Last week, Brian Judy, a senior state lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, said that people who support gun control are like people who helped make the Holocaust happen.
Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist who is part of the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility and has backed a gun control measure in Washington state, was his main target. Hanauer has said that his family ran away from the Nazis in Germany.
Judy criticised Hanauer and other people who support gun control at an event on July 23. The event was against I-594, a Washington state initiative that would require criminal background checks for people who buy guns from private sellers, like at gun shows or online. Background checks are already required when a licenced dealer sells a gun, but the initiative would make these checks required for most gun sales and transfers in the state.
At first, Judy talked about a recent article by Hanauer in Politico Magazine that warned about the growing income gap in America. But then, as you can hear in the above audio, he started talking about the Nazis:
Hanauer talks about his family at the end of this article. They are from Germany. In Germany, they had a place where they made pillows. And in one of the last paragraphs, he talks about how the Nazis forced his family to leave Germany. How stupid can these people be? So, he is paying for, and has put half a million dollars toward, the same policy that forced his family to leave Germany. You know that it blows my mind. You just can’t make this stuff up. It’s like, any Jewish person I meet who doesn’t like guns, I think, “Are you serious? Don’t you remember what went on? What caused that to happen? Because the guns were registered and then taken. And now you’re for gun control? You came to this country and now you’re against guns? Why did you have to run away to this country to begin with? Hello! Is anyone at home?”
After the audio was leaked, the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle asked Judy to step down:
It is a very hurtful thing to say that Jewish people who want to stop gun violence have “forgotten” about our history. If someone from the National Rifle Association or any other group repeats the dangerously out-of-date lie that preventing gun violence is related to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, it is not only a sign of ignorance, but it is also very dangerous.
In 2006, a man with a gun broke into the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and shot one woman to death and hurt five others.
The Huffington Post asked the NRA several times for a response to the video, but they never answered.
thanks to Horsesass.org
UPDATE: 10:11 p.m. — Hanauer told Seattle Met Magazine in response: “I’m sad, but I’m not shocked. This is a common argument from the gun lobby’s most extreme members. The lobbyist for the NRA finally said what we already knew they thought in private. I got involved in this work to help us move past this kind of arguing and focus on finding solutions.”