Rabbi Joel Mosbacher is a Putz

1. Good article. That guy is retarded.

2. I saw a movie once where only the Police and Military had guns, I think it was called Schindler’s List.

   • And the rabbi at the center of this story would have made a fine Kapo in the Auschwitz.

3. In no way am I for civilian disarmament. But pro gun arguments give way too much weight to the idea of the Jewish communities of Europe actually being able to fight back against the Wehrmacht. Even if they had not been disarmed there is no way they could have done anything else but be slaughtered against such overwhelming odds.

   This Jewish disarmament theory is about as nuanced and deep as the grade school version of history where George Washington cut down that old cherry tree. Give it up, its a horrible argument.

   • Jews were disarmed before they were destroyed. What part of that is hard to understand? If you need more nuanced information I recommend you read Gun Control in the Third Reich (review to follow). Or consider what happened in the Warsaw ghetto [via history.com]:

     On April 19, 1943, Himmler sent in SS forces and their collaborators with tanks and heavy artillery to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto. Several hundred resistance fighters, armed with a small cache of weapons, managed to fight the Germans, who far outnumbered them in terms of manpower and weapons, for nearly a month. However, during that time, the Germans systematically razed the ghetto buildings, block by block, destroying the bunkers were many residents had been hiding. In the process, the Germans killed or captured thousands of Jews. By May 16, the ghetto was firmly under Nazi control, and on that day, in a symbolic act, the Germans blew up Warsaw’s Great Synagogue.

     Could armed Jews have held off the Holocaust? Maybe, maybe not. But that misses the point. Anyone who argues for civilian disarmament has failed to learn the lesson of the Holocaust. The lesson that my grandparents paid for with their lives, that made a slave of my father. It is simply this: never again means never again. By any means necessary. Come what may.

     • There are far too many people, many of them Americans, who think “we cant win, so we shouldn’t even try. they are too powerful.” They don’t realize or understand what they are inviting, or why armed resistance is better regardless of the outcome.

     • As a Jew, and former IDF soldier I can say just because it looks like you can’t win doesn’t mean you do not fight.
       As an American it is our duty to fight civilian disarmament, regardless of the odds. If you had looked at history, like the Russians in Afghanistan, the US in Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc. Those rag tag groups can do plenty.

     • So some people argue that because the Warsaw ghetto was ultimately razed, the Jewish resistance ultimately didn’t amount to much? What’s the alternative – going out quietly a month sooner?

       Maybe my youth makes me a bit impulsive and overzealous. But if faced with an ultimate evil like that, even one where the odds of success in overcoming were slim to none, I’d rather make that month a living hell for the enemy than simply roll over a month earlier.

     • First off Robert and LK, I have degrees in History and have studied the Third Reich and the Final Solution to near exhaustion, so I don’t need a reading list from you or other posters. I won’t claim to be an expert, but I am no armchair historical hobbyist. History is my profession.

       In no way do I think the Jews should have just laid down against the Nazis. But yours and others belief that the bourgeois Jews of Weimar Germany could have put up anything other than token resistance is foolhardy. I too would rather die fighting with a gun in my hand than to just give up and die.

       Like those for civilian disarmament, some of us pro-gunners become to attached to our positions and won’t see through the reasonable logic of an argument that disagrees with their viewpoint. For instance, how many posters here equated me with the civilian disarmament mentality? I am the furthest thing from it, but I assume those Faux news viewers do not have the requisite intelligence to read my earlier post and infer that I am not a gun grabber even though I stated it in clear terms at the beginning of my post.

       So in short…I am against civilian disarmament, it would have been better for Jews to go down fighting, but when you write “Could armed Jews have held off the Holocaust? Maybe, maybe not ” you are completely deluding yourself into a wishful fantasy where your people weren’t annihilated in the Nazi Final Solution.

       • If your a historian then please show me a little evidence to back up your assertions that resistance is hopeless. So far all I hear are your opinions.

   • From the Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership:

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H-qOUmCrIU&list=PL62BDB02F46EFE07B

   • Don’t confuse tactics with rights.

