Guns: More shaky 'facts' behind gun bill

Fictitious quotes from the Founding Fathers aren’t the only shaky underpinnings of state Rep. Matt Shea’s anti-gun control bill (TNT, 2-6).

Shea also claims that “(there were) six million Jews murdered by Adolf Hitler, 15 million Russians slaughtered by Joseph Stalin, and an estimated 60 million Chinese murdered in communist China, none of whom were allowed to possess firearms.”

Preventing the Holocaust is a popular delusion of the anti-control faction, so let’s address the situation in Germany first. According to Wikipedia, Dagmar Ellerbrock, an expert on German gun policies at Dresden Technical University, says “At that time (1920s-’30s), most men, and many women, still owned the weapons they acquired before or during the first World War. In my records, I found many Jews who well into the late 1930s possessed guns.”

As for Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China, many people in both dictatorships owned hunting rifles (at least). Further, significant numbers actually used them in futile attempts to avoid being “murdered.”

Civil wars broke out in both countries soon after the communists took over, but all the losing side accomplished was to prove that the myth - a determined bunch of rugged, armed individualists can overcome massive military establishments determined to crush them - is just that: a myth.

This story was originally published February 8, 2016 at 1:34 PM with the headline "Guns: More shaky 'facts' behind gun bill."