Don't Fatwa Me

Oh, the hullabaloo raised by arming a Jew. Welcome to the 21st Century -- the first decade of it well on its way to garnering the title of The Age Of Hysteria.

And meet the Rabbi Yakove Lloyd, founder and president of the Jewish Defense Group (JDG). A religious Jew. A concerned Jew. A Jew that hasn't forgotten.

And what was that now that needed to be remembered? Oh, yeah, just the minor detail that for every Jew there usually are, on average, ten Jew-haters bent on his or her elimination. We could call it "persecution with genocidal intent". It's not a nice sentiment.

Personally, as a Christian, I'm beginning to "get it". A training video recovered from an Afghani Al Qaeda base shows heavily armed terrorists practicing the fine art of entering homes and shooting the inhabitants, in this case mannequins, mannequins with crosses painted on their chests. (But the real dummies are those who don't take these kinds of visuals seriously.)

What needs to be taken seriously is that there are those who believe that to not submit to Allah and recognize his prophet Mohammed makes one an infidel. That's the lighter side. Defending that disbelief, whether in print or in practice, could make you the lucky recipient of your own personalized fatwa, an Islamic religious edict that trades cash for your coco -- ask Salman Rushdie ('cause you can't ask Daniel Pearl).

At the beginning of this month, Iraqi-based fugitive and probable co-conspirator of the 1993 WTC bombing Abdul Rahman Yasin discussed on CBS' "60 Minutes" how, amid the plethora of large significant structural targets in America, Islamikazes also had Jewish neighborhoods in their sights, and still do. The writers at Reuters called that a "perceived threat". And just last week the Feds said that terrorists may be planning on striking local Jewish synagogues and schools with fuel tankers. That's a lot closer than Tora Bora. Now, I don't know what color-code the government has decided to give this particular threat, but methinks the Rabbi is starting to see red. Is it crazy that a Jew living by one of these neighborhoods might consider locking and loading just on the off-chance that these statements are more than just bellicose rhetoric?

And people should "get it". But then it wouldn't be The Age Of Hysteria, it might then resemble a more Biblical Age, a time when Jews were warriors, and winners.

But the only things that Rabbi Lloyd has won by coming to the conclusion that American Jews should be feistier than the average sitting duck are a lot of labels and verbal lashings, and very little praise.

For instance, as far as the Associated Press is concerned, neither he nor the JDG can be mentioned without the prefacing qualifier "right-wing". This kills me, as I've been newspeaked to believe that "right-wing" is synonymous with, among other horrid inferences, "anti-Semite". They're messing with my conditioning. Perhaps it's time for an infusion of fresh talent in AP's Den of Derogatory Disclaimers, 'cause the "right-wing" catch-all has done run its course.

One of my favorite responses to the Rabbi's idea of armed neighborhood patrols has been, by New York's Mayor Bloomberg and others, to call him and his troops "vigilantes". After having so tortured the original intent of the Bill of Rights' Second Amendment by successfully muddying the clarity of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" so as to now have it hinge on the predicate phrase "a well-regulated militia", these bozos don't even recognize a militia when somebody forms one.

It's because they don't want to recognize it, unless it's to narrow down even that meaning even further. In fact, the Rabbi was told by some elected officials that the "militia" solely refers to a group of people who seek to overthrow the government. Hey, don't give the Rabbi any ideas, because his interest in self-defense has so far resulted in a lot of public so-called "servants" rudely ordering around their salary-paying masters.

Commissioner Ray Kelly of the NYPD stated that "(t)he department will not tolerate anyone brandishing weapons under the guise of protecting others." Uh, you mean like your publicized yet rarely heeded job slogan, Commissioner? Because, if one is honest, too little is ever done in the name of protection. Perhaps the police department's motto should be "to serve and fill out paperwork and hose down the bloodstains after having carefully outlined the corpse with yellow tape".

Rabbi Lloyd's response to Kelly was "(w)hat the police commissioner does not understand is that no matter what he says ... those who have the legal right to carry firearms can carry firearms." But now it seems that not only is the NYPD set to seek out and arrest those who are patrolling with a weapon without the privilege to do so bestowed on them by the benevolent state, but that the patrollers with the privileges will be arrested for "unlawful assembly". If the yellow tape doesn't catch up to you, the red tape certainly will.