     Whether it would have made any tactical difference if Jews had been armed is irrelevant; their right to defend themselves was stripped from them, that’s what matters.

     I heard the same arguments about the Aurora theater shooting, no armed person would have changed the outcome, so we shouldn’t be armed anyway. Same arguments about individuals vs. a tyrannical government.

     The right to defend life matters, allowing people to choose to defend themselves regardless of the odds or outcome matters.

   • That’s what the British thought when it came to those uppity British colonists in America. We all know how that turned out

     • Three percentage of the colonists took up arms and fought in the revolution. just three percent was all it took to make all the difference in the world. You cant win if can’t even try.

   • I half agree w/ you here. The argument is blown out of proportion but resistance groups in occupied Europe did a lot of damage for their size. If Jews in Europe had presented a united & armed front very early on things would have been much different. Also, foreign governments are more willing to work w/ resistance fighters who are already organized & actively resisting.

     Yes, mass armed response would have equaled mass casualties for European Jews. A well trained and well funded professional army (w/ military grade equipment) usually bests freedom fighters. However, if the Nazi regime had to fight (literally) millions of Jews (and millions of Gypsies and millions of others) while also fighting the British, French, American, & Soviet empires then their defeat would have come earlier. I am sure the Chinese would have welcomed more and better weapons.

     • Yes, this. Churchill gave up on the German resistance because it was, in his estimation, too cautious and too concerned with the fallout of assassinating Hitler. They wanted to make sure a sane government was ready to step in. But Churchill saw no tangible action, so he didn’t take them seriously and would not support them.

       I’m reading “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy”, and it is quite interesting. More and more I can hardly even believe Hitler took power, with so many opposing him. Time and time again the saner elements of society expected him to crash and burn, and every time he somehow pulled off another victory, be it political or militarily. They were also stunned by the appeasement from Great Britain, as was Hitler himself initially. They served him Europe and the Jews on a silver platter.

   • “Several hundred resistance fighters, armed with a small cache of weapons, managed to fight the Germans, who far outnumbered them in terms of manpower and weapons, for nearly a month.”

     “Switzerland was at risk of being invaded by Germany during World War II but was spared, historians say, because every Swiss man was armed and trained to shoot.”

     Like they say in High School – compare and contrast.

     • Uh, isn’t the entire history of the Jewish people filled with accounts of them persevering against a much larger enemy that was trying to conquer or kill them? Most recently look at the Six-Day War.

       • Sorry replied to the wrong comment, meant my previous comment in reply to the original post

   • Perhaps in total it would not have changed a thing, in the end. It may not have changed a thing for individuals, in the end. But in 1933 the Nazis were not so all powerful, were not even the majority political party, and could have been at least slowed down or derailed. Even more, they could have been embarrassed by stubborn, willful resistance.

     Germany invaded Russia because the Red Army had been embarrassed from the stubborn resistance of a bunch of Finns, which convinced Hitler that Stalin was an emperor with no clothes (which turned out eventually to be wrong, of course, but was “obvious” to witnesses to the Winter War when it happened).

     Everyone dies. Many would say that because of this, all deaths are equal. I do not. I absolutely believe that dying in defense of your self, your family, and your community is a better way to go than being herded into gas chambers or being systematically starved to death. A man with a gun in hand is no slave, though he may certainly still be killed. So what – we all die. It’s how we live and for what we expend our last breath that matters. If nothing else, the uprising in Warsaw showed us that, as did the Alamo, and Thermopylae, and all battles against tyranny.

     • IF the US (and to lesser extent/early on the UK) shipped massive amounts of equipment, food and raw materials to the Stalin they would have not survived winter of 1942/43.

