The Real Target of All Gun Control Is the Law Abiding Citizen

In Government enforced helplessness: a cautionary tale, Milli Sands at the A,erican Thinker tells us what happens when government disarms its citizens and makes them dependent serfs. If you are not one of the "favored" groups, this may happen to you.

In late August 1929, the Arabs of Mandatory Palestine did what they did best: slaughter defenseless people — in this case, as in many, Jews.

The massacre took place on August 23–24, 1929, in Hebron, then part of British-controlled Mandatory Palestine. Arab mobs attacked Jewish residents of Hebron, killing nearly 70 Jews and wounding 60 others. Many homes and synagogues were ransacked and torched. The obligatory raping of women occurred. The attacks were carried out by Arab Palestinians against the long-established Jewish community in Hebron. The Jewish community had lived in Hebron for millennia, way before there was even a single Muslim on the planet.

She goes into some detail on the history of the British Palestinian Mandate and how the disarmament of the Jews came about. As always, prejudice against the Jews was at work in both the British government and the Muslims:

Inconsistent with these agreements was the creation from Mandatory Palestine, the "national home for the Jewish people," of Transjordan. The Jews got one eighth of the land, the Arabs seven eighths.

Despite this, the Arabs objected to the mere stump of land reserved for the Jews and increased tensions with the Jews of Palestine. This erupted in violence in Hebron in 1929. These tensions were incited more than most realize by the British government and its failure to follow the conditions and agreements under which it was given mandate over Palestine.

To assist and effect the Arab violence (mostly if not all from Muslims as they followed the directions of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the British-appointed grand mufti of Jerusalem), the British had disarmed Palestinian Jews weeks earlier as part of policies meant to appease the Arab population. This left the Jewish community vulnerable to attack.

The specific law used by the British to disarm the Jews was the Firearms Act of 1929, which required licenses for firearms and allowed confiscation of weapons by authorities. This disarmament was strongly protested by the Jewish community at the time.

...snip...

There had been some instances of violence between Jews and Arabs in Palestine by the late 1920s. The British aimed to prevent intercommunal violence by disarming both sides. However, in practice, the disarmament was enforced more thoroughly and punitively against Jews. Arabs managed to "hide" weapons, often provided by the Brits, from authorities.

British officials were also influenced by Arab leaders who warned of violence if Jewish immigration and arms were not restricted. This led to policies appeasing Arab demands.

There was antipathy and distrust towards Zionism among some British officials, which translated into selectivity in disarmament, resulting in selective slaughter.

And, quite interestingly, the British were concerned about rising Jewish immigration and nationalism in Palestine in the 1920s. Disarming Jews was seen as a way to limit the ability of Jewish militias to resist British rule.

Well, you say, here is but one example. Nothing like this will happen in the United States . We are not like those people. Except, of course, that we are those people. As Sands points out in the rest of her article, it has happened many times around the world, that whenever the government disarms its people, it soon abuses their trust. Whether it is Nazi Germany, the Ottoman Empire, the Hutu's in Rwanda, the lesson learned is always the same: you can not trust those who do not trust you with a gun. That goes for individual states.

States often posit gun control on the idea that it will control crime. But criminals do not, by definition, obey laws. A piece of paper with writing on it has meaning only insofar as the people who wrote it intend to keep it.  But criminals don't care about your paper.  As such, the laws will not impede them in the least. The real target of all gun control laws is law abiding citizens. Always.