, and individuals are no longer allowed a voice through even a simple link on KABA’s Newslinks section. No featured author has written a piece for KABA in years. There’s no advocacy. There’s no KABA voice. It’s a gun rights news aggregator and little else, and it’s a damn shame.
I had hoped the same thing would not happen to JPFO. There were numerous writers who put their hearts and souls into the organization. We wrote passionately, boldly, and lovingly about our rights. We loved this organization. We loved Aaron Zelman and his vision. We were committed to providing original intense, impassioned content to help preserve our fundamental rights.
I look at JPFO’s content, and see all the passion gone. Most of the writers have resigned. Its latest alerts run the gamut from links to Breitbart reporting to a badly written JPFO position note responding to a months-old letter from a European Rabbi. SAF ostensibly has the resources to at least redo the JPFO website, which was the bane of all of our existences! Loud colors, bad navigation and layout… they could have at least fixed that. But no…
This post is not about JPFO, however. It’s about the Zelman Partisans. We created this organization to carry on Aaron Zelman’s legacy, his vision, and his commitment. Every post you see on this site is original writing by such greats as Claire, Ilana, Sheila, and Y.B. ben Avraham. We censor no one. We are not afraid of criticism from other groups. We allow all points of view.
And we are dedicated to one single mission: to carry on Aaron Zelman’s vision of defending our natural rights.
This nascent effort is the heart of JPFO. We left because we knew and understood that JPFO would never be the same. And we created the Zelman Partisans as the only organization with the vision and the dedication to defend your rights – through the lens of Jewish history, so that atrocities against any people, be they Jewish, Christian, atheist, Pagan, black, brown, plaid, or striped, are never allowed to happen again.
This requires a certain amount of courage, and the Zelman Partisans have it.
No, we will not ban certain Second Amendment voices for personal or political reasons. As a matter of fact, we have done the opposite, and have issued an open invitation to Alan Gottlieb – the head of SAF – to post his views here.
Yes, we dedicate our efforts to this organization – to educate and disseminate the message about the threat to your rights.
Yes, we will carry on JPFO’s mission – Aaron Zelman’s mission – unaltered, untarnished, and with all our hearts and souls.
In the next few weeks, we will open a Zelman Partisans store, where you will be able to purchase all kinds of fantastic stuff designed by the very people who have created this organization. There will be memberships you can purchase, certificates you will receive, plus all kinds of merchandise that will make you proud to be a charter member of this organization.
While we set up shop, please do hit the “DONATE” button in the upper right portion of the site and give us some support!
There are those that see what is happening around them and see the pattern, and see it for what it is, they recognize that pattern. Then there are those that see the pattern and because it is ugly they tell themselves they can’t possibly be seeing exactly what they are seeing and pull the covers back over their head and top it off with a pillow. Then there are those that see the pattern, look at it for two seconds and ask what time “American Idol” comes on that night. Ok, if it were National Finals Rodeo I could maybe understand a little, maybe, but sure not much. That is sad, very sad. Then there are those that see the pattern, know exactly what it is, and in fact maybe helping to contribute to it but deny that it is a pattern and vilify those that point it out. They spend their resources assuring the nervous that all is well, it’s just fine,nothing to see here, move along.
A few random things, a NY city Council man David Greenfield went on a trip to Israel, while there he went to Ramallah. While there, after a visit with the American Consul-General in Jerusalem at his Ramallah office he and the group prepared to go back to their transportation. He was asked to remove his Kippah. He refused.
“I walked into Ramallah with my yarmulke on, of course,” he said. “I was pulled aside by security personnel and was told that I should not wear my yarmulke when I was leaving the building.” The surprised Greenfield asked why he was being told this, and the answer was that “there was a security situation on the ground” and that it was not safe.”I specifically asked them if it was unsafe for me or for the group – they said it was definitely not an issue for the group but they could not guarantee my personal safety. I explained for them that for me it’s a very significant issue and that quite frankly, had I been told this in advance, I never would have agreed to come to Ramallah.”I was told that the US government was providing security and as an official, I expected them to keep up their end of the deal,” he said, adding that the request to have him remove the kippah had come from the Palestinian hosts.
