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Jews, Republicans and Guns: What is the Problem?
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership ^ | March 2005 | Aaron Zelman

Posted on 03/01/2005 10:24:29 AM PST by B4Ranch

Jews, Republicans, and Guns

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Jews, Republicans and Guns:
What is the Problem?
by Aaron Zelman

Second-Amendment advocates often ask me in frustration, why Jews don't vote Republican. And it's true; the “Jewish vote” belongs so solidly to the Democrats that the two parties don't even fight over it, as they fight for other minority votes.

When I hear this question, I can only shrug and answer: “Why should Jews vote Republican?”

When commentators analyze Jewish voting patterns, they usually point out that most Jews live in urban (and therefore Democrat) areas. Or they note that most American Jews are the descendants of Eastern European immigrants who brought socialistic traditions with them to this country. But there's another reason – a better reason, really – for the widespread refusal of my fellow Jews to put their check mark or touch that voting screen next to an R-candidate's name: Justice.

Jews have always been “the people of the book,” the makers of law. From time immemorial, Jewish scholars have pondered questions of right and wrong, fairness and unfairness, truth and untruth. Even though you (and I) might disagree with many political positions my fellow Jews arrive at, the pursuit of law and justice have dominated Jewish culture since biblical days.

Recently, the two major American parties have moved closer together in their policies (if not in their rhetoric). In a pair of role switches, for example, Bill Clinton, a Democrat, presided over a very corporation-friendly administration, while George W. Bush, a Republican, is expanding social-service spending at a rate Clinton never dreamed of.

Since most Jews believe that justice implies providing more government services for the poor, the working class, and seniors, you'd think they might gradually shift loyalties to the Rs.

But there is precious little justice offered by today's Republican party. For most Jews, switching parties would entail nothing more than giving up the devil riding on the back of an ass for the devil riding on the back of an elephant.

Worse, the Republicans have also proved to be a devil that will stab its best friends in the back.

Let me give you some examples of injustice conducted under the reign of the Republicans. I'm taking these examples from the realm of gun ownership and Second-Amendment rights. Admittedly too many of my fellow Jews don't care anything about the rights of gun owners.

Nevertheless, it's logical for anyone concerned with justice to ask: “If this is how the Republican treat their friends, then how just and fair will they be to people about whom they care even less?”

Case in point: John Glover. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) decided to go after this innocent competition shooter, who had been assembling legal semi-automatic rifles from kits. BATFE agent Michael Cooney set out to “prove” that a malfunctioning rifle, built from old and defective parts, was an “illegal machine gun.” Without even bothering to take the rifle apart to examine it, the BATFE got charges brought against Glover and cost him thousands of dollars in legal fees (and his sense of personal security) before being stopped. The current Republican administration made no effort to halt the injustice; that was done by a courageous gun-maker, Len Savage, and Glover's attorney, H.M. Whitesides, Jr. of Charlotte, NC, who caught the BATFE misdeeds on film. (See below.)

Case in point: Danny Peterson. Peterson, a federally licensed firearms dealer, had never had a single brush with the law until he set up a table at a Las Vegas gun show in January 2004. BATFE agents roaming the aisles that weekend decided Danny was their target – even though he had done nothing illegal and repeatedly refused to do anything illegal when they tried to get him too. BATFE agents were caught lying in court and Danny was found not-guilty – but only after spending a year of his life and thousands of dollars to defend himself against these predators.

The “firearm-friendly” Bush administration had been in power for three years by the time the BATFE descended on Peterson. BATFE entrapment and other abuses had been denounced by Congress more than 20 years earlier. But did anyone from the administration take a single step to curb the BATFE's injustice? No.

At this point, some readers will be defending the Republicans by saying that the administration can hardly be held responsible for the actions of a bureaucratic agency that “went rogue” decades ago. Nonsense. A “firearm friendly” leader could have halted the BATFE's worst work with a single executive order. (Giving directions to federal agencies on how to conduct themselves is one of the few valid uses of such orders.) But the Bush administration did the exact opposite ... which brings us to our next case.

