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GUNS FOR EVERYONE!
And the award for "Most Transparently Ridiculous and Astonishingly Vulgar Attempt to Commandeer the Armenian Genocide Resolution Controversy for Their Own Pet Issue" goes to …National Review's Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant, and Joanne D. Eisen:
"Whatever may be said about the U.S. House of Representatives committee vote concerning the use of the term “genocide” in reference to Turkey’s atrocities against the Armenians during World War I, two facts are indisputable: It was gun confiscation that made the atrocities possible. And it was the possession of firearms that saved many Armenians."
I suppose one of the rhetorical benefits of being a Second Amendment zealot is that there isn't an atrocity in history that you can’t at least somewhat plausibly argue could’ve been averted if only all of the victims had been armed to the teeth. For example, look at post-Saddam Iraq: Everybody was allowed to keep their guns, and it’s one of the safest, freest, and happiest places on earth!
--Matthew Duss
COMMENTS (6)
"It was gun confiscation that made the atrocities possible. And it was the possession of firearms that saved many Armenians."
Very revealing - the Armenians had all their guns confiscated, and also possessed lots of guns.
I presume Kopel et al. would say 'oh they had some guns, just not enough' - so how do we know what enough was? How do we know the amount they possessed before whatever 'confiscations' there were took place would have been enough? Maybe it would have required twice that many to prevent atrocities. Or maybe they had just the right number, but they applied them in the wrong way. Blah blah blah. This is a dumb counterfactual of the type that conservatives love to chortle about whenever made by liberals. We can't really know what role any gun confiscations had or what would have happened without confiscations - history is always multi-causal and is almost never 'indisputable'; certainly not here.
Posted by: The Navigator | October 16, 2007 5:34 PM
It's not true that everybody was allowed to keep their guns. They were limited to one AK-47 per family. How do you expect a family to defend itself with only one AK-47?
This proves that any restriction on firearms ownership ineluctably leads to totalitarian dictatorship.
Posted by: The NRA | October 16, 2007 5:34 PM
I've never understood how the NRA can simultaneously argue that:
1) Gun confiscation will be so severe that good guys won't be able to get guns
2) Gun confiscation will be so ineffective that it won't effect criminals.
Which dystopian scenario will they use on any given day?
Posted by: Headache | October 17, 2007 4:39 AM
Effect sould be affect of course.
Posted by: Headache | October 17, 2007 4:40 AM
It is my understanding that the partisans in the Warsaw Ghetto were fairly heavily armed. The SS were even more heavily armed, though.
Posted by: ajay | October 17, 2007 6:29 AM
You have to wonder how the gunners explain that the greatest revolution in history happened when an unarmed populace over-turned the worst dictatorships in history.
The over throw of the USSR and its satellites, no guns.
That should have been impossible according to the gunners
Posted by: Buzzcook | October 17, 2007 1:39 PM