Councilman Greenfield certainly gets it. This is a response he presented at a meeting. He gets it very well.
Then there is this speech by the French Prime Minister.
He gets it.
Then we have those that have walked the streets of Europe wearing a Kippah, to show reactions.
And in Paris for ten hours, but this one just loops, it’s not really that long.
We have the 51 Democrats that are Anti-Semitic and Anti-Israel. They whined that they didn’t like how John Bohner invited Prime Minister Netanyahu to give the speech. Well, I don’t like Bohner. But I suspect he was correct, if he went through the White House aka the House of Hussein, there would be no speech. I’m pretty confident that if Iran develops a nuclear weapon it will affect the US as well as Israel. But barry is too busy trying to be buddies with the people that want to kill US than to allow mere facts to interfere with his enjoyment of his rainbow stew. This link has the speech embedded in the web site. Nancy Pelosi showed she could edge 20 steps closer to Prozac and a padded room when she called the speech “Insulting and condescending.” It would seem Democrats are far more invested in towing the barry boat than living in reality. They do not get it, and they also attempt to mislead the uninformed that vote for them. There is a very real threat.
I have a very sweet lady in a class I take and we had a conversation about guns. She told me she and her husband absolutely respect the Second Amendment, but they belong to the Brady campaign and they just think that all guns need to be registered to stop crime. Class was over and we were all leaving, but I suggested she do a quick internet search for the “Nuremberg Laws”. I pointed out that Hitler could easily keep Jews from owning weapons to protect themselves because they already had a list of who owned what. So when Hitler decided Jews could have nothing to do with firearms, or own them, they knew where the were, duck soup, round up. She doesn’t get it, at all. But she said she still loved me, and I still think she is a lovely lady. An easy target, but a lovely lady. That “Nuremberg Laws article is pretty interesting by the way. Some compare and contrast in it.
So knowledge and interpretation certainly play a role in what you see, and how you see it. But another aspect is your attitude about it. I recently had a very brief discussion with a Rabbi. It involved my wish that Moshe Feiglin would have been returning to the Knesset. He seemed to think that wasn’t such a great thing. I said I just think Jews should be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, and I do, and I mean right now yesterday. His comment was “When the Messiah comes back”. Really. Because this attitude of accepting little scraps of freedom, the little bits of the Jewish identity people are allowed to retain, the areas where it is safe to walk or as Y.B. pointed out, worship should all be determined by others? The Southern Cowgirl in me rears up and says “OH HELL NO”!
Because when you see attacks on a persons religion, on their ethnicity on their belief system when it harms no one else, you can just about bet the farm that not long after follow the physical attacks. WHY does it need to get to that point?
There are people who see what is happening, they see what is coming. And while the current regime uses government agencies to go after those that speak out, they still must.
1 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, speak to your people and sayto them, If I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a manfrom among them, and make him their watchman, 3 and if he sees the sword comingupon the land and blows the trumpet and warns the people, 4 then if anyone whohears the sound of the trumpet does not take warning, and the sword comes andtakes him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. 5 He heard the sound ofthe trumpet and did not take warning; his blood shall be upon himself. But if hehad taken warning, he would have saved his life. 6 But if the watchman sees thesword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned,and the sword comes and takes any one of them, that person is taken away in hisiniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand.~~Ezekiel 33: 1-6
These people are called Watchmen.
There is a name for those that attempt to mislead people into thinking everything is fine too, or should agree to things that have been disastrous in the past and would be again. And this song keeps going through my mind when I think about them. Yesh lanu tayis.
What’s for dinner?
Keep your eyes open, and choose carefully who you listen to.
Yesterday, in a show of compassion and not a small amount of savvy public relations, over one thousand Muslims reportedly formed what amounted to a human shield around a synagogue in Oslo,Norway.
Norway has the dubious distinction of having the highest level of Jew Hated in all of Scandinavia. Indeed “Jew” is a common curse among even non-Muslim Norwegians. Violence against Jews is quite common.
