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PHOTO BY BIL L GEM MEL L
Gunning For Guns
The head of a Jewish gun-rights group says
genocides in this century came in the wake of
anti-gun laws.
JULIE EDGAR SENIOR WRITER
aron Zelman hardly fits
the profile of a fanatic.
Speaking to an enthu-
siastic crowd of 300 Mon-
day night on the subject of
preserving the constitutional
right to own and bear arms, Mr.
Zelman looked and sounded
more like an aging hippie than
a gun-rights activist.
As it turns out, the 50-year-
old founder and head of Jews for
the Preservation of Firearms
Ownership is a vegetarian who
keeps kosher and sends his chil-
dren to an Orthodox day school.
But his similarities to the
members of the audience at the
Jewish Community Center in
West Bloomfield ran deep. Mr.
Zelman, whose 8-year-old orga-
nization boasts 5,000 dues-pay-
ing members, many of whom he
says are Jewish, believes the
U.S. government has been com-
plicit in the murder of U.S. citi-
A
zens who did nothing more than
exercise their right to own guns
— think Waco and Ruby Ridge.
Not only that, he said, but the
government "aided and abetted"
the Holocaust by refusing to
bomb railway lines that carried
Jews and other Nazi victims to
their deaths.
Genocide, Mr. Zelman in-
toned, "begins with a govern-
ment gone bad.", Like the Nazis
who demonized the Jews with
the help of the mass media, gov-
ernment chooses a target of
hate, "and every hate monger
and bigot knows that the tar-
geted group must be disarmed."
His point: Had ordinary Ger-
man citizens been allowed to
own guns in Nazi Germany,
Jews may have escaped their
fate.
"The disarming of non-Jews
was probably more detrimental
for Jews in the long run," he said
is one of these
blind spots Jews
have. They look
for every excuse
possible under
the sun and say
it wouldn't have
made any differ-
ence. I choose
not to be easy
pickings."
Mr. Zelman,
however, chose
not to dwell on
the Holocaust
during . Mon-
day's program,
which was spon-
sored by Brass
Roots, a 2-year-
old pro-gun or-
ganization
based in Fern-
dale. Its founder
and chairman is
Jon Coon, the
Libertarian Par-
ty candidate for
Senate in 1994
and a Libertar-
ian Party candi-
date for the
state House last
Aaron Zelman: A disarmed citizenry is a dead citizenry.
year.
Instead, Mr.
in an interview. "The herd
mentality was there because Zelman, a Milwaukee resident
there was nothing [Jews or non- who has written two books, Gun
Jews] could do about it. This Control, Gateway to Tyranny
Let's Take it Outside!
and Lethal Laws, focused his ire
on government "thugs" in the
United States.
Nazi war criminals, he said,
helped set up the Central Intel-
ligence Agency, and the 1968
gun control laws are based on
the Nazi Party's gun control
laws.
"This is the U.S. government
telling you to disarm the citi-
zenry, because 'We feel your
pain,' 'We've got to do it for the
kids,' " he said to wild applause.
The U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals, he said, ruled that the
government does not have
responsibility for individual
safety, and "this is why people
need guns.
"It's important that we re-
mind people that the Secret War
Against the Jews," a book writ-
ten by former government offi-
cial John Loftus, "shows how the
U.S. government spies on Jews,
even Jewish children playing in
sandboxes," Mr. Zelman said.
As part of Monday's program,
the Holocaust Memorial Center
opened its doors from 7 to 8 p.m.
for tours, and many of the peo-
ple who came to hear Mr. Zel-
man stopped in. Most, by a show
of hands in the audience, had
never visited the museum. Many
were not Jewish.
"We don't have a great deal
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