But They DID Collect All the Guns Before the Rings!
By Chris Meister, vice-president of MCU
The trigger-of-the-day for Michigan’s ideologically-driven outrage culture is currently a social media meme. It features a photograph of a box of hundreds of gold rings from the liberation of one of the Nazi concentration camps. They were seized from victims of the Holocaust before their horrific deaths by cold-hearted agents of a soulless state. Superimposed over the image are the words, “Before they collected all these wedding rings… they collected all the guns.”
No one disputes the historic, factual accuracy of this meme. It is a grim reminder of a world gone mad. Unpleasant, yes, but how could so basic a truth be controversial?
Nonetheless, after the meme appeared on a Michigan Republican Party social media page it triggered much gnashing of teeth in the corridors of our Democrat-controlled state government and a pitifully obedient media. It is rumored to have rendered the political donor class skittish, at least that segment that only seems interested in supporting principled government up to a point where a whiff of controversy is generated.
The familiar post was intended to draw attention to the dangers inherent in the rash of legislation being approved into law by the Democrat majorities in Lansing. It’s fair to classify the reaction from the ideological left as hysteria. To reprise a saying from, appropriately, World War II: If you're taking flak, you must be right over the target.
Dishonest and bellicose critics claim that citing the memory of the Holocaust in political discussion today somehow exploits it. We wonder why they never raise similar howls of protest over the numerous and ongoing occasions when patriotic, Constitution-embracing Americans are falsely accused of being “fascists” without evidence.
But to return to the immediate danger of this tsunami of legislation further restricting legal gun ownership in Michigan: one questions why government officials are so eager to disarm law abiding citizens. They claim they want to prevent future tragedies like the recent shootings on the Michigan State University campus, but that perpetrator violated existing law in carrying out his attack in a designated “gun free” zone. Everyone observing the “gun free” ordinance on campus that day were potential defenseless victims. That is an indisputable statement.
Clearly, more restrictions on law-abiding gun owners are not the answer. Perhaps politicians should devote more attention to illegal gun use and the increasing mental health crisis if they really want to address the issue of mass shootings. We realize those are challenging issues, but legislators need to rise to offices they aspired to and provide meaningful and effective solutions to the problems in our state.
But what if the intention of this legislation is indeed to disarm the law-abiding public? If successful, obedient citizens would be defenseless against both criminals and a government that is already exhibiting contempt for any Constitutional restrictions interfering with its objectives.
Far from being scurrilous and disrespectful, the social media post was precisely to the point, which explains why so many are objecting so vehemently. One of the reasons Holocaust museums are today so nobly maintained across the land is so that we will never forget its horror.
We remember not only the Holocaust’s millions of victims, but the fact that it was perpetrated by an amoral government bureaucracy whose only purpose was to increase its own power and wealth. We also remember that one of its first acts in pursuit of this end was the confiscation of its citizens’ guns.
The future of our state and nation demands we stand resolute against this movement to reduce the people of Michigan to a herd of defenseless victims.