MI GOP Chairwoman Stands By Post Comparing Gun Reform To Holocaust

MICHIGAN — State Republican leaders took heat from both sides of the aisle Wednesday after posting a controversial tweet comparing gun reform legislation to the Holocaust.

The meme, sent out by the official Michigan Republican Party Twitter account, displayed a 1945 photograph of wedding rings that were taken by Germans from Holocaust victims with the words, "Before they collected all these wedding rings ... They collected all the guns." The 1945 photograph is stored at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The post comes as Michigan Democrats are pushing through a slew of gun legislation that includes expanding background checks for firearm purchases, safety storing guns where children are present and "extreme risk" protection orders that would allow a judge to temporarily take away firearms from a home if an individual is deemed a risk to themselves or others.

The Nazi German regime under Adolf Hitler in 1938 did adopt rules banning Jews from owning guns, while loosing them for other German citizens following the Treaty of Versailles, which placed strict gun laws, according to Bernhard Harcourt, a Columbia University law professor.

But the regime did so by targeting a religious ethnic group without any judicial process, while the state legislation seeks a judicial process to take away guns from an individual displaying threatening behavior.

Numerous lawmakers from both sides of the aisle blasted the post.

"This tweet by @MIGOP is absolutely inappropriate and offensive and should be taken down immediately," Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, wrote on Twitter.

"State Party only has two main jobs," Livingston County Republican Party and chief of staff to state Sen. Lana Theis, Meghan Reckling said. "1. Raise Money 2. Win Elections. Memes like this don’t help further either of those goals."

Some Democrats directly criticized the head of the Michigan Republican Party, Kristina Karamo, who assumed the head of the state party in February.

"Haven’t the victims of the Holocaust suffered enough than to be shamefully exploited in death by this vile post?" Michigan Sen. Jeremy Moss, a Southfield Democrat said. "Anti-semitism thrives when these grotesque distortions of history diminish it."

Karamo, however, issued no apology and defended the post with attacks against Democrats on slavery and abortion.

"We will not be silent as the Democratic Party, the party who fought to enslave Black Americans, and currently fights to murder unborn children, attempt to disarm us," Karamo said. "Our 2nd Amendment was put in place to protect us from aspiring tyrants."

Karamo also held a news conference Wednesday in Macomb County, where she further doubled down defending the post.

"We're a different Republican Party," Karamo said. "We are not the Republican Party who apologizes and runs away from our positions. It's a reason the Republican Party has gotten kicked in the teeth the last three cycles. Because it's been a party that's always apologizing. We're done."

Rabbi Asher Lopatin, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council/AJC, attended the news conference and said the Jewish community is hurting and offended.

"Take it down for a day, talk to people in the community and then consider putting it back," Lopatin said. "But the fact that it wasn’t even taken down when I believe you had a lot of complaints, shows a lack of sensitivity. Almost a lack, I hate to say, a lack of decency because it’s exploiting the Holocaust."

Karamo then asked Lopatin if he speaks for every Jewish person, to which Lopatin responded with "absolutely not," so Karamo called his argument "disingenuous."

Stu Sandler, a Michigan Republican political consultant who is Jewish, also hoped Karamo would take down the post comparing the gun reform legislation to the Holocaust.

"Simple rules. Only use holocaust imagery/examples when talking about the Holocaust or other genocides," Standler wrote on Twitter. "Hopefully the tweet in question will be taken down."

When discussing an infringement on rights, the Holocaust, which was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators, is commonly used in misleading ways.

Many, specifically within the Jewish community, see belittling the devastation of the Holocaust could lead to more antisemitic acts. A recent Anti-Defamation League study placed Michigan ranked fourth in the nation for white supremacist propaganda distribution in 2022.

As of Wednesday morning, the controversial post was still up on the Michigan GOP twitter page.