       • Lend Lease had a huge impact on Soviets, true. About 19% of their military aircraft, a huge amount of locomotives and railroad stock, and by 1945 two-thirds of trucks in the USSR were American made. My point was rather that by 1941 during the build up of the Red Army, which swelled to over 2 million men, the size of the army was daunting to war planners in Germany. Yet when the Russians invaded little Finland with one quarter of their total men, half their total tanks and artillery, just 150,000 Finns held the Russians to a draw (Finland signed a ceasefire and both sides agreed to the Russian demands made before they invaded – no big victory for Team Stalin). It exposed the weakness in the Russian Army (from Stalin’s purges, etc.). Bad news for Team Hitler is that Team Stalin realized they took it on the chin and through honest self-examination determined the problems and actively sought to resolve them, which of course was not complete by the German invasion later in 1941. All problems aside, and the value of Lend Lease notwithstanding, the Red Army got a hell of a lot better after their performance in the Winter War.

     • Amen

   • Rammerjammer, perhaps it is your preference to submissively let another entity decide when your life ends. And maybe you aren’t familiar with the history of the Holocaust, but it would behoove you to do some research – read some of the memoirs of Nazi’s involved, look at the pictures (and there are plenty of pictures) taken, read some of the academic articles on the widespread knowledge and acceptance of genocide by the social groups involved. Perhaps then you will understand why there are people who would rather resist no matter the out come then live in utter submission.

   • So, if 50 people came to rape and kill your family, would you rather

     1. Submit passively, and simply accept your fate
     2. Have the possibility resistance and taking some out with you.

     You don’t stand a chance against 50 people, armed or not. Whether you win or not is not really the question.

     In a case such as this, the choice isn’t whether you will die, it’s how you will die. Personally, I’m choosing option number 2. Apparently, you think only option number 1 should be available.

     • Your logic is lost on the closed minded sheeple. They think they can be on the “winning” side if they just lay down their arms. It’s a pure form of cowardice.

     • I’m just going to say it: Even Senator Diane Feinstein claimed that her own gun purchase in the 60’s was intended not with a delusion that she would prevail against the radical group harassing and threatening her, shooting up her windows, but rather with the intent to at least take some of the bast@rds down with her. What fey spirit could wish to achieve less? Apparently Joel Mosbacher is such a spirit.

       I’ll give you a different interpretation of the rabbi’s psychology: He feels that he has found the promised land, that there is no chance Jews will effectively be persecuted in the US …..unless the mass of people, whom he sees as nothing more than potential Brown Shirts, have guns. He hasn’t got a bit of understanding about how trivial the vast power in Manhattan, Chicago, and San Francisco becomes if the economy is disrupted.

       Mosbacher obviously hasn’t looked carefully into the situation in Germany at the start of 1933. No amount of appeasement (and there was plenty), denial of the evil, or financial power within Germany or Austria… sufficed. Take a look at the purchasing of non-Jewishness for Ludwig Wittgenstein’s sister, the enormous pile of gold they handed over to the enemy, inspired by the vainest of hopes.

       Mosbacher is living the delusion of 1929-1933 German assimilated Jews, that if they just work out a deal and support the “good” authorities, those will remain the authorities. That worked out great, right up until the Reparations demands, shortages of food and work, and savings-bank collapses, entered the equation. At the start of the rise of the National Socialist Workers’ Party it was the government that had the guns. That changed rather quickly but in a very surprising way, as the government expanded to take on and arm exactly the hoodlums Mosbacher would wish to see defenseless. He doesn’t get it.

       There will never come a time when mass left- or right-wing political shifts, like an enormous game of Othello, do not offer the prospect of persecution. Joel Mosbacher is advocating resignation to a life fit for cattle, not men. His eyes are blind as he urges power for Centurions, but not Citizens, and trusts the Centurions will not have a change of behavior in a true crisis. He sees comfort in the fact that 40% of guns are purchased by the government, but fails to understand that those guns are placed in the hands of men, not philosopher kings, and that the government’s Centurion-hiring policies can change with dramatic speed.

     • Brings to mind the intrepid (and ubiquitous) western town sheriff standing alone with a double barrel shotgun in front of his jail as the lynch mob of 50 townsfolk converges in the street. The usual comment that turns the tide: “I’ve got two barrels of buckshot here, who wants the first one?” After which the crowd grumbles and disperses.

