Hebrew Voices #55 – Jews for Guns

Hebrew Voices - Jews for GunsIn this episode of Hebrew Voices, Jews for Guns, a firearms expert explains the tragic mass-shooting in Las Vegas, we find out why many Jews believe that gun control is evil, and we expose the Nazi origins of the 1968 US Gun Control Act.

Charles Heller is the Media Coordinator of the Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership, Co-Founder and Communications Coordinator of the Arizona Citizens Defense League, and the host of Liberty Watch Radio.

I look forward to reading your comments! Podcast Version: Download Audio Transcript

Hebrew Voices #55 - Jews for Guns

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Benjamin Netanyahu: Le ma’an Zion lo ekhesheh, u’l’ma’an Yerushalayim lo eshkot. (For Zion’s sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest. Isaiah 62:1)

Nehemia: Shalom, this is Nehemia Gordon with Hebrew Voices, and I am here today with Charles Heller. He is the media coordinator for an organization called “Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership.” He's also a co-founder and the communications coordinator of the Arizona Citizens Defense League. Shalom, Charles.

Charles: Shalom.

Nehemia: It's great to have you on the Hebrew Voices program, Charles. You're Jewish, is that correct?

Charles: That is correct. Both sides of the family, and I was Bar Mitzvah in 1970 at Bnei Jacob, if you're looking for my bona fides, my bar mitzvah fides, as the case may be.

Nehemia: Okay. So, I have you on the line today, and I’ve wanted to do this program for some time. And recently, there was this horrific shooting, this mass shooting, the worst mass shooting in the US history. Sixty people were killed, this shooting in Las Vegas. And I actually had spoken to you about a year ago about doing this program, and never really was able to get to it. And I thought, “Now is the time to do it.” And what I wanted to talk about is this whole issue of gun control and the connection that your organization, Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership, has established, which really blew my mind when I saw this, that there is a pattern in history of a connection between gun control and genocide. And the most famous example, perhaps, or really the clearest one is that the Jews in 1938, there was a law passed in Nazi Germany forbidding Jews from having guns.

Charles: It's called the “Nazi Weapons Act,” yes. What it did was, it made it easier to murder Jews. At that point, they had no clue what Hitler had in mind. And we are a law-abiding people, as you well know, and your listeners know. That's why so many of us choose the legal profession. We have a tendency to be obsessive about complying with the letter of certain laws. And we, as compliant people, if the law of the land at the time said to register guns, they would have registered their guns.

Nehemia: Well, and then that registry, the Nazi Gun Registry, which actually started in the Weimar Republic before the Nazis, that was then used to establish which Jews had guns and which didn't, and to confiscate the guns from the Jews.

Charles: Well, what happened was that the laws were changed in the 1930s. And since Stephen Halbrook's excellent book on the topic called "Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and Enemies of the State.” And I've interviewed him. I'm also a talk show host, and I had him on my program, “Liberty Watch, and America Armed and Free” for 90 minutes. And it was a very, very good interview. Halbrook's an excellent guest.

Nehemia: Now, your organization put out a video, “No Guns for Jews.” And in the video, what they explain is that one day after Kristallnacht in 1938, what was originally the Weimar 1920 Firearms and Ammunition Control Act, which required the registration of guns, that it was amended to prohibit Jews from having weapons. And the Rabbinical director of your organization, Rabbi Dovid Bendory, he says in that video, "If Jews had not turned in their firearms, if Jews had not registered their guns in Hitler's Registry, things would have been different.”

And he's not saying that the Holocaust wouldn't have happened, but it might not have been so easy for them to round up the Jews and kill them. And to put that in perspective, it wasn't just the Jews of Germany. So, during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, “Operation Barbarossa,” the Nazis sent in what they called the “Einsatzgruppen,” the special units and they killed 1.5 million Jews in that operation alone. And those Jews weren't allowed to have guns, ‘cause they were living under the gun confiscation of the Soviet Union. So, it was a double whammy. It wasn't just the Jews in Germany, it was the Jews in the Soviet Union as well.

Also quoting from your video, "No Guns for Jews,” in the video, you guys said, “Prior to writing the Bill…” And by the way, this is referring to the US Federal Gun Control Act of 1968 which was initiated by Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut. So, in the video you explain, "Prior to writing the Bill on July 2nd, 1968, Senator Thomas Dodd requested a translation of the 1938 Nazi Weapons Law from the Library of Congress. A comparison of the language in the final Bill shows some of it was copied word for word from the same laws the Nazis used in 1938, the same laws that were approved by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.”

Charles: Dodd's father had been a prosecutor at Nuremberg, and that's how he became aware of it. And that's the chain of custody, if you will, of how it came to the United States.

Nehemia: And you guys found, no pun intended, the smoking gun, which is the document in which he requisitioned the translation of this Nazi Firearms Act in order to incorporate verbiage and concepts into the US 1968 Gun Control Act. And we're living under the regime of essentially, something descended from the Nazi Firearm Act today, in the United States.

Charles: That's true. It was in our book called "Lethal Laws.” I mean, it actually has a photograph of the document in the book.

Nehemia: And you show that in the video too, a photo of this document from Senator Thomas Dodd. So, it's not just that there are superficial similarities. We know there's actually a direct connection from the Nazi Firearm Act to the US Federal Gun Control Act of 1968.

Charles: The '68 GCA, we call it. Yeah, there absolutely is a direct line. But, you know, vicious statism has a lot in common, no matter whether it's Nazi or communist. I mean, the people who wish to wreck freedom have a lot in common.

Nehemia: Explain what “statism” is. I think a lot of the listeners don't know what it is.

