Larry pratt on Warsaw ghetto Jews and Guns

Katha Pollitt kpollitt at thenation.com
Tue Nov 16 21:18:40 PST 1999


Since we are discussing militias, guns etc, I though this puff piece of Larry pratt by Alex C might be of interest. you will note, Jordan, that the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto DO come into it, not those of Germany. Alex does not seem to know that the jews of the Warsaw Ghetto were armed, had a rebellion and so on. They were not unarmed wimps going meekly to their deaths because of gun control restrictions.

As for the German jews -- they constituted a mere one percent of the German population. By the time the nazis got serious about getting rid of them, there were even fewer -- the majority of German Jews who remained in Germany were women, particularly older ones, who had stayed behind to take care of family matters and gotten trapped.

I must say I found Pratt's crocodile tears about the jews disgusting -- this is a man who was holocaust denier Pat buchanan's regional campaign director before he was fired for being too racist in public.


>
> Counterpunch - July 1-15, 1999
>
> PUT GUNS INTO THE HANDS OF CHILDREN
>
> One of the pleasures of talking to Larry Pratt, executive director of
> the Gun Owners of America, is hearing Charlton Heston denounced as a
> chardonnayswilling Hollywood sellout, only too delighted to betray
> the Second Amendment if it means he gets his face on network tv and
> taken seriously on Capitol Hill.
>
> And it's true. Heston's NRA collapsed in the wake of the Columbine
> killings in Colorado. Only an unusual combo of House conservatives
> and liberals was able to beat back the recent gun bill. Even so Pratt
> still fears that another House bill could get conferenced with New
> Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg's Senate Bill 254, introducing laws
> making it all but impossible for gun shows to continue to operate.
> Liberals hate gun shows, regarding them as the seedbed of all that's
> wrong with America. This is all nonsense. Gun shows do of course
> attract people eager to exercise their Second Amendment rights,
> collector exchange various types of firearms and so forth. They are
> also vibrant rendezvous for important elements of popular American
> culture. They are antigovernment, populist and lots of fun. Which is
> why the better element Lautenberg in the lead, wants to do them in.
>
> Pratt exultantly tells us of a tv debate on Long Island he'd had with
> Rep. Carolyn McCarthy a couple of weeks after the Columbine shooting.
> Rep. McCarthy is the widow of a man killed on a Long Island commuter
> train by the lunatic Colin Ferguson. Was it wrong, Pratt asked, for
> an assistant school principal in Pearl, MS, to have taken a gun from
> his desk drawer and chased a shooter who had already killed two, run
> him off the road and then hold him at gunpoint until the cops arrived
> five minutes later? This happened in 1997.
>
> Pratt says that he put the question to Rep. McCarthy twice, and twice
> she wouldn't answer him. The third time, Pratt says, he answered for
> her, to the effect that she obviously doesn't believe in
> self-protection. Pratt's other debate-stopper, he tells me, is to ask
> his opponent whether it would have been wrong to arm Jews in the
> Warsaw ghetto with machine guns, so that they could have fought back
> against the SS loading them into the cattle cars.
>
> Pratt's solution to the schoolyard killings: Let the teachers bear
> arms, just like they do in South Africa, where one instructor
> recently gunned down a bellicose student. Pratt also faxed us an
> interesting study on urban delinquency, put out by the Office of
> Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (part of the Justice
> Dept.) in 1994. This was a survey of delinquency in Rochester,
> Pittsburgh and Denver, tracking delinquency "pathways," as affected
> by drugs, school attendance, parental oversight, gang membership and
> so forth. The study shows clearly enough that one way of keeping kids
> out of trouble is to let them carry legal guns. Out of 1000 boys and
> girls surveyed in Rochester in the 1980s, some 7 percent of the boys
> own illegal guns by the ninth and 10th grades. Legal guns are held by
> 3 percent. There is a strong correlation between illegal guns and
> delinquency and drug use. Seventy-four percent of the illegal gun
> owners commit street crimes, 24 percent commit gun crimes and 41
> percent use drugs. The Justice Dept. study continues, "Boys who own
> legal firearms, however, have much lower rates of delinquency and
> drug use and are even slightly less delinquent than nonowners of
> guns."
>
> Specifically, of those involved in street crimes, 74 percent had
> illegal guns, 24 percent were nongun owners and 14 percent had legal
> guns. In drug use, the equivalent percentages were 41, 15 and 13. No
> legal gun owner was involved in a gun crime. The authors of the
> report hastily add that the "socialization into gun ownership" is
> very different for legal and illegal gun owners. "For legal
> gun-owners, socialization appears to take place in the family; for
> illegal gun owners, it appears to take place 'on the street.'"
>
> So the first thing is to fix your kid up with a gun permit, plus
> plenty of practice at the target range, thus installing a sense of
> self-respect and social responsibility. The next thing is to make
> sure that your kid does not get a job. Not? This flies in the face of
> every puritan instinct. But the Justice Dept. report is clear:
> "Belief is widespread that work or employment protects us against
> delinquency and gangs. Unfortunately, the faith placed in youth
> employment is not generally supported by empirical findings over the
> last several decades. The relationship between lack of employment and
> crime or drug use found among adults does not seem to hold for
> adolescents." Guess what? "Working youth" have levels of delinquency
> and drug use equal to or even higher than the layabouts on the street
> corners or on the porch. It's logical. The work ethic and the crime
> ethic are closely intertwined, as Max Weber spent many pages
> suggesting.
>
> A final piece of news from the Justice Dept. you already knew: Boot
> camp or lesser coercive assemblies for the delinquents are bad ideas.
> Bringing predelinquent or delinquent peer groups together in school
> or community or coerced association (such as boot camp) merely
> provides the opportunity for shaping "delinquent knowledge" and
> attitudes. They make things worse. Delinquency-prone young people
> should be integrated into generally prosocial groups. "To obtain
> attachment and integration among all youths, school programs that
> ensure that all youth can be successes somewhere in the school
> setting are needed."



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list