       Certainly they could prevail, given enough incentive, but which two want to absorb the buckshot?

   • Your point seems to focus on a pitched battle.

     Look at the current events in: Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. and you will see that a weak but dedicated minority can create just enough kinetic results to produce political results.

     In most tyrannies, the middle management is ruled by fear. You don’t need to kill every one of them, you just need to make them more afraid of you than their boss and only for a brief but critical period of time.

     • Nicely said.

   • Perhaps they could have caused enough bloodshed to deter the Nazi’s? Or cause so much disorder the outside world would have taken notice? Or the rest of German society for that matter. Even if all it amounted to was causing enough bloodshed that the Nazi’s would not have been able to stop some Jews from fleeing the country it would have been better than simply waiting to die.

     If a small band of armed Jews could battle the German army for the Warsaw Ghetto, think of what millions could have done.

   • Perhaps the argument lacks nuance. Maybe, instead, you underestimate the ability of small arms and sabotage by 0.75% of the population to weaken Germany’s ability to wage war. But there is a more significant oversight. The disarmament of civilians, of which Jews were but a small fraction, extended across national boundaries into the Soviet Union. Though numbers are imprecise, it is often agreed that 6 million died in the Holocaust, of which 3 million were Jews. Obviously, then, most Jews murdered in the Holocaust were not German citizens or permanent residents. A weakening by sabotage of factories in Germany would have provided, could have provided, a delay, chance to flee, to the more than 2.5 million Jews outside the boundaries of Germany. Arms in the hands of those non-German Jews could as well have provided a means to slow the advance of the Wehrmacht and the capitulation by Hungary and others.

     I would note that as international Jewish agencies and benefactors gathered means to bribe Germany to release Jews for a price to populate Palestine, that money was disproportionately steered toward the salvation of educated assimilated German Jews, with little allocated to the transport, liberation, of Hungarian Jews, RF’s ancestors for example.

     Polish and Lithuanian Jews received relatively little of the financial means to freedom, despite the fact that it was those Betarim among them who did indeed take up arms in Europe to conduct sabotage and evasion, and who provided the effective military backbone in the creation of the Jewish state through force of arms, as compared with Palmach in the early days. The Betarim precisely provide you with the example, how small arms in the hands of Jews in Europe, and later in Palestine, could slow and sometimes prevent annihilation.

     You ignore that bit of actual history to assuage the tender feelings of those who would play down the role of small arms in civilian defense against the predations of crisis-bred tyrannies. How convenient. Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, and former Defense Minister Moshe Arens might disagree with your assessment. Yes, Betar has fallen away in popularity as American Jewry has entered prosperity and a feeling of security vis a vis the government, and as its liberal politics have overwhelmed its memory of the past. I do not consider this a wholly positive trend.

     • By the way, and I’m sure the history experts will correct any numerical errors, but the “Holocaust” as we understand it, usually refers to the approximately 6,000,000 (6 million) JEWS who were massacred by the Nazis by all possible means. There were as many as 6,000,000 (6 million) other prisoners slaughtered in the Nazi camps, including Soviet POWs, Gypsies, homosexuals, mentally insane, etc.

       • Cliff: I used the low and familiar number of deaths within the camps simply to avoid debating that issue. The ratio of German national Jews and residents to French, Polish, Russian, and other Jews is a fairly secure number, though, secure enough to make the point perhaps.

   • For starters, let me say that this idiot rabbi and his clergy friends should stick to telling their parishioners to pray that God, Yahweh, Allah, or whomever, intercede on their behalf to protect them from “gun violence” and leave it at that. Otherwise they are just hypocrites.

     As for the Nazis v. Jews:

     In the beginning the Brown Shirts roamed the streets and looked for Jews to beat up. They traveled in packs and at most carried clubs. Would they have been so brave and brazen if they thought the Jews they persecuted could/would shoot their asses? Seems unlikely.