Charles: Statism is the idea that the state runs things, that the state is supreme. Either the state is supreme, or that you're endowed by your Creator with unalienable rights, one or the other is true. And in America, we believe that you are endowed by your Creator with inalienable rights, or unalienable rights as the case may be. And statists believe that your rights come from the state. Let me give you just a very brief example.

I interviewed the great historian, G. Edward Griffin on my program, and he said that statists believe that your rights are software installed by the government. And freedomists believe that your rights are hardware installed by your Creator.

Nehemia: And the point is that if the state gives you a privilege, it can take away the privilege. A state can try to deny you rights, but they actually can't take away your rights, because they're given to you by God.

Charles: Supposedly not without due process of law, which I believe is in the Constitution.

Nehemia: Let me give a little bit of background for this interview, so people understand where I'm coming from here. So, I started spending a lot of time in Texas a few years ago, and I befriended this police officer in the DFW area. And he said to me one day, he says, “What kind of gun do you have, Nehemia?” I said, “Gun? I don't have a gun.” I grew up in Chicago. The only people I knew who had guns were gangbangers and drug dealers and the police, of course. And I said to him, “I don't have a gun.” And he said to me, and this is a quote, he says, “If you're a Jew in Texas without a gun, then you're a stupid Jew.” And I thought, “Wow, okay. A policeman told me this.” And I don't come from a line of people who had guns. And I'm gonna ask you in a minute to share your background, because I think you come from a very different background in relation to guns.

Well, that was what I call my first witness. Then my second witness, Charles, was I was in Israel during the knife intifada. About a couple of years ago we had this spate of attacks where they were just knifing Jews every day. And I would literally be having conversations with people. I'd be going to meet a friend at a cafe, and my friend would say, “Well, what are you carrying?” And I would literally be carrying in my pocket a small hammer, and my friend would be carrying like a kitchen knife and things, because that's all we had. Because in Israel, we don't actually have the right to bear arms, at least that's recognized by the government, which is kind of surprising to a lot of people. And these were functional things. I'm carrying a hammer, ‘cause someone may come with a knife at me and attack me, and I don't have the ability to have a gun. Well, in the United States I actually have that right to have a gun.

And then there was an incident in 2015. Rabbi Menachem Margolin, he was one of the leading Rabbis of the European Jews and he's a Rabbi in Belgium. And he wrote a letter to the European governments asking for Jews to be allowed to carry guns in order to defend themselves. And this is after anti-Semitic attacks in Europe had become rampant. And you had a situation where the police had openly said, for example, in France there were these police who were Muslims who said, “We're not going to defend Jewish synagogues.” And even when they were defending synagogues, the police can't be there 24/7. And so, the Rabbi was asking for permission for Jews to have guns to defend their synagogues. And he wasn't even talking about every Jew, he was talking about armed security guards. And they were denied that right.

And it made me start to think, so when I'm in the United States I have the right to bear arms and I don't exercise that right. Maybe I should. And so, I actually made it one of my goals to buy a gun, to be trained in how to use that gun and to get a license to carry that gun in the state of Texas. And I've actually done that. And I'm actually the first person in the history of my family, Charles, in the history of my family, going back to King David, I'm the first person ever to own a gun of any kind. So, tell us about your background and your introduction to guns.

Charles: Well, my dad came home from World War II with a .45, and when I got old enough to be curious, he moved it out of our apartment and left it at my grandfather's house. Once a week on Saturday, when we'd go to visit my grandfather, he would take out the .45 if I was behaving myself. He'd show me how it worked, and he'd make sure I left it pointed in a safe direction, not at people. It was a real gun, and of course, there was no ammo present. And when I got to about six-and-a-half or seven or so, he showed me how it came apart and went together. And he says, “When you can do that by yourself, you can shoot it.” And then he left the room, took the ammo and left me with the gun disassembled. I went on a six or seven-year project to figure out how that bleep-bleep thing went back together again.

If he’d have showed me one trick that I've known for a long time now, I could have put it together when I was six. But no, he wasn't gonna do that. He wasn't gonna show me how to assemble the top and then slide it on and then just hold up on the spring so that it didn't pop out. And then, I could have just put it against the table, pushed down on the handle of the gun while the front sight was buried against the table, and then put the pin in it while that was happening. If he’d have showed me how to do that, I could have done it at seven.

But he did it the smart way. He showed me how it worked, and every time I asked him, he'd take it apart and put it together again. And then he'd leave it disassembled, laying on the bed where I slept when I stayed over at my grandfather's house. And one day, I think I was about 11, I figured out how it went together. I sat there and I looked very frustrated, sweating. And actually, some of my first experiences with profanity came with trying to put that gun together.

Nehemia: And for our younger listeners, Charles, this is before the advent of Google and YouTube. Because today you'd figure it out in five minutes by watching a YouTube video, but back then you had to figure it out yourself.

Charles: So, I figured out how to put it together, and then I quietly stuck the gun back in. There was a blue zipper bag that he had. I put it in this, and it was in a brown paper bag inside the blue bag. So, I left it assembled, and I said, “Hey, dad, can I play with the gun?” And he said, “Sure,” and he stuck his hand in there for a bag of parts and came out with an assembled .45. And he said, “Hey, what happened here?” Actually, he uttered one of the first times I'd ever heard him using, you know, what the fun! And there was an assembled .45 in there, and he goes, “I got it.” And he says, “Show me,” and it took me 15 or 20 minutes of sweating to get it done, but I actually put it together again. He goes, “When do you want to go shoot it?” I said, “How about for my birthday?” So, my birthday was up and coming, I think it was my 11th birthday. And we went over to “Bell’s” and that thing made music so sweet, I've never lost the tune.

