Daily Archives: December 23, 2013

2 posts

The Hitler Thing

This is a Public Service Announcement to anyone who wants to argue gun rights and not come off as an incoherent and tactless windbag.

We lose an argument very quickly by comparing contemporary politicians to the architects of the Holocaust. Likening someone to Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot just makes the speaker sound like he’s off his damned rocker. Such statements are factually inaccurate, and they just come off as mean-spirited and ignorant.

On top of that, there are still folks around who were actually affected by the Holocaust. They find it pretty insulting when we compare a battle over a single political policy to the systematic killing of six million Jews.

Yes, the President has a gun-control agenda. It’s blatant and vindictive, but that doesn’t make him Joseph Goebbels. Statements like that cost the commentators the moral high ground they so cherish. While it might generate hits for a right-wing blog or a few “attaboys” from the choir, it loses us a huge portion of a moderate audience.

Continued...

Mikhail Kalashnikov, 1919-2013

The man credited with designing one of the 20th century’s most iconic firearms has passed away at the age of 94.

Kalashnikov is widely acknowledged for designing the AK-47 rifle, but I can’t miss the obvious similarities to Schmeisser’s StG-44. Given that Schmeisser worked with the Red Army after the war, it’s hard to dismiss the possibility that the Soviets simply didn’t want to give a German credit for the design.

That said, we may never know.

I find it to be a charmless piece of stamped sheet metal with numerous design flaws, but the AK-47 was cheap to produce and easy to use. Its legacy is uncontestable, if not grim. Michael Chivers wrote an excellent history of it a couple of years back, and the book is a good read.