The primary organizers of the event, described as a Peace Circle, went to great pains to declare that Islam is a “Religion of Peace” and to try to draw distinctions between those few “Jews” living in Norway for whom they feel kinship (Norway has only thirteen-hundred Jews.) and those other “Jews” who live in Israel, for whom said kinship is demonstrably less vigorous.
Bloggers “Aussie Dave” and “Carl in Jerusalem” have more on the event and organizers here and here.
Norway’s Chief Rabbi , and long-time left-wing political activist, Michael Melchior was “visibly moved” by the turnout.
Still, the Police were taking no chances. They were there in force, despite claiming that there was no particularized threat to which they were responding. They even had snipers positioned in vantage-points on buildings adjacent to the synagogue.
Since Norwegian gun laws administrators almost never accept “self defense” as an acceptable reason for gun possession (despite statutes theoretically allowing it) these Jews and their new-found friends, are utterly reliant on those policemen to be everywhere, and all the time.
What a plan.
Update: According to Breitbart, the “Thousand” Circle participants was only twenty. What a SCAM. (Thank you, Mr. Baker )
When it comes to genocides, Jews aren’t unique. What made them special is the cultural history of self-expression. Many of the relatively recent genocides in places like Africa have gone by with only a slight interest from the rest of the world, as neither Burundi nor Ethiopia nor Nigeria have a literary tradition of notice. Jews, being spread all over the world and fluent in local languages, also had surviving relatives and friends able to expose the plight of their people. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, the shining example of the Israeli success despite the odds underlined the advantages to armed resistance to evil.
Unfortunately, the socialist origins of Israel meant that only collective resistance to evil has been fostered. Israeli government treats its own citizens as unworthy of trust unless controlled by the state military and police agencies. American Jews, heirs to a more individualist tradition, are better positioned to provide for their own defense. Some of the take advantage of this opportunity, while others prefer the comforting but disabling opium of left-wing promises of safety through surrender to the state.
Jews as a culture have been traditionally quite good at educating each other and at influencing those who sympathize them. With every new person convinced of the need for self-reliance — defensive as well as economic — the collectivist foes lose a minion and we gain an ally. The mainstream Jewish culture has the terrific advantage of being welcoming to outsiders: it’s tenets do not require strife against any kind of alien or infidel, and so make it competitive through cooperation. The offer of training extended to a person serves simultaneously as a compliment (“we consider you sane”), a show of trust (“we expect you to remain friendly”) and as a peace offering (“this training will put you on par with us, and wouldn’t have been offered had we planned to mistreat you.”) These effects apply across such divides as culture, gender, religion and even party affiliation.
All of these consideration apply to other distinct cultures. Defined in enough detail, every one of us can be considered a minority. Those who make political careers of building lynch mobs are quite good at dividing to rule. Our job is to out-argue them while being so well armed and trained as to make the prospect of a stand-up fight to burn us out unattractive. And, given the post-war hunt for Nazi criminals, Jews in particular have a proven track record of avenging injustices.
Given the varied interests of the stereotypical Jewish youngsters, technological solutions to physical threats are preferred. It takes less time and keep-up practice to stay proficient with a Tavor rifle than to maintain combat proficiency in unarmed martial arts. The Bielski guerrilla band of WW2 Belorus illustrated quite well the survival advantage conferred by firearms on even a slightly trained group of civilians. And the occasional range trip or a weekend rifle class doesn’t take all available time away from competing academic and cultural pursuits or family obligations.
“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”~~John Donne
I attended a showing of The Holocaust: Through their eyes at the Jewish Community Center. It is the accounts of local holocaust survivors. Not people who heard about it from their distant cousin or parents, but lived it, survived it.
According to one of the survivors, in 1930 Berlin, hitler’s SS beat to death 8 Jews who were walking down the street. That was the start of the spiral down. The harassment of Jews in public places had already started, the anti-Jewish notices and slogans had started. But these were the first deaths. That act was the start of the holocaust, no matter what other signs there were or were not, THAT was the start, according to this survivor.
