Letter: Gun registration disarms citizens

During his June 4 interview on ABC's "Good Morning America," President Clinton bolstered his reputation as the most overtly anti-gun chief executive in U.S. history by blurting out his belief that Americans should register their firearms.

Author and attorney Stephen Halbrook, who has studied and written on anti-gun policies implemented by Hitler's Nazi regime, notes that gun registration makes it easy for a tyrannical government to confiscate firearms and prey on its subjects. He explains that "denying this historical fact is no more justified than denying that the Holocaust occurred or that the Nazis murdered millions of unarmed people."

One of the many examples he cites is Kristallnacht ("Night of the Broken Glass"), the infamous Nazi rampage against Germany's Jews in November 1938. "It was preceded by the confiscation of firearms from Jewish victims," Halbrook recalls.

President Clinton's gun control agenda is clearly in the Hitlerian tradition. And as American historian and essayist George Santayana once observed, "Those who will not learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them."

FRANK PELTESON

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