Nehemia: And what is Bell’s? You went to "Bell’s,” what's that?

Charles: Bell’s Gun Range, that was back when Ma Bell still owned it. Ma Bell was the little old lady that started the place. Illinois hates guns. And so, they eventually ran it out of business and the neighboring Police Department engineered their losing their FFL so they couldn't sell guns.

Nehemia: That's the Federal Firearms License?

Charles: Right, yeah. They couldn't sell guns there anymore, but they still had the range. And eventually, it went downhill and downhill and downhill. And finally, they closed and the place has been bulldozed. It's something else now. It's a shame, but a lot of us fired our first shots there. Anyway, I grew up and finished high school and some college. And then I got a job opportunity to move out to Arizona. And in Chicago you could own a handgun as long as it was registered, while the scam was, “Okay, here's my registration.” “Oh, we don't accept those.”

Nehemia: Wait, what?

Charles: That was how Chicago worked. From 1978 until it changed in 2008, the scam was you could own any handgun you wanted as long as it was registered. So, attempt to register a gun and not be a police officer, or a security guard, or a court official, or a politician, and the answer was, “We don't accept those.” And so, that's what the McDonald lawsuit in 2010 was all about.

Nehemia: So, you're actually, legitimately a firearms refugee from Illinois, from Chicago.

Charles: I'm a political refugee for the right to keep and bear arms. I would have stayed in Chicago. If it had been legal to register a gun and I could have legally owned a gun, I would have stayed in Chicago. But what they did was, they made me unwelcome. They made me unwelcome by disliking the way I dress, which is going armed. And if I couldn't do that legally, I wasn't going to give Illinois or Chicago any of my tax money, because they had disqualified themselves from my participation, by outlawing what at the time was my hobby and is now part of my profession.

I'm a state-certified concealed weapons instructor, and I teach a mighty fine class on the laws on the use of force and self-defense, and some of the physical aspects. The basics; not a gun fighting school, but the basics and how-to and armed self-defense. I teach that, and it's part of my living, it's part of my livelihood. And I figured out a way to make my hobby into a part of my profession.

Nehemia: Now, you live currently in Arizona, and you're a co-founder of the Arizona Citizens Defense League. And I want people to know what that is and to look that up. That was the organization that was the main push behind Arizona getting constitutional carry, so this is actually a really important organization that you're a co-founder of.

Charles: Right. Constitutional carry was our flagship, but we've had 58 good bills signed by three different governors.

Nehemia: In the video that you guys have - and it's really an amazing video, I'm gonna put a link to it on my website, nehemiaswall.com, "No Guns for Jews," - and there's a line there that's really powerful. Rabbi Bendory, he says, "Self-preservation is a God-given right, as described in the Torah.” And then he says, "Contrary to God's law, many Jewish politicians and influential Jewish leaders promote gun control, gun control measures that take away that right.”

And I want to talk about those Jewish politicians and leaders who are against guns, who are in favor of gun control, in a minute. But before that, this being Hebrew Voices, I want to just bring a few passages from the Torah. You actually bring these in the video. First one is Leviticus 19:16, and it says, "Lo ta'amod al dam re'ekha,” “You shall not stand by the blood of your neighbor or your fellow.” And what that means is, if you see someone being physically harmed and their blood being spilled, you're required by the Torah to intervene and get involved to try to save that person.

Charles: Right. It's no different than if someone is drowning. You're not going to stand there and watch them drown, and you're not going to stand there and watch them be assaulted. It's evil to say that you should stand there. I mean, what are you, in line to be eaten by the Morlocks?

Nehemia: Oh, that's a reference to HG Wells, “The Time Machine.” Okay. Anyway, the other passage is Exodus 22:2-3 which in Hebrew is verses 1-2, "Im bamakhteret yimatze haganav vehuka vamet, en lo damim.” It's speaking about a thief breaking into your house. It's as if the thief is found in a tunnel and is smitten and dies, there is no blood guilt. And what that means is that if someone's breaking into your house and there's a reasonable expectation this person is going to use violence against you, if he's caught and you kill him, you're actually allowed to do that. And in the Talmud, in Sanhedrin 72A and Yoma 85B, there's a famous phrase in Hebrew, “Haba lehorgekha hashkem lehorgo” which is, “He who comes to kill you, rise up first and kill him.” And they base it on that passage in Exodus 22, that if someone's breaking into your house, if he's breaking in at night through a tunnel or some other means, he knows that if he's caught that you're going to defend your property. And so, he's coming in with the thought that, “Okay, I'm going to use deadly force.”

And even though you can't read his mind, his actions show that he's willing to use deadly force, and therefore you are allowed to defend yourself with deadly force. And then, we have an example of that, we call that in Hebrew "din rodef,” the “law of the pursuer,” which is derived from 2 Samuel 2:19-23. That's the story of Abner and Asahel, where this man named Asahel is chasing Abner. And he only wants to really take Abner's cloak, he doesn't even want to kill him. And Abner warns him, he says, “If you come after me, I'm gonna have to defend myself.” And he keeps coming, and he kills him.

So, this idea of what we learn from Scripture, from the Tanakh, from the Bible, is really a contrast to the principles that seem to be espoused by leftists in America, by what you call the “statists,” these Jewish statists. And I want you to talk about that a little bit. Why is it that you have these Jewish politicians, prominent Jewish politicians and leaders, who are against guns, who want to establish gun control? I mean, it's this paradox.

