North County Times, CA
May 3 2009

FORUM: Gun advocate needs to know history
By DANIEL ZUCKERMAN — Temecula | Sunday, May 3, 2009 12:09 AM PDT ??

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story An estimated 30,000 people die each year due to guns. I am not
going to debate whether guns should be outlawed, though I do think
assault rifles have no place in our society. They are for military use
and nothing more.

What I will debate is the insertion of a total fabrication into a
newspaper read by numerous communities. The Community Forum that ran
April 24 was nothing more than NRA talking points that have been
circulating on the Internet. Dick Morgan seems to have copied it
verbatim in his ill-informed piece on gun control.

I would like to rebut the link he tries to draw between so-called gun
control and the deaths of citizens in other countries. Mr. Morgan,
through his copying of these talking points, would like to lay the
deaths of countless millions on those citizens not having guns to
protect themselves.

It is always instructive to know your history.

— The Ottoman Empire (not Turkey, which wasn’t in existence until
1923) did commit genocide against Armenians. This had to do more with
religion than anything else. Guns were not an issue, as this happened
during WWI.

— The best guess for deaths under Stalin in the Soviet Union was 23
million, with an estimated 20 million-27 million people killed during
WWII. This was not due to gun control, though I am sure that the
repressive Soviet government did not want its civilians armed. The
deaths occured as a result of mass deportations and famines.

— Mr. Morgan’s talking points claim that in 1935, China established
gun control, and approximately 20 million people died. How China
established gun control when it was fighting the Japanese in an
all-out war is beyond me; 19.2 million people died in the war with
Japan.

— He continues that in 1938, Germany established gun control, which
led to the extermination of 13 million Jews and other
peoples. Mr. Morgan, the Jews did have guns, and used them. Read about
the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. The Jews had guns, and unfortunately
still died.

I could go on, but there is little use. Each of the points Mr. Morgan
cites as evidence is an example of a mobilized repressive state
killing its own citizens. Every example happened during a world war or
a civil war: World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, civil wars in
Guatemala and Uganda. And somehow Mr. Morgan would have us believe
that all these deaths are because a law-abiding country outlawed guns,
then proceeded to kill its citizenry.

This kind of infomation that is passed off as knowledge is
disingenuous at best, and outright lies at worst. Knowing that this is
a forum for the community to air its concerns, what concerns me is
that a newspaper such as the Californian would print anything that was
as false as this.

Dan Zuckerman lives in Temecula.