Control: Exposing the Truth About Guns

by Glenn Beck

  During the early months of 1933, storm troopers raided the apartment of the widow of Friedrich Ebert, the first president of the Weimar Republic. According to the New York Times, they searched “for hidden arms, but found only a revolver belonging to Herr Ebert [Jr.], which he handed to them together with a permit that had expired.”

  A few days later, perhaps to send a message that no one was immune, they searched the home of another notable person: Albert Einstein. The Times reported: “Charging that Professor Albert Einstein had a huge quantity of arms and ammunition stored in his secluded home in Caputh, the National Socialists sent Brown Shirt men and policemen to search it today, but the nearest thing to arms they found was a bread knife.”

  That might be embarrassing to some governments, but it did not slow the Nazis down. The following month, Nazi police conducted several mass searches throughout Germany. The Times reported:

  A large force of police assisted by Nazi auxiliaries raided a Jewish quarter in Eastern Berlin, searching everywhere for weapons and papers. Streets were closed and pedestrians were halted. Worshipers leaving synagogues were searched and those not carrying double identification cards were arrested. Even flower boxes were overturned in the search through houses and some printed matter and a few weapons were seized.

  One week later, the Times reported that Nazi police had searched passengers’ baggage at railway stations: “Truckloads of trunks filled with Communist literature, arms and munitions were seized in Berlin and other cities.”

  As the home inspections and mass searches continued, Nazi authorities turned their attention to the licensing and registration records they had on gun owners thanks to the original Weimar law. In April 1933, the Times reported the following from Breslau:

  The Police President of the city has decreed that “all persons now or formerly of the Jewish faith who hold permits to carry arms or shooting licenses must surrender them forthwith to the police authorities.”

  The order is justified officially on the grounds that Jewish citizens have allegedly used their weapons for unlawful attacks on members of the Nazi organization and the police.

  Inasmuch as the Jewish population “cannot be regarded as trustworthy,” it is stated, permits to carry arms will not in the future be issued to any member thereof.

  This confiscation was permissible based on the Weimar firearms law, still in effect, which authorized the disarming of persons deemed dangerous to public safety. Police had discretion to cancel firearm permits at will.

  The next five years (1933–38) saw National Socialism imposed on all aspects of society, including a planned economy, work camps for dissidents, racial purity laws, the elimination of Jews from professions, and the forcing into line of labor, sports, and culture through both propaganda and coercion.

  In 1938, Hitler revised the Weimar law to exclude Jews from firearms businesses, ban .22-caliber hollow-point bullets, and stipulate that anyone could be disarmed on “public security” grounds. At the same time, some provisions for “loyal” Germans were softened. For example, an acquisition license was no longer required for long guns, so long as the state determined that you were not a threat.

  In November 1938, using the homicide of an official at the German embassy in Paris by a Jewish teenager from Poland as the impetus, and relying on those helpful Weimar firearm registration lists, the Nazis disarmed Jews all over Germany during what’s now called Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass.” Jewish homes and shops were ransacked and synagogues were burned. Thousands of Jewish men were thrown into concentration camps.

  On November 9, 1938, under the headline BERLIN POLICE HEAD ANNOUNCES “DISARMING” OF JEWS, the Times reported:

  The Berlin Police President, Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, announced that as a result of a police activity in the last few weeks the entire Jewish population of Berlin had been “disarmed” with the confiscation of 2,569 hand weapons, 1,702 firearms and 20,000 rounds of ammunition. Any Jews still found in possession of weapons without valid licenses are threatened with the severest punishment.

  It’s interesting to note that the Jews were already being disarmed weeks before the German embassy killing in Paris (the incident that supposedly necessitated the confiscation). That means the raids had been planned well in advance. I guess the saying “Never let a serious crisis go to waste” wasn’t invented yesterday.

  A couple of days later, on November 11, 1938, the New York Times published an article headlined POSSESSION OF WEAPONS BARRED, which reported on the confiscation of weapons from the Jews:

  One of the first legal measures issued was an order by Heinrich Himmler, commander of all German police, forbidding Jews to possess any weapons whatever and imposing a penalty of twenty years confinement in a concentration camp upon every Jew found in possession of a weapon hereafter.

  It’s pretty incredible that those who talk about guns and Nazis usually treat the disarmament of the Jews as though it’s a minor point. The Daily Kos article quoted above puts this fact in parentheses, saying “Hitler in fact relaxed gun control laws (though not for the Jews and other groups)” as though it’s almost an afterthought. Stephen King references it only so that he can make an idiotic point that, since it was the government that did the killing, the fact that the Jews lost their guns made no difference.

  Disarming the people most likely to stand up to you (and using registration lists to do it) is not an afterthought at all—it’s the whole point! Could the German Jews single-handedly have defeated the Nazis? No—absolutely not. But could they have mounted a much stronger resistance, or put up enough of a fight to encourage their countrymen or other nations to join them? We’ll never know.