Charles: They're not against guns, they're against rights, let's be clear, because a gun has no rights in and of itself. It's the person, only a natural person can have rights. And the problem is that the religion of the Jewish statists is not Judaism. Their religion is socialism, their religion is statism. So, as a result, what they've done is they've forsaken God, and they've embraced the religion of collectiveness. They've embraced a collective philosophy, as opposed to embracing their Jewish roots. It's a shame. You know, I see people like that, and it makes me want to rend my clothes and say that we've lost a soul, because they're clearly not following God. Who are they following? All their actions, they mistrust the individual to decide for themselves. And that's really what the issue is here. It's, do we obey the collective, or do we respect the individual? And that's the problem.

You see, God's law respects the individual choice that if someone comes after him, and if in his reasonable judgment, you know, someone is coming in a tunnel into your house, or someone is breaking in the door at night, God trusts the judgment of the Jew to defend himself. But Schumer doesn't. So, either God's wrong or Schumer, I'll let you pick who. The idea that you're not trustable to make decisions for yourself, that's the statists’ thing. The whole idea, whether it's that with guns or whether it's Bloomberg with 32-ounce sodas, or any number of other things that you have to first get permission from the state before you exercise your rights.

The Supreme Court, if you read the Heller Decision, has said that the right to keep and bear arms is a basic individual right on par with free speech, and any other basic constitutional right. The Heller Decision was Dick Heller. He was a Special Police Officer for Washington DC. He carries a gun for work, and the government told him, the DC law said that he couldn't have a gun in his house. So, I mean, it's not that he's not qualified. It's not that he's not trained. But because he doesn't have government permission, he can't have a gun in his house for self-defense, and because he's not a member of some militia.

Well, what the Heller Decision said is that private ownership of a handgun in your home is not conditional upon malicious service. And it's a basic individual fundamental right, and that the city of DC cannot abridge. They can’t burden your right to such an extent that you can't exercise. They may regulate it, but they can't regulate it out of existence.

Nehemia: I started to explain before what got me interested in your organization. And so, I go to this class to get my, we call it in Texas LTC, License to Carry, because I want to follow the law. You know, like you said, Jews are law-abiding. So, I'm in this class, and the teacher is asking all the people, “Why do you want a gun?” And there were interesting answers. And I told him, “It was the Dallas area police officer who had said to me, ‘If you're a Jew in Texas without a gun, you're a stupid Jew.’” So, he said to me, “Oh, you should look into the Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership. They're better than the NRA.” I said, “What? No, no, Jews are against guns. I don't know what you're talking about.”

In fact, an hour before we started this discussion, I was talking to a friend and mentioned the story about, you know, Jews having guns. And this person said, “Oh no, Jews don't own guns.” And so, it was this paradox. It was almost an oxymoron, Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership? No, Jews don't have guns. And in fact, what I find out from your organization is that Jews being stripped of guns was essentially, historically, a way of controlling Jews and persecuting Jews. And one of the things you guys talk about on your website is the historical connection between genocides in the 20th century and gun control.

Charles: Yeah, there's a very good movie called "Innocence Betrayed" that we did a number of years ago. It's a landmark piece of work, it's been quoted in a lot of places. But it shows how the precursor to a lot of genocides was the disarmament of the population. It goes through six or seven of them, of course the Nazi one, but it also goes to the Armenian genocide almost 25 years before World War Two. And it goes through the genocide that Pol Pot engaged in. It goes into the genocide of Mao Tse-tung. It goes into genocides around the world; the Rwandan massacre is in there.

It goes through a lot of times in history when people have been disarmed by their governments. In fact, there's a term for it, it's called “democide,” murder of the people. And more people in the 20th century were killed by their own governments than were ever killed in wars. And it's demonstratable, it's a provable fact.

And the precursor act in every single time there has been a democide is the disarmament of the public. And you know, gun control for Jews is not new. I mean, throughout the centuries sword control, when swords were the modern handgun of their day, and bows and arrows were the modern rifles of their day, and crossbows were the modern bump fire stocks of the day, I mean, you had these things that were the weapon of the day that many Jews were banned from having in times before guns were in vogue. So, it's not like gun disarmament is new to guns. Disarmament, especially of the Jews, is something that's been going on for a very long time.

Nehemia: Jews should be the group that's more in favor of the right to bear arms than anybody else. And that's why when I found out about your organization I said, “I need to speak to these people, Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership.” And yet, many Jews in the United States are open prominent advocates of gun control. I mean, it doesn't make sense.

Charles: Right, but an equal number, or at least a significant number are very pro rights when it comes to the right to keep and bear arms. And the most prominent pro rights, pro self-defense people are Jews, as well. For instance, the lawyer who's won landmark cases for this is a dual Israeli-American citizen raised in Israel, Alan Gura. Yeah, and the prime leadership guy on suing the living daylights out of jurisdictions that won't comply with the constitution is Alan Gottlieb.

Nehemia: Who's Jewish. Meaning you have Jews on both sides, yet for some reason they’re...

Charles: And you have significant, heavyweight ones. You got David Kopel, who's the heavyweight guy in terms of rights. Kopel is an observant Jew who is an attorney, and has been on a lot of these cases like Heller, and McDonald, and Madigan versus Roe in Illinois that got them concealed carry. A lot of these guys are Jewish. And I mean, the significant, heavy duty pro rights people, a lot of them, probably one of the most outspoken - and he's an advisor to JPFO and erudite spokesman for the right to keep and bear arms - is Alan Corwin, who is about as Jewish as it gets.