Case in point: Project Safe Neighborhoods. Republican politicians postured and protested when the Clinton administration passed restrictive gun laws. Then George W. Bush and his first attorney general, John Ashcroft, came into office – and one of the first things they did was to create a program designed to place 700 state and federal prosecutors in jobs where their major responsibility would be to prosecute “gun crimes.” Not crimes of violence, please note, but merely “gun crimes” -- including petty, technical violation of the Clinton-era laws they'd pretended to hate just a few years earlier. These Republican-established witch-hunters need the BATFE to feed them fresh victims. And the cases I outline here are, unfortunately, not unusual. These hundreds of prosecutors could make much better use of their time by going after government agents who abuse their powers, entrap innocents, and lie in court. But that's not what the Republicans want them to do.

Next case: Ulrich Weigand and Inter Ordnance of America. Weigand came to the U.S. from Germany seeking greater freedom. Instead, he ended up having to spend more than $1,000,000 in legal fees to fight BATFE's typically selective, nonsensical prosecution. His is an all-too-typical story: arbitrary seizure of legal, properly permitted firearms worth $1.5 million; false statements by agents; refusal to return legal property ... yet another attempt to destroy a firearms dealer by committing an Economic Waco against him and his employees. And so far, the BATFE is succeeding. Weigand has made a direct plea for help to the White House (see below). But is anybody listening? It seems not.

Case in point: Len Savage. I mentioned above that a gun maker, Len Savage of Historic Arms, LLC was instrumental in saving John Glover from the crushing jaws of the BATFE. He's one of the few people in the firearms manufacturing industry who retains the courage to stand up to the BATFE when he knows it's in the wrong. On January 3, 2005, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership sent out an alert that mentioned Len Savage's heroic role in the Glover case. On January 5 – fulfilling a threat the BATFE had made earlier – Sterling Nixon, chief of the BATFE's Technical Branch – send a memo declaring Len's latest semi-automatic rifle to be an “illegal machine gun” -- even though the very same letter admits that the rifle is semi-automatic, and even though functionally identical guns received BATFE scrutiny.

At that moment, things looked very bad for Len Savage. Economic ruin? Arrest? With the BATFE, that's often the next step. But in Len's case, something very interesting happened: Len Savage kept fighting back. Not merely defending himself, but fighting aggressively to expose even more BATFE abuses (which should come to light soon). And the BATFE backed off. Len's property was properly reclassified as a semi-automatic firearm and shipped back to him.

But did the Bush administration help any of these people? Did the Justice Department investigate? Not one bit. And what about Congress? For years, we've heard the Republicans say that they're limited in what they can accomplish because they don't control both the White House and Congress. Well, now they do – and they hold Congress by a strong margin.

So what's stopping them from halting the abuse of gun owners?

Where are the repeals of those unjust gun laws? Only one, the so-called "assault-weapons" ban, was allowed to sunset, over George W. Bush's objections. Where are the attempts to curb or disband the rogue BATFE? Where are the laws cutting back federal power over us all?

Nowhere. Gun owners are as vulnerable to federal abuse as ever – more than ever, under Project Safe Neighborhoods. As they have for decades, U.S. gun owners don't live under the rule of law. Instead we continue to live under lex talionis – the law of retaliation and revenge.

If this is what passes for “justice” under Republican rule ... if this is the “fairness” Republicans offer some of their best friends and most dedicated supporters, then what kind of “justice” can others expect?

And these abuses of gun owners are just one part of a whopping, punitive Big Brother package the Republicans have been laying upon us all. They've advocated and perpetrated torture. They've turned constitutional protections into a joke by holding people in detention without charges or trial. They've increased social welfare spending at about three times the rate the Clinton administration did. They've initiated and passed new laws to encourage federal snooping into everything from our bank accounts to our reading habits. They're pushing as hard as they can for biometric national ID (while making it look only like federally enforced "improvements" in drivers licenses). The Bush administration has also called for a substantial budget increase to boost IRS enforcement. That's a strange request from a president who talks about tax reform.


What the Republicans are doing, or allowing to be done, to gun owners is just part of one enormous, and very, very ugly, police state package.

No, it's sadly true that too many Jews don't care about the rights of gun owners. Perhaps many of my fellow Jews even think that Len Savage, Danny Peterson, Ulrich Weigand, and John Glover deserve even worse than they're getting. But once again, if even the most liberal Jew were to look at this situation he might ask himself, “If this is how they treat their friends and supporters, then how will they treat me? Or the poor? Or blacks? Or any other group?”

I can't speak for anyone else, but for myself I can say if this is how the Republicans perceive “justice,” then I can't blame my fellow Jews for recoiling in horror – all the way to the voting booth.