     At the very least the willingness and ABILITY of Jews to shoot back rather than be rounded up without the means to resist would have been a giant red flag to the world that something extremely sinister was going on rather than the quiet concentration of Jews and other desirables in camps out of the world’s view where they could be exterminated.

     Finally, most here would agree that it is better to die a free man fighting for liberty than to die on your knees as a slave. What must have been the terrible thoughts in the minds of Jewish fathers who had been rounded up with their families when they knew the awful fate in store for them and that there was now NOTHING they could do to prevent it? Wouldn’t death while doing your damndest to send these monsters to Hell be preferable to living starved, enslaved, like less than an animal, fearful of death around every corner, and knowing your family was suffering the same torment?

     Never Again!

   • Its the deterrent effect, 12M Jewish dead, say 3M able to fire a weapon thats maybe 3M+ DEAD German policemen. Fact of life only a fool picks on someone who can shoot back.

4. TL;DR version: “I’m here to completely revolutionize a situation I don’t know a goddamned thing about!”

5. “Unlike the pubic sector, which feels free to piss away taxpayer funds…”

   How do I get some taxpayer funds for my pubic sector?

   • Say things that the governing class likes, or behave the way the governing class wants you to behave.

     More specific methods I’ve seen recently: Build a “renewable energy” facility which will lose money but for federal funds; serve as city engineer for a small town and personally conduct an “environmental assessment” for every tree which needs to be cut down (after selling the city counsel on the fact that they can get federal funding for the tree clearing project, which will then require the assessment); or use the database you created last election to solicit enrollees into a government “health insurance” program. For more ideas, head to your local city, county, state, or federal capitol. You will see herds of crony capitalists who can give you a much better education than I.

6. “Microstamping is doubleplusgood.”

   Never trust a clergyman with a guitar.

   • Nor trust those that say they talk to God or believed someone that says they have talked to God.
     Seems like some that do, (talk to God) go with weapons, to malls, movie theaters or Jericho.

     “The city was completely destroyed, and every man, woman, CHILD and animal in it was killed by Joshua’s army by God’s command”.

7. “As I returned from a week-long trip to paid vacation in Europe…”
   Fixed it for him. You’re welcome. Deluded twit…

8. Putz … that is one of my favorite derogatory words. I haven’t even read the article yet and I like it already.

   • And he wouldn’t have looked like such a putz if he’d conversed with Rabbi Dovid Bendory of JPFO.org before his vacation trip to Europe. Nothin’ like having one of your own tell you you are a f*ckin’ idiot.
     But never mind about defending against an oppressive government; what about the inherent right to self-defense against feral youths? I’m sure there is more of that going on.

     And yeah; never trust a clergyman with a guitar.

9. I read the original article. I like how the author is appalled that “guns are made the same way they were 100 years ago.”

   Does he realize that most advancements in the design of firearms are often illegal under the arbitrary, generic and broad legal definitions of “assault weapons”? Many gun laws that limit the function and cosmetic features of firearms make sure to keep the designs of 100 years ago the only guns they can make.

10. “In terms of choking off the supply of legal guns in [what’s likely to be] a low-income area? Success!”

    And now you know the real objective: reduce the number of guns in public, whether possessed legally or otherwise.

11. Do we apply the same standard to car dealers? Liquor stores? Sporting goods stores (re: baseball bats)? Of course not.

    You forgot clothing stores, (Hoodies)

12. Ahem:
    http://www.northjersey.com/news/More_than_100_NJ_mayors_rally_behind_Jersey_City_mayor_after_criticized_by_NRA_board_member.html

    “Among the questions Fulop said had been sent to gun manufacturers that want to bid on city business were whether they would to refrain from selling certain models of firearms for civilian use, require dealers to conduct background checks, y[sic] support research on smart gun technology and prohibit their brand names from being used in violent video games.”

    • Well, we now know how many members MAIG has in New Jersy.

    • I’d fully support that plan if all gun manufacturer’s had some ethics and were willing to tell the government (whether city, state, or federal) to go to hell and refuse to provide them with more weapons with which they will take away people’s rights.