Nehemia: Wow, so I think the reason that a lot of people are against guns is that they're actually afraid of guns. And I've heard this so many times, if you have a gun, you're more likely to shoot yourself than actually use it to defend yourself. And one of the statistics that you bring in the video, "No Guns for Jews" is - and I quote, "According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, every day, 550 rapes and 1,100 murders are prevented just by the intended victim showing a gun.” And that is a mind-boggling statistic. That's a huge number. How come we don't hear about this every time there's a shooting? Yes, it's horrible 60 people were killed. But 1,100 people are alive today because they have a gun to defend themselves.

Charles: Because we don't have honest journalists who care about the facts, unfortunately, many of whom are Jewish.

Nehemia: Wow, and I looked up on the Bureau of Justice Statistics website. They have all these interesting studies from different periods. I'll put a link to this on my website, nehemiaswall.com. From 2007 to 2011, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the United States, there were 235,700 victims of violent crime who defended themselves with a firearm. And that's an average of nearly 50,000 people per year that are defending themselves with firearms and not getting raped, not getting murdered because they have firearms. We're not told this when we hear about how evil guns are.

And another statistic that has been going around is something that was tweeted by Ben Shapiro, and he shows a graph of the increasing firearm ownership versus the decrease in gun murders. It's an inverse relationship. As the number of firearm ownership goes up, the percentage of murders is going down. So, the way it's presented by statist Jews and the left-wing media is that guns are evil and people only die because of guns. But actually, we're seeing that horrible murders and rapes are being prevented because of guns.

Charles: Right. I'll give you something else that you're starting to hear in the media today. There's between 29,000 and 32,000 deaths a year attributed to guns. But of those, about 19,000 a year are suicide. Now look, I'm not advocating for suicide. But the fact that someone does themself in with a gun is a far different thing than a murderer who comes and steals your life from you.

And almost 60 percent of the deaths by firearm are suicide, which means that in the United States, about 11,000 people kill someone with a gun. Of those 11,000, about 1,000 of them are justifiable police killings, and about 1,200 of them a year, more or less, are justifiable killings in self-defense. That brings the statistic down to about 9,000 murders with a gun in a year.

Most of those are in 75 counties in the United States, largely populated counties. And most of those have either a drug or a gang affiliation. If you were to subtract the drug and gang affiliation away from the murders, there's probably about 5,000 a year. Now divide 5,000 by 330 million people in the country, we have a very low gun murder rate and one of the lower among all the developed countries in the world.

Nehemia: And just in contrast, you mentioned suicide, so I looked this up. The country that has the highest suicide rate in the world, I was actually kind of surprised, it's actually Hungary. And Japan is number two. And in both of those countries, you can't get guns. I mean, there's almost no guns in Japan, and Hungary being a European country, has very tight gun control. And those two countries have the highest suicide rates. And when it comes to murders, Russia has four times the murder rate that we have. And in Russia, if you're a private citizen, you can't get a handgun.

Charles: I'll tell you another country that’s got 10 times our murder rate; it’s Honduras, and they've got tight gun control.

Nehemia: And you mentioned that a significant number of the gun murders in the United States are drug-related and gang-related. I gotta wonder how many of those gang murders are carried out with legally purchased licensed handguns. And so, what ends up happening is the bad guys have the guns and you end up preventing the private law-abiding citizen from getting the gun. That's what gun control does.

Charles: Right, exactly. Well, gun control is classically defined as “the punishment of the innocent for the acts of the guilty.” That's what gun control is.

Nehemia: I want to bring something up here. You have this wonderful article on Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership. It's an article and again, I’m gonna link to it on nehemiaswall.com, on my website. The article is called, "Why Jews Hate Guns.” It's a white paper that you guys put out, by Rabbi Dovid Bendory. It's actually really profound, I want people to go and read it.

But the number one reason he lists out of the 10 reasons why Jews hate guns is a desire for utopian moral purity. And I think, really from the Jews I know, this is the number one motivating concept behind opposition to guns. You know, and look, we have this prophecy, it's Isaiah 2, that when the Messiah comes, he'll bring peace to the world. People will beat their swords into plowshares. And the thought is, “Well, let's do that now.”

But we don't live in the world of the Messiah. We live in a fallen world where we have drug crimes and we have ISIS. Really, the number one thing that made me go out and buy a gun, and I mean, I mentioned a few of the things, but one of them was reading this book. Because I really had that thought too, that we should live in a utopian world where we don't need to have guns. But we don't live in that world. And I was reading this book, it was called, "Guns, Germs and Steel,” a profound book that explains all kinds of things in history.

And in the beginning of the book he talks about the Chatham Islands, which are 500 miles east of New Zealand. And he describes that these islands were completely isolated. There was a tribe there called the Moriori. And they were related to the Maori who lived in New Zealand, but the two didn't know each other existed. I'm going to read a few quotes from this book, and you'll see where I'm coming from here. It's really profound.

So, he describes the isolation of these islands, and he says, “With no other accessible islands, the Moriori had to learn how to get along with each other. They did so by renouncing war. The result was a small unwar-like population with simple technology and weapons.” And you hear this and you're like, “It's literally an island paradise where there's no war, everybody lives in peace.” And then he goes on. He says, "In 1835 an Australian seal-hunting ship brought the news to New Zealand of the islands," meaning they didn't know these islands existed. And he explains, "The islands where the inhabitants are very numerous, but they do not understand how to fight and have no weapons. That news was enough to induce 900 Maori from New Zealand to sail to the Chatham Islands.”

