Saturday, January 12, 2013

A Rebuttal to Alex Jones

Two things: One, there are so many things to make fun of in Alex Jones, the radio host and King of the Hill reject, but as a sometimes-avid reader of history, the parts of his rants about tyrants taking guns got me thinking how inaccurate he is. And two, this is a neutral as possible informal post, so there's no citations or anything, and I am by no means being an authority on the subject here, and for all I know this post could be inaccurate without me knowing it. or something. Anyway, here it is:
The American Revolutionary War began in 1775, and enemies of the British such as the French were supplying weapons to the Patriots; meanwhile there were a number of loyalists who wanted to stay under British rule, not everyone was taking up arms. Hitler, he was popular and legally elected, taking advantage of the Weimar republic's weakened state from the Great Depression; plus, many Germans probably did not own personal firearms at the time, although there were also many paramilitary groups in 1930s Germany from across the political spectrum, but that's enough on Hitler for this. Stalin, had the might of the Soviets on his side to purge millions of people, and probably the only people around in the Soviet Union for a really long time to have firearms, and also had the gulags. Mao, during the early years of the People's Republic didn't take away guns, but rather used campaigns of purging and getting people to rat out others, and there were some counter-revolutionary rebellions that did exist with weapons, at least in the 50s I'm guessing. Castro, apparently he has loved guns since he was a kid, don't know how that's relevant but couldn't hurt. And Hugo Chavez, I haven't done any research since I'm nervous I'll find scary shouting posts on Google and not a single statistics chart.
Okay, didn't turn out as well as I thought, but I think the point is clear. Or not, so I'll spell it out: I couldn't find anything on stealing guns away to prevent being overthrown, and the statements made in his CNN interview show an awful ignorance to history and factors such as cultural context.

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