    • I think the police should field test this Smart Gun technology for 15-20 years before it is released to us lowly civilians citizens.
      IIRC, the original impetus for Smart Guns was officer safety in case his weapon was taken away from him. But every time I see this Smart Gun technology being discussed, the police and military are exempted.
      Hmmmm.

    • Interesting to note on this webpage about this mayor that only wants “gun safety” for his city, there were three news stories about bank robberies. That gun control stuff must not be working in NJ after all.
      And I’m sure the handgun manufacturers in Nazi Germany would be able to answer the mayor’s questions exactly as he would have liked… except for that pesky Smart Gun technology thing; those manufacturers expected the operator to supply the “smart.”

13. I’m constantly amazed and amused by people like this.
    Folks that on the outset, would seem to be reasonably intelligent, have a closer than average tie to a horrible historical event, and yet? WTF.
    How can this guy think this way?

14. Can the synagogue the caring rabbi works at be made public to those likely to rob it? I imagine it has quite a number of valuables in it and it is gun free. Easy pickings, better they do it there than some poor souls that don’t deserve it. A true win win win scenario in my book.

    • They have DOUBLE safety from the government – they are not only an official “Gun Free Zone,” if you do something illegal in their synagogue it is classified as an especially awful “Hate Crime!” Can’t anything bad possibly happen there. Even if Yahweh is not watching, the government is making sure they are safe!

15. IF weapons must be purchased for government employees, disarming them is a better option, then we should always go with the lowest bidder. Arming cops with Cobras or Hi Points is a step back towards freedom.

    • Police should have access to three weapons – a six-shot .38 special revolver, a .22lr rifle, and a 20 gauge shotgun. If they need anything more, then they can call up the locals to help out.

16. Can you Jewish folks PLEASE get a handle on your hoplophobic culture that permeates deep within the many Jewish politicians and beaurocrats who are in position to make life for all Americans very miserable?

    Feinstein, Boxer, Schumer, Bloomberg, Emmanuel, I could go on and on and on..

    You guys MUST change your culture. Jews should be extremely pro-2A. Instead, most of the major anti-gun politicians come from it. What gives? Can you please fix this for us?

    • Israeli’s and many orthodox Jews are very pro gun. They get it.
      It is the reform and no practicing Jews. They love the victim mentality, and yet have no balls to stand up and defend themselves.

      • Looking at Israel’s gun laws, I’d have to strongly disagree with the claim that Israeli’s are very pro-gun.

17. You know, any time someone asks why anyone would need an ‘assault weapon’ (I correct the terminology for them, point out ‘assault weapon’ is a legal term which doesn’t mean what they think it means. Define for them an ‘assault rifle’ as a medium caliber rifle selectable between semi-auto and auto fire in either burst or full) then point out that the following folks may have seen a need for them-

    * The millions of Jews in the holocaust
    * The millions of Russian victims of Stalin’s purges/mass starvation
    * The millions of Cambodian victims of the Khmer Rouge
    * The millions of victims of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ in China
    * The millions of vicims of the ‘Cultural Revolution’ in China

    Or any of the other victims of government repression/genocide who trusted their governments and believed ‘…it could never happen here…’

    Perhaps someone should ask the Rabbi why folks use the slogan ‘Never Again’ at holocaust memorials and museums? And then how do we actually ensure it never happens again.

18. Been reading through armed citizen stories.All those people at the mercy of criminals.

    Does this man really think you are safe when you comply with a criminals demands???

19. The image of a rabbi going to Europe (and Germany in particular) to campaign for people not having guns… the irony is so thick, I don’t think I could cut it with a gas axe.

    As an aside, here’s a loaded question (pun intended): After all the events of the 20th century where Jews were persecuted and killed in industrial numbers, when there’s a cohort of Jews who think as the above-named Jews do, and they’re hauling around a title of “rabbi,” tell me again why any of us non-Jews should care when (not if) the next time someone wants to eliminate Jews in large numbers.