However, the (drumroll, please) certifiable winner of the Ridiculous Reaction To The Revolutionary Rabbi Award is presented to Brooklyn City Councilman Bill DiBlasio, who said about the Rabbi, “He's not wanted here and he's not welcomed here. His brand of terrorism we don't accept.” Good grief, Councilman, what brand of terrorism is it that you do find acceptable? And who, exactly, considers an armed Jew a terror? Councilman DiBlasio should consider the company that statement inadvertently causes him to keep -- such notables as Adolf Hitler, Arafat, and, lately, Ted Turner.

This is the same mentality that a lot of DiBlasio's peers in our Capitol share when discussing the issue of arming our commercial pilots. Instead of the possibility of shooting dead an attempting hijacker, they prefer a policy of shooting down an entire plane.

I had the privilege of interviewing Rabbi Lloyd last week, and he's more than aware of the fact that his own people here in America have contributed significantly to the lunacy and fear that arise whenever the topic of guns does. Most national Jewish groups have rarely met a gun control bill or gun-grabber that they didn't like -- lots of brainwashing, very little Warsaw Ghetto. Not one major Jewish group has spoken out in the Rabbi's defense.

The Rabbi quotes Talmudic Law: "He who comes to slay you, slay him first", which is not unlike our own President's commitment to taking out hostile, threatening regimes before they become successfully-made-good-on-the-threats, murderous regimes. If yellow tape is an unacceptable outline for our nation, why should it become acceptable in our Jewish neighborhoods?

We live in a Republic where its founders were respectful enough of their citizens to guarantee the maintenance of their pre-existent right to self-defense. They didn't envision a nation of sitting ducks. Anyone who doesn't "get this" is a quack. Rabbi Lloyd says, "Every Jew, a .22". Amen, Rabbi, and for every Gentile, too.

Anna Zetchus Raetz is a wife, mother, filmmaker (Tailing the Millennium), writer, and national spokeswoman for Liberty Belles. Her Internet radio program, Unspun, can be heard on The Other Radio Network.

Mercurial Times exclusive commentary. Reprints must credit the author and Mercurial Times.

I saw a great article about the 'Sullivan Law' in the NRA magazine, which attributed the original NYC handgun ban to a city official from the 'canal district(?)', under pressure from the criminals in his area to make it easier for them to mug strangers!

I haven't been able to find that article, but I did find a bit of info on the Sullivan Law..

From Gun Control: White Man's Law

Attempts to regulate the possession of firearms began in the northern states during the early part of the 20th century, and although these regulations had a different focus from those that had been concocted in the South, they were no less racist and elitist in effect or intent. Rather than trying to keep handguns out of the price range that blacks and the poor could afford, New York's trend-setting Sullivan Law, enacted in 1911, required a police permit for legal possession of a handgun. This law made it possible for the police to screen applicants for permits to posses handguns, and while such a requirement may seem reasonable, it can and has been abused.

Members of groups not in favor with the political establishment or the police are automatically suspect and can easily be denied permits. For instance, when the Sullivan Law was enacted, southern and eastern European immigrants were considered racially inferior and religiously and ideologically suspect. (Many were Catholics or Jews, and a disproportionate number were anarchists or socialists.) Professor L. Kennett, coauthor of the authoritative history *The Gun in America*, has noted that the measure was designed to "strike hardest at the foreign-born element," particularly Italians. Southern and eastern European immigrants found it almost impossible to obtain gun permits.

Over the years, application of the Sullivan Law has become increasingly elitist as the police seldom grant handgun permits to any but the wealthy or the politically influential. A beautiful example of this hypocritical elitism is the fact that while the *New York Times* often editorializes against the private possession of handguns, the publisher of that newspaper, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, has a hard-to-get permit to own and carry a handgun. Another such permit is held by the husband of Dr. Joyce Brothers, the pop psychologist who has claimed that firearms ownership is indicative of male sexual inadequacy.

