For decades — ever since I really became aware of RKBA as a political and moral issue, and educated myself on the subject — one particular question has nagged at me.
Given history (Maccabees, Basel, Warsaw Ghetto, and the Holocaust in full, to pick out a few), why and how do so many American Jews support victim disarmament? If any single group has thousands of years of experience with the value of arms, it must certainly be Jews.
The closest I’ve come to understanding this, if only on an intellectual level and certainly not agreement, is expressed by Charlie Deitch. So far as I know, he isn’t Jewish, but this seems to be the same mindset.
Deitch: Fight for gun control now, you don’t know whose life you’re saving
I’m only alive today because she killed her husband 64 years ago.
She felt so certain of her death because she only knew him as an abusive monster her entire young life. Her siblings, the oldest in his teens, had dealt with it much longer. The fact that this was her daddy made her even surer of what was coming.An account I got later in life, the account I’m inclined to believe, is that [grandmother] got the gun away and took her shot. My grandfather, a World War II veteran and inveterate drunk, was dead; my grandmother was arrested; and six months later a grand jury, who heard the first version of events, ruled the shooting self-defense, according to a news report from the time.
Now some will say, of course, and I’m just waiting for the emails, that a gun actually saved my mother’s life back in 1952. And who knows, maybe that’s how you might think of it if you’re not a 5-year-old with a rifle in your face or her 44-year-old son who sometimes thinks about how close he came to not existing so someone else could exercise his Second Amendment rights. But I don’t see it that way, and most rational people wouldn’t see it that way either.
One man with one rifle nearly ended our entire bloodline in one night.
So the fact that everyone knew him as an abusive monster likely to kill them all means nothing. It’s the gun’s fault.
The fact that his grandmother got the rifle away from the would-be killer, yet still felt sufficiently threatened by the disarmed man to find it necessary to kill her own husband in self defense, means nothing. It’s the gun’s fault.
I’m surprised Deitch doesn’t condemn his grandmother for using that nasty, evil rifle. Isn’t it still the gun’s fault, if guns are evil by default?
No, sir, most rational people wouldn’t see it that way. You’ve confused rationality with your own delusions.
And so, I believe, do the Schumers, Feinsteins, Spielbergs, and Creditors of the Jewish world.
Rationally, a firearm is neutral; neither good nor evil. It isn’t even specifically designed to kill. “Firearms are chemical/mechanical devices designed to direct a projectile at a target. That’s all.” The target is chosen through the intent of the person using it. Deitch, of all people — his mother threatened with a gun by his grandfather, and saved by his grandmother with the same gun — should see that.
And so should should anyone whose forebearers used arms to put off their own involuntary participation in the Holocaust.
In the end, it seems that the answer to my question is that those people are irrational, not quite sane. And one does not help a crazy person get better by compromising with them and adopting part of their delusions.
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Carl, the sad fact is that most people, regardless of culture or nation, are tribal herd beasts and are perfectly satisfied with that status. They like a comfortable, defined role in society and the assurance that if they do as they’re told they will be looked after and protected. They view armed people who are not officials of the tribe as dangerous unpredictable troublemakers. These people are not reachable or educable. They do not want to be reached or educated. All you can do is hope there aren’t enough to vote for more infringements on your rights, or to ignore what comes if there are enough.
And who knows, maybe that’s how you might think of it if you’re not a 5-year-old with a rifle in your face or her 44-year-old son who sometimes thinks about how close he came to not existing so someone else could exercise his Second Amendment rights. [emphasis added]
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
When I read the Second Amendment, I can see the part about “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,” but I guess I’m missing the part about the right of the people “to threaten and kill their wives and children”, or even more generically, “to threaten and kill other people”.
It’s almost like, rationally, there’s conduct that is protected by the Second Amendment, and conduct that is not protected even if it sometimes involves firearms. When his grandfather was threatening to kill his family with a gun, he was not exercising his 2A rights, he was abusing them; his grandmother, who shot her husband and ended the domestic terror, was exercising her 2A rights.
But I won’t hold my breath waiting for gun-haters to see the difference.
Lets pretend that we’d had more enlightened leaders back then who’d passed more enlightened legislation concerning firearms. As a given starting condition, we have a drunken animal who wants to kill his wife. The most likely scenario as I see it is as follows.
Having been denied a rifle by his wise and benevolent overlords, husband grabs what ever other weapon, improvised or otherwise, is to hand. In this case, let’s say its a baseball bat. At some point the woman gets the bat away and takes her swing. Being bigger, stronger, meaner, and insulated from pain by alcohol, the husband shrugs it off, takes back the bat, and proceeds to beat his wife to death. Score one for common sense.
What these people seem ignorant of, often willfully so, is that it isn’t guns aren’t evil, people (certainly some individuals if not necessarily in aggregate) are, and violence is inherent in the human condition. That animal WAS going to try to kill his wife, the only question is how.
Which brings us to the crux of the matter, what forms of violence and there WILL be violence, are to be permitted, knowing that it will be used both defensively, and to dominate others. This is, in my (not so) humble opinion, where firearms truly shine. Every other form of man-portable violence is dependent upon the physiology of the individual. Pugilism obviously, as well as bludgeons such as the aforementioned baseball bat, but also knives and other blades to a significant degree. Guns are different, the powder is going to impart the same amount of force to the bullet whether the trigger is pulled by a champion bodybuilder, a veteran longshoreman, or a 98 lb white collar weeny. Firearms are the democratization of violence.
This is perhaps where the anti-2A mindset often comes from. From a certain angle, it is laudable, a testament to their idealistic optimism. They absolutely cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that some people are simply scum not worth the air they breath, and so they blame the deodand instead. Being far more cynical, I recognize that I am forced to operate in reality and so long as violence remains a part of that reality (as I contend it must so long as humans also inhabit it), then I would sooner see violence as widely distributed as possible, rather than see it concentrated in the hands of those who, more often than not, are those whom I am least comfortable with possessing it.
“Having been denied a rifle by his wise and benevolent overlords, husband grabs what ever other weapon, improvised or otherwise, is to hand.”
Which, practically, speaking was the case as the author describes. Granny had gotten the rifle away from him…
…and still feared for her life. The particular weapon wasn’t the problem; it was the violent person set on murdering someone.
“They absolutely cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that some people are simply scum not worth the air they breath, and so they blame the deodand instead.”
True, that. The HuffPo piece “A Revision on the Bill of Rights, Part III” (not linked due to a total disinterest in driving their traffic) claims:
Clowns like that are incapable of making the mental leap to “rights and responsibilities are two sides of the same coin; break one, you broke the other.” When when Grandpa broke his responsibility not to initiate deadly force, he forfeited his right. Once the incident is over and he’s no longer an eminent threat, his rights kick back in. If he survived.