Additional resources: “BATFE Fails the Test” -- documentary video showing attempted frame-up of John Glover

Media coverage of Danny Peterson's entrapment -- (news article) (editorial)

Ulrich Weigand's unanswered letter to President George W. Bush

Len Savage and the BATFE

Bush requests budget increase for IRS – http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2005/02/president_bushs.html and http://www.georgewbush.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=13936

The State vs. the People: The Rise of the American Police State



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TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: bang; banglist; billofrights; civilrights; freedom; genocide; gun; guncontrol; jews; jpfo; prohibition; pubsaredemssamething; rkba; secondamendment; victimdisarmament; violence
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To: Bogolyubski
>> With "conservatives" like these, who needs liberals? <<

That's a statement that needs repeating!

21 posted on 03/01/2005 11:31:25 AM PST by B4Ranch
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To: Bogolyubski

The thought police are about to come to your door and drag you over to a Day in the Life thread to cure your heresy.


22 posted on 03/01/2005 11:39:36 AM PST by the gillman@blacklagoon.com (Have artificial fruit flavored drink! It's on the house.)
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To: B4Ranch
For most Jews, switching parties would entail nothing more than giving up the devil riding on the back of an ass for the devil riding on the back of an elephant.

The Jewish vote, like the Blacks, is solidily left and likely to remain so. There has been absolutely no trend to the right as with the Catholics.

Ike got about twice the percentage of votes as Reagan.

No one has the satisfactory answer...For the Blacks, it seems the handout syndrome is the catalyst...But the reason for the Jews voting as they do is a mystery, particularly with the strong Republican support for Israel.

23 posted on 03/01/2005 11:47:52 AM PST by squirt-gun
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To: squirt-gun

Hillary was elected because of the Jewish vote in her District. That shocked me during the election. My wife and I discussed it for a couple of days trying to determine the "why's" would they support her.

We never came to a satisfactory answer.


24 posted on 03/01/2005 12:02:49 PM PST by B4Ranch
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To: squirt-gun; B4Ranch
Guys, you have to get the facts right.

Hillary is estimated to have gotten 53%-56% of the Jewish vote, just below her statewide margin, and well below Gore's 80%.

Ike got 36% in 1952 and 40% in 56, compared to Reagan's 39% in 1980 and 31% in 1984. That's not double. Bush I got 35% in 1988 in the wake of Reagan, then 11% in 1992 in the wake of his administration's *uck the American Jews, they don't vote for us foreign policy.

25 posted on 03/01/2005 4:23:18 PM PST by SJackson ( Bush is as free as a bird, He is only accountable to history and God, Ra'anan Gissin)
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To: dennisw; Cachelot; Yehuda; Nix 2; veronica; Catspaw; knighthawk; Alouette; Optimist; weikel; ...
If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.


Click to join

26 posted on 03/01/2005 4:25:12 PM PST by SJackson ( Bush is as free as a bird, He is only accountable to history and God, Ra'anan Gissin)
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To: B4Ranch

Will we EVER get an administration that will do what needs to be done to the ATF, namely prosecute and imprison the lot?


27 posted on 03/01/2005 4:44:32 PM PST by Blood of Tyrants (God is not a Republican. But Satan is definitely a Democrat.)
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To: squirt-gun

Change can take time, at the risk of sounding trite. The South voted almost solidly Democratic from right after the civil war until well into the next century.

Some high profile jews who have crossed over--David Horowitz, Ron Silver, Dennis Miller. And at least one no-profile jew who crossed over-me. And I am not alone. I have made it a mission in my life to convert the liberal jews--to conservatism. Recently there was an anti-terror rally in Berkeley. Arabs and palestinians came out along with leftist groups, including "jews for peace" and counter protested the rally--then physically attacked the anti-terror ralliers! The pro-terror groups (they must be, if they are anti-terror) held signs that said "Organ thieves" and a picture of a dead Israeli and a picture of a dead Pal. the caption read "Pig vs. Human". Clearly jew haters. How stupid do you think those "jews for peace" felt? How long before they realize the left has no place for them, except maybe into the ovens?

Sorry to rant, but I cannot believe my fellow Jews will stay on the left. I saw the light, they can too.