I did find an article which mentions the Sullivan Law, and it had actually been reprinted in 'The American Rifleman' back in 1926...

Editor's note: MSRPA member Jack Tishue brought the following to DownRange's attention. It is a copyrighted article by H. L. Mencken originally published in 1925 (during Prohibition) by The Evening Sun (where Mencken was editor at the time) and reprinted in the March 1, 1926 issue of The American Rifleman.

THE UPLIFTERS TRY IT AGAIN

by H. L. Mencken
(Copyright, 1925, by The Evening Sun. Republication without credit not permitted.)

The eminent Nation announces with relish "the organization of a national committee of 100 to induce Congress to prohibit the inter-State traffic in revolvers," and offers the pious judgement that it is "a step forward." "Crime statistics," it appears, "show that 90% of the murders that take place are committed by the use of the pistol, and every year there are hundreds of cases of accidental homicides because someone did not know that his revolver was loaded." The new law or is it to be a constitutional amendment? will do away with all that. "It will not be easy," of course, "to draw a law that will permit exceptions for public officers and bank guards" to say nothing of Prohibition agents and other such legalized murderers. "But soon even these officials may get on without revolvers."

More than once in this place, I have lavished high praise upon the Nation. All that praise has been deserved, and I am by no means disposed to go back on it. The Nation is one of the few honest and intelligent periodicals published in the United States. It stands clear of official buncombe; it prints every week a great mass of news that the newspapers seem to miss; it interprets that news with a freedom and a sagacity that few newspaper editors can even so much as imagine. If it shut up shop then the country would plunge almost unchallenged into the lowest depths of Coolidgism, Rotarianism, Stantaquaism and other such bilge. It has been for a decade past, the chief consolation of the small and forlorn minority of civilized Americans.

But the Nation, in its days, has been a Liberal organ, and its old follies die hard. Ever and anon, in the midst of its most eloquent and effective pleas for Liberty, its eye wanders weakly toward Law. At such moments the old lust to lift 'em up overcomes it, and it makes a brilliant and melodramatic ass of itself. Such a moment was upon it when it printed the paragraph that I have quoted. Into that paragraph of not over 200 words it packed as much maudlin and nonsensical blather, as much idiotic reasoning and banal moralizing, as Dr. Coolidge gets into a speech of two hours' length.

II.

The new law that it advocated, indeed, is one of the most absurd specimens of jackass legislation ever heard of, even in this paradise of legislative donkeyism. Its single and sole effect would be to exaggerate enormously all of the evils it proposes to put down. It would not take pistols out of the hands of rogues and fools; it would simply take them out of the hands of honest men. The gunman today has great advantages everywhere. He has artillery in his pocket, and he may assume that, in the large cities, at least two-thirds of his prospective victims are unarmed. But if the Nation's proposed law (or amendment) were passed and enforced, he could assume safely that all of them were unarmed.

Here I do not indulge in theory. The hard facts are publicly on display in New York State, where a law of exactly the same tenor is already on the books the so-called Sullivan Law. In order to get it there, of course, the Second Amendment had to be severely strained, but the uplifters advocated the straining unanimously, and to the tune of loud hosannas, and the courts, as usual, were willing to sign on the dotted line. It is now a dreadful felony in New York to "have or possess" a pistol. Even if one keeps it locked in a bureau drawer at home, one may be sent to the hoosegow for ten years. More, men who have done no more are frequently bumped off. The cops, suspecting a man, say, of political heresy, raid his house and look for copies of the Nation. They find none, and are thus baffled but at the bottom of a trunk they do find a rusted and battered revolver. So he goes to trial for violating the Sullivan Law, and is presently being psycho-analyzed by the uplifters at Sing Sing.

With what result? With the general result that New York, even more than Chicago, is the heaven of footpads, hijackers, gunmen and all other such armed thugs. Their hands upon their pistols, they know they are safe. Not one citizen out of a hundred that they tackle is armed for getting a license to keep a revolver is a difficult business, and carrying one without it is more dangerous than submitting to robbery. So the gunmen flourish and give humble thanks to God. Like the bootleggers, they are hot and unanimous for Law Enforcement.