  Finally, there’s a legitimate question to be asked about whether loyal, Christian Germans were really allowed to purchase and keep firearms—even if they followed the restrictive rules. In 1940, the New York Times published an article that related the conditions in France after the Nazi occupation to the way the German people had lived for years:

  The best way to sum up the disciplinary laws imposed upon France by the German conqueror is to say that the Nazi decrees reduce the French people to as low a condition as that occupied by the German people. Military orders now forbid the French to do things which the German people have not been allowed to do since Hitler came to power. To own radio senders or to listen to foreign broadcasts, to organize public meetings and distribute pamphlets, to disseminate anti-German news in any form, to retain possession of firearms—all these things are prohibited for the subjugated people of France, as they have been verboten these half dozen years to the people of Germany. (emphasis added)

  The facts are clear to anyone willing to see them: Hitler used existing gun control laws to consolidate power and then he confiscated firearms from Jews and other opponents to ensure he would keep it. It was a key part of his ability to extinguish any flicker of hope by the opposition and it’s why, in the midst of World War II, he was quoted during his “Table Talk” monologues as saying:

  The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.

  I’m pretty sure I’ve ever said this before, but, in this case, Hitler was right. Those who would prefer to rewrite history so that it better fits their current political agenda would be smart to read his actual words and open their eyes to what really happened. The reason that history so often repeats is not only human nature, but also human ignorance.

  PART TWO

  Winning Hearts and Minds

  Adam Smith’s most famous book is The Wealth of Nations, but his more important work came seven years earlier, when he wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments. While most people have never heard of that book, it was the key to everything. Smith realized that the free market could never work unless people first understood morality and human nature. When a breakdown in the free market occur
s, it’s not the market’s fault; it’s the fault of individual participants who’ve lost their way.

  The same principle holds true for guns. The Second Amendment, like all of our rights, is reliant on a moral and virtuous people. Without that, nothing else matters. Man cannot rule himself if, as Smith put it, moral sentiment is missing.

  That, I contend, is the answer. Not just to gun violence, but to many of the other problems that plague us. We must stop looking to assign blame to the choices we are offered—whether it’s guns or large sodas or tanning beds—and instead take personal responsibility for our choice and our lives. It’s clear to me that if we raise children with no moral compass, we are planting the seeds of our own destruction. As Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “[O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

  But the good news is that the opposite also holds true: if we can restore morality and responsibility and virtue back to their rightful places, we are planting the seeds of a future filled with hope and opportunity.

  It is my hope that now, after showing that guns are not the problem, this section will prove what really is.

  * * *

  To claim that America’s “culture of violence” is responsible for school shootings is tantamount to cigarette company executives declaring that environmental pollution is the chief cause of lung cancer.

  —STEPHEN KING, Guns

  At 7:45 a.m. on a frosty Monday in December 1997, a bespectacled fourteen-year-old boy walked into his Kentucky high school and made his way toward the lobby outside the principal’s office. There, an informal group of thirty-five to forty kids stood in a large circle saying their morning prayers. The boy, a freshman who played baritone saxophone in the high school band, waited for the final “Amen” before taking a stolen handgun out of his backpack and opening fire.

  By most accounts, the boy fired eight to ten shots into the group. By the time he put his weapon down three of his classmates were dead and five more had been wounded. Before the police arrived, the boy spoke to his principal and seemingly could not believe what he’d just done. “It was kind of like I was in a dream,” he said. “And then I woke up.”

  As the reality began to settle in, the boy looked up at his friend who had come to stand by his side and said, “Kill me, please.”

  Investigators were stunned by the lethal accuracy in which the boy had carried out the massacre. Of the approximately eight shots he’d taken, he had registered eight hits. That’s pretty remarkable for two reasons: First, the FBI reports that, in shoot-out scenarios, experienced officers register a hit with only 20 percent of their shots from seven yards. Second, before stealing the gun, and firing two clips of ammo the night before the massacre, this ninth-grade boy had never fired a real pistol.

  During the investigation, police learned that the boy had honed his shooting skills by playing hundreds of hours of video games. The incident itself had apparently been modeled after a similar scene in the movie Basketball Diaries. And one other thing: the boy’s locker contained a book about a student who brings a gun to school, kills his teacher, and holds his class hostage.

  The book? Rage, by Stephen King.

  * * *

  I want to get a few major disclaimers out of the way right up front so that there’s no confusion:

  I don’t believe that violent video games can turn a normal kid into a cold-blooded killer.

  I don’t believe that watching violent TV shows can take a kid who loves his life and respects his family and turn him into a monster.

  I don’t believe that violent movies or music videos or rap songs can force kids to massacre their classmates.