“On November 19th, 1835, a ship carrying Maori armed with guns, clubs and axes arrived. Groups of Maori began to walk through the Moriori settlements, announcing that the Moriori were now their slaves and killing those who objected. An organized resistance by the Moriori could still have then defeated the Maori who were then outnumbered two to one. However, the Moriori had a tradition of resolving disputes peacefully. They decided at a council meeting not to fight back but to offer peace, friendship, and a division of resources.”

“Over the course of the next few days, the Maori killed hundreds of Moriori, cooked and ate many of the bodies and enslaved all the others. A Maori conqueror explained, ‘We took possession in accordance with our customs and we caught all the people. Not one escaped. Some ran away from us. These we killed, and others we killed, but what of that? It was in accordance with our custom.’”

And so, I read this around the same time that the Yazidi genocide was taking place. That was in northern Iraq, where ISIS was going through these areas with a group called the Yazidis. They actually did exactly what the Maori had done 200 years earlier. They were slaughtering people and taking them as sex slaves. And it was around the same time that the Boko Haram had kidnapped 300 young girls from a boarding school in northern Nigeria. I looked into this. “Boko Haram” means “Western education is forbidden,” meaning it's a Muslim terrorist organization in northern Nigeria that's in principle opposed to education.

So, it wasn't an accident that they attacked a school, meaning it was part of their platform. They were attacking schools for years. And what they would normally do is, they'd slaughter all the boys and they'd sometimes let the girls go. Well, this time they took the girls as sex slaves, and the world was shocked. And I heard this, and I was reading this thing about the Maori and the Moriori, and I thought, “Wait a minute. If they had been doing this for years, murdering people in these schools in Nigeria, how come every teacher in that school didn't have an AR15? How come there was no security to protect those little girls?”

You know, I lived in Israel for decades and in Israel you can't even get into a school without going through an armed security guard. And there they had hundreds of little girls in a boarding school, and there was no one there to protect them. And then we're told that having guns is evil. No, not having guns when you live in this world is evil. It's just evil. It's evil to leave people undefended and open to attack. If every Yazidi had an AR15 or an AK47, we wouldn't be reading about the Yazidi genocide.

Charles: Right. You know, bevi'at haMashiakh ani ma'amin.

Nehemia: Amen, may it be soon, the coming of the Messiah.

Charles: At the same time, until he or she arrives, maybe it'd be wise to protect your family?

Nehemia: Not just maybe, it's a moral imperative. I think that's what the lessons of history have taught us.

Charles: That was a Jewish maybe.

Nehemia: Okay, a Jewish maybe. And this is the conclusion I've come to, that if you have the ability to have a firearm, then you need to have that firearm to protect you and your family and those around you. And if you don't, you're just opening yourself up to the next genocide and those around you to the next genocide.

Look, it also has a deterrent effect of those people who prevent the rapes and the murders that we mentioned before. Most of those just show the gun to the person and no one ever gets shot. And that's enough to deter the rape or the murder.

So, let's talk about Las Vegas, ‘cause one of the arguments that people have made is that, you know, these bump stock devices are a force multiplier. And so, one person is able to kill 60 people, instead of in the past, someone would go in with a knife and he'd kill a few people. So, what could have prevented this massacre in Las Vegas? What law could have prevented it?

Charles: Nothing. There is no law that would have prevented it. No amount of regulation is going to change what happened in Las Vegas last week. What could have prevented it was a few judiciously placed counter-snipers on top of the buildings surrounding the venue. And once one of the spotters, once one of the counter-snipers said, “We have an active attack going on from the 32nd floor of a certain hotel,” and he says, “I can see where he's shooting. I can see him. I have him in my scope. Permission to fire,” and then permission granted, and bam, he's done. Yeah, he'd have killed a few people, but he wouldn't have injured 500 and he wouldn't have killed 60, or 58 I believe is the official total right now.

But what I'm saying is yes, it could have been stopped and it wouldn't have taken much to do it. Now, agreed, people with licensed handguns at the venue were powerless to change what happened, because of where they were firing on from, and what they were fired on with. But any one of them inside the venue, if they had an AR-15, could have certainly, or any other...I mean, even a bolt action 30-06 could have easily enough shot back at the 32nd story. Whether or not they’d had a braced position from which to take a good shot is questionable. But certainly, having a couple of snipers on the roof of every building around the venue is not an unreasonable thing to do. And the teams that are trained and lawfully able to do stuff like that already exist.

Nehemia: And they do do that, that's not a farfetched thing. In other words, when they have a million people in Times Square for New Year’s celebrations, they actually show you on the news the snipers that are on the roofs to protect people against this exact type of thing.

Charles: Right, exactly. This is not rocket science. This is not new. And what it's done is, it's woken people up to the possibility of what can happen if they're in condition white, which is the mental state of liquid paper, and not paying attention to the surroundings. You could see the people who are in condition yellow, they were the ones, the guy who found a truck with the keys in it and took people to the hospital. People using shirts and other things to tie a tourniquet around a limb to try and staunch the arterial blood flow.

You can see people doing things like this that largely were military veterans, that knew what to do in that circumstance, and I think saved a lot of lives doing it. This is why I don't go to entertainment venues for the most part. When I do, I sit in the back row proximal to the door. If somebody ever comes in to do that, I have a firing angle and I don't go anywhere where I'm a fusila non grata, where the firearm isn't welcome.

Nehemia: I was at an event in Israel about a year ago, and you had to go through security. They checked to see if you had a weapon when you came in. And it was probably only 200 or 300 people there, it wasn't that large of an event. And there was a sniper on one of the roofs nearby, in case something went wrong. And look, it costs money, there's no question about that. You know, do you devote resources to save lives? That's what it comes down to.

And if you have an event with 22,000 people, it's actually hard for me to believe that they didn't have some kind of security like that. I guess that won't happen again, I'm assuming.

