Tony Bennett: Gun Control or We Become Nazi Germany
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/tony-bennett-gun-control-or-we-become-nazi-germany/
This week, 86-year-old singer Tony Bennett sounded off on gun control. “I just believe that assault weapons – they were invented for war. They shouldn’t be on our streets here.” This, in and of itself, would be no surprise; virtually everyone in Hollywood is anti-gun control. But then Bennett went off the rails:
This is the kind of [turn] that happened to the great country of Germany, where the Nazis came over, created tragic things, and they had to be told off. And if we continue this kind of violence and accept it in our country, the rest of the world is going to take care of us in a very bad way. We should learn that we’re the greatest country because we’re all different nationalities, different religions, and we should show the rest of the world how to behave.
This is obviously faulty history. The Nazis didn’t rise to power thanks to an armed population. They secured their power at least in part thanks to a disarmed population. The Weimar government passed gun registration and licensing for all guns in 1928. And the Nazis were the purveyors of mass violence, not the result of it.
Bennett should know better than this. After all, he served in the infantry; he was drafted in November 1944, and was a replacement in the 255th Infantry Regiment of the 63rd Infantry Division, serving in France and Germany. He served in battle, including house-to-house fighting in Germany; he was there for the liberation of the Landsberg concentration camp.
But Bennett became a pacifist after the war, writing, “The main thing I got out of my military experience was the realization that I am completely opposed to war. Every war is insane, no matter where it is or what it’s about. Fighting is the lowest form of human behavior.” Now, America thanks Bennett for his service. But this is an infantile representation of the way the world works. Civilized people abhor war. But uncivilized people often use that