28 posted on 03/01/2005 4:44:59 PM PST by ariamne (reformed liberal--Shieldmaiden of the Infidel)
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To: SJackson

In the last couple of hours the announcer had a competitor ahead of Hillary, then he said the votes weren't in from a highly Jewish region of her District.

As the time passed, she pulled ahead and won.


29 posted on 03/01/2005 8:02:06 PM PST by B4Ranch
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To: Blood of Tyrants

My opinion is NO, we will not.


30 posted on 03/01/2005 8:03:27 PM PST by B4Ranch
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To: ariamne

>>I saw the light, they can too.<<

When? When it's too late?


31 posted on 03/01/2005 8:05:13 PM PST by B4Ranch
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To: B4Ranch

Can't predict but I do know this: the left is getting exponentially more rabidly anti jew every day. What once was a trickle is becoming a flood. As a jew, you can either grab onto the life raft of conservatism, as I did, or drown. I chose conservatism and every day I find another reason to be grateful that I did. Oh sure, a few jew haters here and there, but I've dealt with that all my life. But the left is teeming with them and they are aligned with radical islam, which preaches DEATH to ALL JEWS (even the liberal ones). I predict you will be seeing more conversions in the next couple of years than there have been for the past fifty. God bless.


32 posted on 03/01/2005 8:44:14 PM PST by ariamne (reformed liberal--Shieldmaiden of the Infidel)
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To: ariamne

I certainly hope you are right.


33 posted on 03/01/2005 9:01:21 PM PST by B4Ranch
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To: the gillman@blacklagoon.com

LOL!! Thank heaven I'm not diabetic, I'd go into a sugar coma if they did.


34 posted on 03/01/2005 11:33:22 PM PST by Bogolyubski
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To: SJackson
Re # 25...Guys, you have to get the facts right.

The American Israeli-Cooperative Institute has the Jewish non-Jewish presidential vote detailed on the internet.

The fundamental fact is that the Jewish vote is historically and basically left and there is no visible trend to the right for the past 100 years. For example, Mr. Kerry got 78% of the Jewish vote according to the Jewish source mentioned.

My problem with these facts is that it is confounding that an intelligent, educated, closely knit group of people who are under attack from the barbarians...can turn around and support those on the left when logic says it is not to their best interest. That, my friend, is a mystery.....at least to me.

35 posted on 03/01/2005 11:57:34 PM PST by squirt-gun
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To: ariamne
re # 28..Sorry to rant, but I cannot believe my fellow Jews will stay on the left. I saw the light, they can too.

I certainly hope so....Pls see #35.

There are some who don't see reality and therefore the problem. I am a non-religious former Catholic but I am in support of the Jews. This situation is a mystery to many people, not just me.

Have a great day wherever you are.

36 posted on 03/02/2005 8:23:26 AM PST by squirt-gun
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To: squirt-gun

You have a blessed day, sg. I understand the frustration. I take heart in the knowledge that there are Jews who can be like Moses and lead their people to the promised land (the right); Jews like Mark Levin and David Horowitz. Part of the problem was the anti-semitism on the right that did exist for so many years is still hammered into the minds of the older Jews, you know in the years before William Buckley said "out, damn spot" or something to that effect, to the right wing anti-semites.

But that was then. This is a post 9/11, post-American AND Israel under attack world, and it is time for Jews to leave the Islamic pandering left. I was one of the biggest koolaid drinking leftists there was, so I have hope!

Shalom.


37 posted on 03/02/2005 8:50:47 AM PST by ariamne (reformed liberal--Shieldmaiden of the Infidel)
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To: coloradan

It will not be done, until it must be done. At that point, it must be armed Americans to get it done, or die trying...


38 posted on 03/02/2005 10:23:00 AM PST by Gilbo_3 (Patience is a virtue, but it aint one of mine !!!)
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To: Dan from Michigan

They could and should easily get rid of the 'alcohol' and 'tobacco' parts of the agency, but then they would only be the BFs of BFEs, take your pick ...


39 posted on 03/02/2005 10:26:20 AM PST by Gilbo_3 (Patience is a virtue, but it aint one of mine !!!)
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To: Gilbo_3
BF...

Bumbling...you-know-what heads....

40 posted on 03/02/2005 10:34:06 AM PST by Dan from Michigan ("There out ta get me! They won't catch me! I'm #@^#@# innocent! They won't break me" - Guns N Roses)
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