  Because I don’t believe any of that, I also don’t think the answer is to ban video games or television shows or movies.

  I believe in the First Amendment just as much as the Second; I believe in more speech, not less. I don’t want to write more laws or pass more regulations or give some government agency more oversight.

  I believe in more freedom, not less.

  I have a lot of ideas for how we can fix this, but none of them involves the Federal Trade Commission or the ATF or the hallowed halls of Congress.

  I do, however, believe passionately in personal responsibility. I believe that all of us, as parents, brothers, sisters, coworkers, and mentors, have a role to play in our communities.

  I believe that, with a few obvious exceptions, we all know right from wrong and good from evil. Or—at least I used to believe that. With all that is happening in the world lately, I’m not so sure anymore. We are all born with common sense, but we don’t all use it. Many people have seemingly decided that the easy answer is always the right one. We put our kids in front of video games and iPads and then we get hostile when someone dares to say that maybe that’s not the best thing for their developing brains. Instead of taking responsibility we blame the messenger.

  With all of that being said, and with all due respect to Stephen King (he’s a wonderful writer of fiction, after all), his analogy about cigarettes and lung cancer only hurts his argument. While there’s great evidence to suggest that cigarettes are a major contributing factor to lung cancer, smokers who die of lung cancer have a very hard time proving to juries that cigarettes are specifically what killed them. Why? Well, one reason is because fewer than 10 percent of lifelong smokers will ever get lung cancer. Fewer still will die from it. It’s virtually impossible to take a person with lung cancer and isolate the effects that his smoking had from the effects of everything else he did in his life—even if it’s clear that cigarettes were the primary risk factor.

  To make the direct connection—and control for all other variables—researchers would need to design a controlled, double-blind study like the ones used by the Food and Drug Administration in considering new prescription drugs. But, at least here in America, we don’t commission studies where the primary objective is getting lung cancer. We don’t use “placebo cigarettes” to measure one group against another. As a result, we don’t know, with absolute scientific certainty, that smoking cigarettes directly causes lung cancer.

  Yet, even without that absolute certainty, we’ve tightly regulated tobacco companies to the point where massive warnings and disgusting photos of disease-ridden organs are printed directly onto their product as a way to discourage use. Why? Because society has basically accepted that the link between cigarettes and cancer exists, even if researchers aren’t able to design a study that scientifically proves it.

  And that brings us back to Stephen King.

  Just as with cigarettes and cancer, it will never be scientifically possible to prove that consuming violent entertainment results in an increased propensity for violence. We can listen to what the killers themselves say and we can look at the statistics and studies that show the strong correlation, but we will never be able to design a study that would prove it conclusively. Why? Well, think about what that study would have to look like:

  1. First, we’d have to select a large group of kids of similar demographics and upbringings.

  2. Next, those children would have to live in a lab environment controlled by the researchers for a significant amount of time. Everything these kids do would need to be monitored and controlled: what they eat; what they do for fun; what they learn in school; how their parents raise and discipline them. Remember, the idea is to isolate violent-media consumption as the only factor having an impact on their lives.

  3. During the study we’d have to force half of the kids to play violent games and watch violent television for three or four hours a day while the other half read poetry or listened to Michael Bolton songs.

  4. For the next forty or fifty years we’d have to individually track each of the kids to see what happens in their lives.

  Unfortunately, even that study would fail, because as soon as the kids left the lab they’d be open to all kinds of outside influences. What if a child from the video game group later goes on a
killing spree, but we subsequently find out that he’d been on all kinds of prescription drugs? What if a child from the control group kills his classmates but we later find out that he’d been traumatized after the study was done by seeing his father killed in a home invasion? How would these crimes be classified?

  The issue is just not as simple as people would like it to be. When the New York Times asked Michael Ward, an economist at the University of Texas at Arlington who is studying the issue, whether violent video games increase the likelihood that someone will commit a violent crime later in life, he answered, “I don’t know that a psychological study can ever answer that question definitively.”

  And that’s the point: it will never be possible to scientifically prove this correlation. There are just too many variables, too many ways that even the best-designed studies can be corrupted. But that doesn’t mean we simply dismiss the idea or stop looking for answers (even though that’s what many people in the entertainment industry would like). In fact, just the opposite is true—we should be ramping up our efforts to understand this relationship.

  Besides, data is only one part of the equation. The other part, common sense, is equally important—and, in this case, even more conclusive. Anyone who is willing to take the time to actually read about the video games our kids are playing (or better yet, to play those games themselves) will probably be shocked. I know I was. Once I saw these games with my own eyes I was left with no doubt they should be classified as a risk factor. Just as good parents don’t leave their children with unfettered access to pornography, good parents would never let their kid play a game where the goal is to commit increasingly heinous violent acts so you can move up the ranks of a criminal organization.