Some of the survivors seemed astonished that their non-Jewish friends began to turn against them, people they had known for years, played with, grown up with would no longer associate with them. Not only would they not associate with them, they turned on them. There was a government who’s leader had the opinion that “The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” and a very obliging media who was willing to spread the message. I suppose it should be no big surprise that when a population constantly hears a message it eventually wears down resistance & rational thought. The persecution was embedded in laws like the Nuremberg laws, which defined who and who was not a Jew according to the Reich, and based on those definitions what people were allowed to do, and who they were allowed to marry or be with. The discrimination further curtailed privileges such as riding on a bus, going to a public park or sitting on a bench in a park. All decreed by having one Jewish Grandparent. Then it became Jews weren’t allowed to go to school and Gentiles weren’t allowed to go into Jewish homes. Then they were denied the ability to own a radio, or animals. One lady talked about how the family had a pet dog and a bird, they had to get rid of them. My heart just broke for her, you could tell, hers still hurt. With all she had endured, the loss of the pets still hurt. Then the Jews were denied service. The baker, butcher, barber refused to serve Jews. More than one of those interviewed talked about people they had known most of their lives that were turning against them. Labensraum was begun, the German policy of taking land belonging to those that the nazis considered inferior. Because in their deluded minds, taking land from the inferior people to give me superior people “living space” and room to grow food was necessary. The nazis felt this was a fair way to encourage and increase the natural vigor of the superior race.
Then hitler was elected in Austria. Anschluss, March 12, 1938, when the Austrians welcomed the Germans rolling down the streets with cheers and waves. Banners were unfurled out of windows, swastika pins appeared on lapels and in parks signs stating “No dogs and Jews” appeared. Austria was not invaded, the Austrians choose this. And again, the turning away of life long friends, their scorn and derision on open display. The painful realization those people had never been their friends. They had always hated them, it was just that now it was permissible to publicly show the hatred.
Then Kristallnacht, “Night of the broken glass” 9-10 November 1938. A series of pogroms that caused the death of between 1-2 thousand when the total includes those that died in German custody, concentration camps and suicide as a result of what they suffered are included. Over 1 thousand Synagogues were burned and Jewish owned businesses and homes were destroyed.
In September 1939 Germany and Russia invaded Poland.
Then Operation Barbaross, when Germany invaded Russia generated some horrible atrocities.
One lady talked about being a 16 year old girl the night the Germans came to their home at 0400. They told her Father to walk outside. As he was complying they shot him in front of her, six times and left him in the doorway for the family.
On December 7th, the day America’s Pearl Harbor was attacked the first of the Jews were sent to be gassed. The witnesses that spoke of this seemed saddened that so many don’t realize that was the day the gassings started. One witness talked about how the nazis would enter a town, drive the people to the town center square then take them to a building, like a brewery to sort them. Who lives, who dies? As one witness stated matter of fact, if you were old, or very young or sick, you had no chance. Up the chimney you would go, they said. If you were healthy you would be sent to a camp to work. One survivor of the Gross-Rosen camp talked about eating grass and snow to survive. Germans liked starving people to death.
Of one ghetto in a Polish town that had once held 5000 souls only 3 survived. One lady told of enduring 25 lashes for being caught with a pound of butter. Another told of seeing a baby being thrown at a truck, another recounted the brave German soldiers tearing a baby into pieces and throwing it out the window. Remember, these are not stories that were handed down by grandparents, these are the things the witnesses saw themselves.
At camp you got to keep your clothes, and there would be 150-200 people per barrack. You were given a blanket, a bowl and a cup and then maybe some food for the first time in two days. One man said they had to sing. Once a day they were given some noodle or potato soup. On those meager rations you worked from day to night. The prisoners would lay pipe, and shovel coal despite having no shoes, and that was the women. One man painted portraits of the Russian guards for food. One recounted how they became very good at realizing about a week out when someone was going to die within the week.