Can you just give some last words, maybe some words of hope for people in America and around the world, who are being subjected to gun control and really a witch hunt with this sort of moral panic?

Charles: Get a gun, learn to use it, and learn how to be situationally aware. There's a wonderful book, would it be a Jewish interview without recommending a book?

Nehemia: Please.

Charles: There's a wonderful book by Colonel John Boyd. And it's his autobiography, but Boyd is the man who developed the concept called the OODA Loop. OODA is O-O-D-A, it sounds kind of Hebrew, doesn't it?

Nehemia: It does.

Charles: The OODA loop is, “Observe, Orient, Decide and Act.” And what it is, it's constant vigilance. Some people would almost describe it to a point of hyper-vigilance; I don't. It's just constant vigilance, and observing and constantly comparing the known to the unknown, and looking for incongruities. And if you do that, you will see things that other people just do not see. That happens to me all the time. I notice stuff that other people just don't notice, because they got their nose so far in their phone, it's coming out the other side. In fact, Apple's got a new case on the market. It's got a nose bulge in the back of the phone case.

Nehemia: Okay. Well, Charles, where could people find your information?

Charles: If they want to look at our organization, it's JPFO.org., Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, JPFO.org.

Nehemia: And you mentioned you have a radio program, is that something people can listen to online?

Charles: You can listen live, or if you want to listen to the podcast, it's libertywatchradio.com. So, libertywatchradio.com. Just look on the left side, go down to the recent shows tab, click the recent shows. The last six months of the program are there.

Nehemia: Wonderful. All right Charles, thank you very much and I appreciate you coming and sharing with us.

Charles: Zei gezunt.

Nehemia: All right, Shalom.

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  • shell says:

    This guy really gives me hope for this country. May God bless charles heller in all his work

  • Bruce Sutterby says:

    Hello Folks, If you get a chance watch Peter van Uhm: Why I chose a gun Ted Talk.

  • I had not heard this podcast before. When it came out this year 2020, I was not sure I wanted to listen to it. I must say I learned a lot from this podcast about the history of giving up our guns. Also I learned that Yehovah endorsed our defending ourselves and standing up for our brothers when we see him attacked. Thank you Nehemia for another insightful teaching. Yehovah continue to be with you.

  • Zhui Feng says:

    I am for the right to have and carry guns. Missouri legalized the right to carry concealed without a permit. The local grocery store chain called Schnucks has a sign on the door banning open carry but, concealed carry is ok! ??? Open carry frightens people because they don’t know if you’re a psycho or not. In Missouri you can only shoot if they have broken into your house or if they are shooting at you. You can’t pull a gun on someone if they are threatening to harm you or, stealing or vandalizing your property.
    They also took away our right to make a citizens arrest. If anyone gets a protection order against a gun owner they take away their guns untill the order ends. Hand guns can be Very Good to have but, you better know what the law is. Keep close tabs on your gun too! Someone could borrow without your permission or knowledge, commit a crime with it and put it back. Years later you just might could have a problem. Trust No one! All that said, I grew up with guns and was taught how to be responsible with them as a child. I also like throwing knives and hatchets. They’re a lot of fun and good for survival. Too bad they’re not legal to carry. I have a pair of throwing knives that will go through your car door! I could take out a gunman from up to 100′ away! Go buy a water pipe, make a poster board cone, tape a nail to it. Now you have an effective blow dart gun, add a neural toxin and you can take down a buffalo! Hey, they’re a blast to play darts with. If you all get by Knoxville TN you gotta check out Smokie Mountain Knives, the worlds largest knife shop. They’re on the web too. Humans will always find a way to defend themselves no matter what the law says. Hey, King David took down a giant with a sling. I gotta get me one of those! I know some young women that found a bar with throwing hatchets. They had a blast. Don’t mess with Molly Hatchet she’s been trained! You can carry them in a pack legally but, not on your person.

  • Susan says:

    I a very much in favor of more education and information encouraging Jews to own guns. And for that matter everyone to do so.

  • Steve Starr says:

    Please do more public interest videos! I carry a 45 ACP most every day.

  • Steve says:

    Great video! and I hope to see more of them that deal with daily life issues, from a gun carrying senior citizen Texan. I have drawn my gun or put my hand on it to spoil a criminal act or defend a family pet from a much large dog attacking it. I carry one everyday and for the purpose of preventing a crime on me or someone else.

  • Karen Powell says:

    God’s Scriptures indicates that God is a realist and he expects you to be courageous! We have the laws for responsible weapons ownership.People complain about the NRA. But,it is not NRA members killing.It is fearful,angry,mentally ill,or individuals with criminal backgrounds that either could not honestly obtain a license.People who had shoddy, incomplete background checks by law enforcement or the FBI.

  • Don Cole says:

    I would like to say that just having a gun is not enough. You must learn to use it as would learn to play a instrument. That is practice all of the ways you can use it and all the options you have with the type of ammo and its uses. Think of how would you hide it and the ammo if the government would come and try to take it. Something else is not letting other know about your ownership of guns as to make yourself seem less a suspect. I strongly believe we must teach the youth of our community that gun are not evil, People with an evil hard heart are. You can only hide from an oppressor that is out to kill you for a short while if unarmed before they find you. My father taught me and my brother if it looks like your going to be hunted and die, then die fighting and not to be lambs to slaughter. The last thing is to learn how to live off the land and off the grid of society. If a man can build it, or grow it he will want for nothing but it take practice to make it work.

