The NRA and pro-gun extremists advance the fiction that had Hitler not taken away the guns from the Jews they could have prevented the Holocaust. Ben Carson actually believes this. As I lost all of my European family in the Holocaust and my father’s village where he grew up is now a field of wild grass this is particularly galling and it is important that I set the record straight from both a personal and a historical point of view. Here are the facts: In 1919 after World War I Germany banned firearms ownership and possession. All guns had to be surrendered immediately. In 1928 Germany reversed the 1919 ban and all Germans were allowed to possess firearms In 1938 the "German weapons act" restricted ownership of firearms to "– persons whose trustworthiness is not in question…" On November 11, 1938 a new law was passed "Regulations Against Jews Possession Of Weapons.” This regulation effectively deprived all Jews of the right to possess firearms or other weapons In January 1933 there was some 523,000 Jews in Germany representing less than 1% of the country’s total population. The events of 1938 caused a dramatic increase in Jewish emigration and that the end of 1939 about 202,000 remained in Germany. The claim that some 200,000 Jews possessing firearms (of which half were woman and children) could have defeated the German army in 1938 and prevented the slaughter of 13 million Jews and others in the rest of Europe is absurd. Bear in mind that the Russian Army with its firearms plus tanks, planes and artillery lost 7 million men fighting the German war machine. (See link below signature line for sources of data.) That the NRA has for years used the deaths of those Jews lost in the Holocaust as propaganda to sell guns--and to support the continuation of the gun violence epidemic in our country--is beyond disgusting and tells you all you need to know about them. The gun violence epidemic must be halted now—TODAY. To do it, we need to keep steadily increasing the number of people who have signed the petition. If you really care, then get one person per week to sign the petition through the holidays. If you do, and each of the people who sign the petition does, we will have a critical mass of pressure on Obama to declare a state of emergency and issue the appropriate executive orders. Elliot Fineman CEO National Gun Victims action Council www.gunvictimsaction.org German Actual Gun History