One addressed the question of why didn’t they fight back? More than one reason it seems. The first was possession of a weapon was a death sentence. And thanks to the German version of Universal Background Checks it was easy to know who had what where, so when Jews were forbidden to own guns it was easy to divest them of their now illegal guns. The other factor he mentioned was how weak, physically, everyone was. He said with the amount of food you got, you were lucky to survive, let alone fight or run. It sounds like it was less than a moochelle obama school lunch. He also pointed out even if you got away, you are wearing a stripped uniform, you are tattooed, gaunt and they have cut your hair into a reverse Mohawk, and go where? Although one lady did have her means of resistance. She passed on Jewish history and knowledge to the children.
In 1943 from 19 April to 16 May the Warsaw Ghetto uprising took place. It was the largest single revolt by Jews during WWII, and they held off the Germans longer than the whole country of Poland. But poorly armed with virtually non-existent re-supply they were finally overrun.
One talked about being on the cattle cars the Germans used. They said if the boxcar held 100, they would cram 150 in. The witness talked about little children and old people in those boxcars. They said there was no food or sanitation. They would drive the boxcars back and forth for 11 days. For 11 days the people in those boxcars would starve, vomit, defecate and die. Mothers would be trying, Fathers would be praying and no one was listening and 60% died.
One witness talked about getting to Auschwitz. The guards would yell “Rouse rouse” Come quick. They signaled to go left or right. If you went to the right, you went to the barracks, if you went to the left “You went to the crematory and up the chimney”. If you didn’t move fast enough they hit you, if you still didn’t move fast enough they shot you. Some saw their whole family murdered. More than one talked about the sky high fires.
In 1945 the Allies arrived and the death marches to the next camps started. They weren’t allowed to take a blanket and it was winter. Maybe 10-20 below. There was no food and anything that could be grabbed along the way was, corn, wheat, potatoes, beets anything they saw, they would grab and share with the others. Of the 55,000 that left the camp 12,000 survived to arrive at the next death camp.
In April of 1945 when the Allies found the death camps they initially had no scope of the magnitude of what they were seeing. Then they realized they prisoners were mostly civilians, so weak and with heads like skulls, words mumbled and garbled. They found bodies not fully burned and wagon loads of bodies to be burned. The soldiers were shocked. They had heard about the camps but didn’t realize what they were hearing meant in reality.
Reality? While the dead by category differs according to different researchers it’s basically around 6 million Jews, or 78% of German occupied Europe were murdered. Roma, or Gypsies 130,000 to 1,500,000 depending on which researcher. Handicapped, 200,000 to 250,000 were murdered, POWs around 3.1 million, Ethnic Poles 1.8-1.9 million. Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians lost around 13.7 million including 2 million Jews. 10,000-15,000 Homosexuals died in the concentration camps. Around 1,000-2,000 Catholic clergy, 1,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses and some Freemasons were killed in the camps. The price tag for vulnerability is very, very high.
One lady talked about what to do after liberation. Where do you go? You could stay in the camp, but no one wanted to, and most no longer had a home.
Ok, so the camps are liberated, all is well now, right? Not so much. July 4, 1946The Kielce Pogrom took place.
The soldiers and the policemen then went into the building. Jews were told to surrender their weapons, but not all of the residents obeyed the order. The entry of the policemen and the soldiers into the Jewish house marked the beginning of the pogrom. Excerpts from testimony supplied by people who witnessed the outbreak of the pogrom describe what followed.
Ewa Szuchman, resident of the house on Planty Street, said:After the police took away the weapons, the crowd broke into the Kibutz ( on the second floor) and policemen started shooting at the Jews first. They killed one and wounded several others. Albert Grynbaum, another inhabitant of the Jewish house who was on the first floor, said: The soldiers went up to the second floor. Several minutes later two Jews came to me and told me that the soldiers were killing Jews and looting their property. It was then that I heard shots. After the shooting on the second floor, shots were heard from the street and inside the building.
Apparently by then some of the people had learned when the government starts demanding groups of people hand over their weapons bad things are about to happen. Unfortunately not enough of them were armed to stop what was coming. And this was AFTER the war had ended. One man told of his brother going in to try to get their Mother and his Girlfriend out. The man said his brother was never seen again.