    Sure, there’s that catchy marketing slogan “never again.” But actions speak louder than words, and the above actions say “Sure, we were good victims in the past, and we want you people who killed us in industrial numbers in the past to help us achieve an even more enlightened state of victimhood in the future!”

    As such, if a bunch of Jews want to be disarmed, then they must want to be victims. i.e., They made their bed, they get to lie in it. Why should any of us lift a finger to alter the outcome they want?

    That’s a serious, not rhetorical, question. If so many Jews are so hell-bent on gun control, why should the US lift a finger to help Israel, or any other particular bunch of Jews when the killing inevitably starts?

    • You raise a question for which there is no good answer. There is a bad answer though. When the resolve of “Never Again” is overwhelmed by the imagining that “It Can’t Happen Here,” then the focus turns away from the government to fear of the population as a whole, as if disarming them was the last issue in the way of total security. Having been welcomed to the corporate and governance world in this country as a useful minority, there is a tendency to forget what exactly has happened. Then the attitude shifts, as the feeling that “we are so deeply in they can never abandon us” grows, and arrogance follows. It is in its evolution Germany 1920’s Redux. It is an error. I note that Mosbacher did not take his anti-gun advocacy to Moscow and Tehran. How unsurprising.

    • While the origin of the term “Never Again!” is certainly and forever linked to the Jewish Holocaust, I think that many of the secular Jews have so dissociated themselves from that traditional culture, and seen so little actual religious bigotry in America, that they do not envision any repeat of such an anti-semitic pogrom.

      And many of the readers (and writers) here have acquired that phrase even though they (we) are not Jewish. Given its historical due, and the horrors that led to its creation, I believe that at this point Molon Labe can safely be considered the rallying cry for any social group that perceives a potential for genocide by a Statist tyranny and it is no longer a strictly religious concern. The POTG are such a social group and their use of this as a battle cry serves not only those persecuted in the name of religion, but those facing political persecution, especially when the political class in power takes on the trappings of a religious fervor.

20. Any man wearing a goofy hat and holding a guitar is obviously not a man who is capable of self-defense, on any level.

    • Gene Autrey (semi-goofy hat) used to have a Winchester built inside his guitar. I believe Antonio Banderas used a similar gimmick in one of his movie, sans hat.

21. I think that deep down, most antis recognize that an armed populace could have prevented numerous past tragedies, though to admit as much would run counter to their agenda.

    But the reason that knowing this makes no difference to them is that they 100% believe that:
    A. It would never come to that here.
    &
    B. If it did, the gov’t is too powerful to resist, so it’s better to submit.

    Here’s Fulop addressing guns and the holocaust and why it’s better to stand down:
    http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/12/jewish_groups_fulop_slam_nra_for_holocaust_comments.html

    Fulop’s grandmother was held at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II and his grandfather was held at a Nazi labor camp. They both survived and emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1960s.

    Fulop said today the notion that if his grandparents were armed they would have fared better against the Nazis was “as crazy as it comes.”

    “Had my grandparents had guns, my grandparents would be dead and I would not be here today,” he said.

    ————
    I’m sure he realizes that if the 9.5 million Jews in Europe (and millions of others whom the Nazis killed) would have stood together, they would have saved millions of lives. Of course many of the men would have died (they did anyway), but they would have done so fighting and killing their enemies and would have spared the lives of most of the women and children.

    But he just doesn’t believe that matters here and now.

    • Or perhaps, if they had never been disarmed, the politician’s in Germany would have been successfully discouraged from even attempting the ‘finall solution’.

      I view an armed populace in the same manner as the founding fathers. As a deterrent, effectively the fourth branch of government whose potential via the power they possess to dissuade the other branches from abusing their power at an intolerable level. The truly desired affect is achieved by the population actually having the means, not actually have to use it.

    • Fulop’s point is the “if it saves just one child” argument stood on its head: “If it saved just one set of ancestors, mine, then sacrificing millions of other ancestors was worth it.”

      It doesn’t get any more narcissistic than that.