III.

To all this, of course, the uplifters have a ready answer. (At having ready answers, indeed, they always shine!) The New York thugs, they say, are armed to the teeth because New Jersey and Connecticut lack Sullivan Laws. When one of them wants a revolver all he has to do is to cross the river or take a short trolley trip. Or, to quote the Nation, he may "simply remit to one of the large firms which advertise the sale of their weapons by mail." The remedy is the usual dose: More law. Congress is besought to "prohibit the inter-State traffic in revolvers, especially to bar them from the mails."

It is all very familiar, and very depressing. Find me a man so vast an imbecile that he seriously believes that this prohibition would work. What would become of the millions of revolvers already in the hands of the American people if not in New York, then at least everywhere else? (I own two and my brother owns at least a dozen, though neither of us has fired one since the close of the Liberty Loan drives.) Would the cops at once confiscate this immense stock, or would it tend to concentrate in the hands of the criminal classes? If they attempted confiscation, how would they get my two revolvers lawfully acquired and possessed without breaking into my house? Would I wait for them docilely or would I sell out, in anticipation, to the nearest pistol bootlegger?

The first effect of the enactment of such a law, obviously, would be to make the market price of all small arms rise sharply. A pistol which is now worth, second-hand, perhaps $2, would quickly reach a value of $10 or even $20. This is not theorizing; we have had plenty of experience with gin. Well, imagining such prices to prevail, would the generality of men surrender to the Polizei, or would they sell them to the bootleggers? And if they sold them to the bootleggers, what would become of them in the end: would they fall into the hands of honest men or into the hands of rogues?

IV.

But the gunmen, I take it, would not suffer from the high cost of artillery for long. The moment the price got really attractive, the cops themselves would begin to sell their pistols, and with them the whole corps of Prohibition blacklegs, private detectives, deputy sheriffs, and other such scoundrels. And smuggling, as in the case of alcoholic beverages, would become an organized industry, large in scale and lordly in profits. Imagine the supplies that would pour over the long Canadian and Mexican borders! And into every port on every incoming ship!

Certainly, the history of the attempt to enforce Prohibition should give even uplifters pause. A case of whisky is a bulky object. It must be transported on a truck. It can not be disguised. Yet in every American city today a case of whisky may be bought almost as readily as a pair of shoes despite all the armed guards along the Canadian border, and all the guard ships off the ports, and all the raiding, snooping and murdering everywhere else. Thus the camel gets in and yet the proponents of the new anti-pistol law tell us that they will catch the gnat! Go tell it to the Marines!

Such a law, indeed, would simply make gun-toting swagger and fashionable, as Prohibition has made guzzling swagger and fashionable. When I was a youngster there were no Prohibition agents; hence I never so much as drank a glass of beer until I was nearly 19. Today, Law Enforcement is the eighth sacrament and the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals is itself the authority for the sad news that the young of the land are full of gin. I remember, in my youth, a time when the cops tried to prohibit the game of catty. At once every boy in Baltimore consecrated his whole time and energy to it. Finally, the cops gave up their crusade. Almost instantly catty disappeared.

The real victim of moral legislation is almost always the honest, law-abiding, well-meaning citizen what the late William Graham Summer called the Forgotten Man. Prohibition makes it impossible for him to take a harmless drink, cheaply and in a decent manner. In the same way the Harrison Act puts heavy burdens upon the physician who has need of prescribing narcotic drugs for a patient, honestly and for good ends. But the drunkard still gets all the alcohol that he can hold, and the drug addict is still full of morphine and cocaine. By precisely the same route the Nation's new law would deprive the reputable citizen of the arms he needs for protection, and hand them over to the rogues that he needs protection against.

Ten or fifteen years ago there was an epidemic of suicide by bichloride of mercury tablets. At once the uplifters proposed laws forbidding their sale, and such laws are now in force in many States, including New York. The consequences are classical. A New Yorker, desiring to lay in an antiseptic for household use, is deprived of the cheapest, most convenient and most effective. And the suicide rate in New York, as elsewhere, is still steadily rising.

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