Maroc - EURASIAREVIEW.COM - A la une - 09/Sep 23:30

Should The People With All The Power Have All The Guns? – OpEd

Presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a California Democrat, has been rather quiet about gun control of late, but as a senator, she touted a “mandatory gun buyback program.” Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, a Minnesota Democrat, wants to “make surethose weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at.” The American people deserve a hard look at both these policies. Gov. Walznever carried weapons“in war” but he is obviously referencing the AR-15 rifle. The version of that weapon available to the public is not military grade and requires a separate pull of the trigger for every shot. The civilian AR-15 is no different from many semi-automatic rifles available to people in calibers from .22 on up. No firearm has ever posed a threat all by itself, without human agency, something Gov. Walz and many others fail to make clear. In a similar style, Vice President Harris’ mandatory buyback program dodges a key reality. Blame the Shooter Not the Gun The firearms that so trouble the vice president are not purchased from the government, even in the case of military surplus rifles such as theM1 carbine, restricted to semi-automatic operation. The government, therefore, cannot “buy back” the guns in any meaningful sense, and a mandatory buyback would seem to violate the people’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear firearms. Those troubled by Harris’ plan might check on her record as attorney general of California. On Dec. 2, 2015 at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malikgunned downRobert Adams, Isaac Amanios, Bennetta Betbadal, Harry Bowman, Sierra Clayborn, Juan Espinoza, Aurora Godoy, Shannon Johnson, Larry Daniel Kaufman, Damian Meins, Tin Nguyen, Nicholas Thalasinos, Yvette Velasco, and Michael Wetzel. In both aDec. 17, 2015 statementand astatement one year later, Attorney General Harris failed to condemn the mass murderers or name a single victim. The dead and wounded included African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and immigrants but Harris failed to call the mass murder a hate crime or even “gun violence.” For Harris, that designation seems to depend on the identity of the shooter. An Unarmed People Have Faced Tyranny Before The current election campaign has seen the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.Anti-Semitism is surgingand candidates have taken to calling their opponents Nazis and so forth. That invites a look at the actual gun-control policies of the German National Socialist regime, detailed in Stephen Halbrook’sGun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming Jews and “Enemies of the State.” The Nazis used the registration records of the Weimar Republic to deny access to firearms to anyone not an adherent of National Socialism, even veteran groups such as theStahlhelm. In the Nazi view, nobody needed a firearm for self-defense when the police protected society and sport shooting and hunting were not a “need,” as determined by the government. German Jews were a primary target. In 1896, Albert Flatow won first place in gymnastic events at the Olympic games in Athens. In 1932, Flatow registered three handguns, as required by the Weimar Republic. On Oct. 4, 1938, the Nazis arrested Flatow for possession of the firearms he dutifully registered in 1932. His arrest report stated that “arms in the hands of Jews are a danger to public safety.” Flatow died of starvation in Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in Dec. 1942. Consider also the tyranny in France which Halbrook covered inGun Control in Nazi-Occupied France: Tyranny and Resistance, the first scholarly work on the subject. Prime Minister Pierre Laval decreed the registration of firearms in 1935, focusing on firearm owners at large, not those indulging in violence. After the Nazi occupation, the French government issued a decree demanding the surrender of all firearms and radio transmitters, on penalty of death. Those failing to denounce gun owners were subject to the death penalty. On June 10, 1944, Nazi forces surrounded the village ofOradour-sur-Glaneand ordered the people to assemble in the village square. The attackers killed 245 women and 207 children, including six infants. The 196 men killed included seven Jewish refugees from other parts of France. As the late P.J. O’Rourke might say, this is what happens when the people with all the power have all the guns. To say that such a thing could not happen here is to ignore cases such asKent State,Ruby Ridge—where FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shot dead Vicki Weaver as she held her infant child—andWaco, where military force was deployed against the people. For Halbrook, the lesson is clear. “A disarmed populace that is taught that it has no rights other than what the government decrees as positive law is obviously more susceptible to totalitarian rule and is less able to resist oppression.” By contrast, “an armed populace with a political culture of allowed constitutional and natural rights that they are motivated to fight for is less likely to fall under the sway of a tyranny.” In 2024 moving forward, that is something candidates of all parties need to understand. This article was also published in The American Spectator