      • +1

      • That’s the same narcissism behind Moms Demand Action:
        Banning all guns will cost more people their lives. But those people won’t be my suburban kids (who already in almost no danger of gun violence). So f*ck it, ban them.

        • Yep. And it’s Bloomberg’s take, as well.

22. Ask any Rabbi and they will tell you that the Torah allows for self-defense of the person and actually commands that you should kill your enemy if you know for a fact that he is coming to kill you. Obviously there is an anti-gun liberal strain in modern American Jewry, which is to their detriment. As a matter of fact most Christian denominations push for disarmament and capitulation when facing an enemy. This is misguided and potentially lethal. The Bible gives you the authority to protect your life in self-defense if someone is coming to do you harm. The Ten Commandments are often cited as the reason for pacifism with regard to “Thou shall not kill”, which is actually a misinterpretation of the Hebrew which reads “Thou shall not MURDER”. Killing to save your life or that of an innocent person is NOT murder. Rabbi Joel needs to either go back to Rabbinical School or effectively grow a pair…

23. You forgot to include the proper attribution for that picture or the Rabbi at the top of this post.
    It comes from the Wikipedia entry for “useful idiot”.

24. This guy trying to talk intelligently about guns and domestic purchasing policy would be like me trying to educate him on the Torah.

25. Please; when you refer to this person, use the title Reform Rabbi. Otherwise you are denigrating, by association, Jews who follow true Jewish tradition, which says exactly the opposite, as Hegemon noted.

26. If Mosbacher decries violence as a means to a people’s survival and future, he should present a suitably redacted Tanakh. Leave out all the books celebrating the kicking of goyim ass and the text will be much less expensive to print or copy by hand, and more edifying as well from Mosbacher’s point of view.

27. The picture was enough for me not to like him, playing the guitar in a meadow, this dude has chump written all over him.

28. Rabbi Joel Mosbacher is not a putz. However, he is a schmuck. A schmuck is a putz with a big mouth and a small schwantz.

    • HA!!!!! Never heard that one before.

    • Thank you for clarifying that. Nothing like having the correct definition.

29. On the one-year anniversary of Newtown, and approaching the fifteenth year after my father was murdered with a handgun in Chicago, I felt something I hadn’t felt for a long time regarding gun violence in America: optimism. -Joel Mosbacher, writing in the New York Daily News

    Chicago’s anti-gun laws were fully in effect at that time his father was killed. So he infers we, elsewhere in the country, should get…more laws. His optimism should instead be flowing from the increase in CCW joined to a falling murder rate. But, no. It comes from his dream, that a murder won’t have his bio-metrics set correctly. Odd.

    In his NY Daily News article Mosbacher passes on the story that Sig’s north-German factory is at one-third strength, due to losing government contracts with its outmoded pistols: He fails to note they lost most of those contracts to Glock, not some new age bio-metrically locked design. Sig moved most of its pistol manufacturing to the US. years ago, to be free of the labor and regulatory costs. Mosbacher isn’t even trying to be honest about the gun business trends. Some rabbi.

    As for his meeting in the historic heart of German anti-semitism, München, he fails to name the company with the wonderful bio-metric guns, the entire inventory of which were probably on the meeting table, along with the pastries. Quite a sales pitch, Joel.

30. Maybe they’re a new kind of Nazi. Ever think of THAT, Robert?

31. Oy vey, oh weh!

    Anti-gunner clergymen are not religion-specific.

32. Can we please stop using the Anti’s messaging terms. You can’t “Buyback” something you never owned. It is voluntary or involuntary compensated confiscation.

33. As an Orthodox rabbi with yeshiva smicha, I want to let everyone here know a couple of things. First and most importantly that the drivel and nonsense spewed by Mr. Mosbacher in no way represents normative Jewish teachings or understandings. And second to dignify Mr. Mosbacher with the title of rabbi is an absolute and complete shanda!

34. This dumb schmuck is a great recruiting tool for JPFO.org….I just joined!

35. Dus yid is ah shanda fir di Goyim.

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