One witness told of coming to America, seeing the Statue of Liberty and looking at the crowds of people waiting to greet loved ones getting off the ship, and he had no one. It’s not just that there wasn’t anyone there to greet him, it’s that he literally had NO ONE.
The witnesses had messages for us. How fragile is liberty and civilization. Life is precious and wonderful. Change the world around yourself. Not my children, not nobody’s children should have to live through what we lived through. I didn’t want to tell people because I’ve never gotten over that my family died. My Mom was 45, my sister 22 and another sister 25, a brother 10 and a little nephew 2 or 3. I tell people what happened so it won’t happen again. I saw it with my own eyes. People helped me rebuild my life. I live in a world that has changed, the holocaust can’t happen again, then I realize it IS happening again in other parts of the world. And their suffering becomes our suffering.
One witness talked about hearing of hilter and eva braun’s deaths after he was liberated from the camp. He said they are dead and we are alive. We have won. That is how I defined victory.
With all due respect, this is NOT how I define victory. I would define victory as when the nazi’s tried to enact their Nuremberg laws and used their universal background checks to begin gun confiscation people would have seen the writing on the wall and stopped it right then. Yes, I do think the Christians would have needed to stand with their Jewish neighbors and realized that the only hope any of them had was to stand together. Had it happened? Millions of people would not have died. We can not compromise to “common sense gun laws”. We can not compromise to political correctness. We can not compromise to universal background checks. We can not compromise to phony public opinion polls. We can not compromise to phony anti-gun groups funded by anti-gun millionaires with armed security guards. We can cease to support Hollywood anti-gun liberals with armed security guards. We can look critically at the choices of Second Amendment groups and pick the ones that truly fight for our rights. Now we have choices, use them wisely. Resolve to do something each day to regain our liberty. Be resolved, we are. The Zelman Partisans, no compromise, no surrender, ever.
On 21 January a man armed with a 8 inch knife managed to perpetrate a horrific attack. Twelve people were wounded in the attack, of which three who were in serious condition, four in moderate condition and five who sustained light injuries. Another seven people were treated for shock.
The terrorist says he learned how to conduct these types of attacks from the internet. It seems there are helpful manuals online in video form. Videos translated by Palestinian Media watch found
video focusing on Hamas founder Ahmad Yassin and portrays young children as continuing the slain Islamist sheikh’s legacy. Children are portrayed wearing uniforms, holding rifles and participating in military training. The children are shown marching and carrying out mock attacks on their “enemies,” and are exhorted to “carry the knife” and “carry machine guns” to attack Israel.Other videos show the specific techniques needed to slash someone’s throat or stab them in the side, what spot to aim for in order to kill someone, etc.
Oh, goody. Reminds me of what Golda Mier said
Peace will come to the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.
“I had no choice, I had to save the passengers,” Biton stated, from his hospital bed in Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital. “He stabbed me while driving and went to the middle of the bus and began to stab passengers.””Then he began to rock the bus from side to side, so that people standing on the street will notice that there is a problem,” Biton added.Biton said that he purposely directed Matrouk toward him so that he could enable passengers to escape while they could. “I had no choice but to bring him to me,” Biton stated. “I hit the brakes so that he flew like a bird [up front] to my seat.””I jumped out of my chair, grabbed his left hand, and started to spray him with tear gas,” he continued. “I gave him a punch and he punched me back. Because I was losing a lot of blood, there was a pool of [my] blood next to me and I slipped in it.” Meanwhile, passengers had wrenched open the bus doors and fled – but it was not enough to stop Matrouk, who left the bus and began walking toward Yitzhak Sadeh street in the heart of the city. But despite his injuries, Biton “left the bus and started chasing him,”
“When I realized I was on the scene of a terror attack, I tried to neutralize him (the Arab terrorist) due to the fact that I was armed.””I saw people running. I asked ‘who is the terrorist?,’ because I had trouble identifying him,” said the man. “And then I saw a youth, dressed in jeans and holding in his hand a knife with a 20 centimeter (nearly 8 inches) blade, trying to stab passersby around him.”Despite being armed and faced with an attacking terrorist, the man was unable to act due to the surrounding passersby.”I tried to shoot him but had trouble doing so because there were passersby around him and I feared harming innocents. I shot in the air, I tried to warn the passersby, and shouted ‘terrorist,’ but it didn’t help,” he said.”In front of my eyes he stabbed an elderly man who was there. Afterwards he continued on to a young girl who was in shock. I shot in the air again trying to snap her out of it – but I didn’t succeed. In front of my eyes he raised the knife and stabbed her until she collapsed,” related the man.