  • Right on Nehemiah. I have been waiting for years to see “innocents betrayed”. Be careful to not go too far with anything though. I suspect that Aaron Zelman’s early, untimely, and very regrettable death was in large part a result of the anger that he put into his mission. Anger has derailed many otherwise worthy causes that a calm and peaceful spirit would not have.

  • Geoff Robinson says:

    Nehemiah,
    Great show. I am looking into getting reacquainted with JPFO. I used to listen to one of their representatives who was a regular guest on a local talk show program. The entire program was very good. I come from the extreme opposite of Chicago. In about 1971 I can remember riding my bicycle to the outskirts of Fort Collins with my fishing pole and a .22 rifle across the handle bars. Fort Collins is no longer Mayberry, but we have a good sheriff. I carry daily. My son, 24 years now carries daily. My middle daughter will own her own pistol and have a CCW just after her 21st birthday.

    On the show you mentioned that just carrying a fire arm can stop a confrontation. One day about two years ago I was headed home after a two houw martial arts work out. On the main road into Fort Collins, there was a guy driving “road rage” style who ended up in front of me at a double lane left turn lane, As we stopped he was yelling at me in his mirror. I held my hands up palms up to indicate I did not know what was irritating him. Next thing I know, he leapt out of his car, screamed something about why wouldn’t I get out and fight him. He quickly closed the distance to my car. This guy was seeing RED, and not thinking. As he came up to my window he was yelling he was going to pull me out of my car. (There was no options to drive away between other cars and landscape.)
    As he pulled his fist back and appeared to be starting to punch at my window, I raised a 45 APC and would have used it if he had come through the window. When he saw the gun, and yes, it was aimed right between his eyes. He stopped, reversed direction and saying something like “I didn’t mean anything man….” He jumped into his car, and ran a red arrow leaving. he was gone…. I looked at the guy in the car to my right and he was clapping. The folks behind him and myself were giving me “Thumbs up” responses.

    Fort Collins is a safe community, but you never know when you need help or to help someone else.
    Nehemiah…. Thanks for a great show!!
    Geoff
    Fort Collins, CO

  • Janice says:

    Please notice members of all races (colors) have participated in genocide, not just whites. Wickeness is an equal opportunity employer Much depends on one’s view of G-d and all humankind. More Torah to the nantions.

  • Gregg Walker says:

    Look up the story of the Bielski brothers. They resisted the Nazis and saved many Jews in the woods near Bellarus. There is a movie about them called: Defiance – starring Daniel Craig.
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034303/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

    It is a good movie and will give you a lot to consider.

  • Gregg Walker says:

    Right off the bat, I had to comment. YES!! So many of us who are either NRA members or “pro” gun aren’t gun nuts, but we know what history says. I have printed out on my office wall, all the times when governments of the world enacted gun control, then it lists the millions who were slaughtered because they couldn’t defend themselves. The left in America tries to make it all sound so nice and logical to get rid of guns. That has always been the way. There are always people who side with the (soon-to-be) murderous government and support taking guns away from their fellow citizens. How awesome that this gentleman is doing what he is. I have feared for Jews in America because so many are on the left and would never own a gun or would gladly turn them in – to their own destruction (may Yehovah forbid).

  • Thank you Nehemia for sharing your personal journey to gun ownership. It’s a huge deal in a person’s life whenever they take on this responsibility and moral obligation to protect themselves and those around them.

  • Phillip Lester says:

    Please comment on Exodus 22:1-2. “If a thief caught in the act of breaking in is beaten to death, it is not murder; unless it happens after sunrise, in which case it is murder.”

    • Steve Starr says:

      I have learned a few things in my 70 years and one of them is that if a thief breaks into your house in day light knowing that some one is there, they are the most dangerous type of B&E criminals that are willing to do anything to the resident victim.

  • Reyes Nava says:

    Such a powerful message for our times and a reflection of our past. The Jewish people have repeatedly been targeted and history does repeat itself. Jews today (including those in politics) would best be served in following the example of Mordecai and Esther.

    “A copy of the edict to be issued as law in each and every province was published to all the peoples, so that the Jews would be ready for this day to avenge themselves on their enemies.”

    “In them the king granted the Jews who were in each and every city the right to assemble and to defend their lives, to destroy, to kill and to annihilate the entire army of any people or province which might attack them, including children and women, and to plunder their spoil…”

    “For the Jews there was light and gladness and joy and honor.”

    “Thus the Jews struck all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying; and they did what they pleased to those who hated them.”

    May it be so. Shalom, Shalom

  • Nicole Chaplain-Pearman says:

    I’m not opposed to gun ownership per se, but Israel is right to have the strict laws that they do. You should have to prove your competence and mental stability before you’re allowed to own one.

    • That stance is problematic; for the very reason that it is the hateful and the unstable that are most likely to violate your beloved laws.

      • Nicole Chaplain-Pearman says:

        Israel doesn’t seem to have the problems the US has. I have no problem with the right to defend oneself, there are many ways to do that. I do have a problem with the right to own a gun. Mentally ill people, domestic abusers and those previously convicted of a violent offence should have no such right. I’ve known victims of domestic abuse who were put in jeopardy because the abuser had a gun. No thanks! If it’s the government you’re worried about, they will always have bigger weapons than you have including sensors that can detect guns and gold to a depth of 40 ft. There is also the problem of civil asset forfeiture; a police officer or other official can confiscate your property at will, without explanation, even if you’ve done nothing wrong. They can take everything you have and you have no recourse, contrary to popular belief. If you’re a Jewish person, make Aliyah if at all possible because Israel is the only place you’re truly safe in accord with Yehovah’s promise. Forget the USA or anyplace else.