The terrorist continued his stabbing spree as he headed up the street, you can see people running to get away from him.
So far methods used to try to thwart the attacker have been tear gas, armed security but they couldn’t shoot the terrorist due to by-standers. He did fire in the air, and try to warn passersby. We also saw people running away to try to escape being attacked. Security cameras, like the ones countries like Britain and the U.S. tell us are such a great crime deterrent. None of it worked.
So, what did finally stop him?
According to police, a team from the Israel Prisons Service’s elite Nachshon unit happened to be driving behind the bus when the attack took place. The officers got off the car and gave chase to the terrorist, shot him in the leg and arrested him.
“If two armed and trained citizens had been on the bus yesterday in Tel Aviv, the terror attack would have ended in a completely different way – or it wouldn’t have happened at all,”
“So if weapons-bearing citizens help to secure the public domain, shouldn’t the State encourage responsible citizens to practice shooting and carry weapons? Why does it do just the opposite?
The answer is that the State of Israel is not increasing our liberties; it is reducing them. Dictatorship confiscate citizens’ weapons. ‘The State alone will take care of all your security needs’.In the past, there were 300,000 citizens licensed to bear weapons in Israel. That number has now been cut in half. As a member of the Knesset Interior Committee, I was able to stop the trend. But we have to understand: Without liberty, we will not enjoy security,”
WOW, he’s a politician, and he gets it. The same principles apply the world over. But the response of the elected Representatives will determine the direction the country goes. Will there continue to be attacks by terrorists that fear little chance of citizens stopping them, or will they begin to fear attacking a “Sheepdog” nation, knowing their chance of success small and if they fail they will be buried in Uncle Buck’s pig farm?
We must become resolved that we will not tolerate Politicians who do not represent us and hold their feet to the fire. We must demand that groups that are paid membership dues represent us, or we find another group to belong to. The situation has become so serious we can’t afford to be anything less than fully resolved to fight this battle.
An important human aspect of firearms ownership and regulation includes the reluctance of gun owners to consent to measures that, viewed in historical isolation, appear quite limited. But this opposition is understandable if placed in historical context. During the rise of the modern gun-control movement in the early 1970s, gun-control proponents publicly proclaimed their objective was a complete or nearly complete ban on private handgun ownership. And they made it clear that lesser measures were but a means to that end. While they subsequently focused on those lesser measures, they returned to the objective of a complete handgun ban whenever that target of opportunity presented itself. When, in the 1990s, a focus on handguns became politically inexpedient, they switched the focus to semiautomatic rifles—notwithstanding their earlier avowals that rifles were not their concern.
Gun owners thus learned by experience that their opponents were not interested in genuine compromise, where each party gives up something to the other. Their opponents had no stopping point, no exit strategy, no “enough is enough.” Under these conditions, real
compromise is impossible. Any concession given would not be a stopping point, but rather a stepping stone to further restrictions.
This conclusion has been underscored by the experience of gun owners in states with restrictive gun legislation, where waiting
periods for purchase started at one day but were later increased to three, five, and then ten days. And initially limited restrictions have expanded to fill over a thousand pages of annotated text. Many of these measures serve no discernible purpose except to make legal firearm ownership as difficult, expensive, and legally risky as possible.
Intelligent actions are usually founded upon experience. Gun owners’ experiences have taught them one lesson: there is no true compromise to be had.
Et tu, background checks?
Jews. Guns. No compromise. No surrender.
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