NEW JERSEY MILITIA

Dear Jewish Congregation,

The 20^th century may go down in history as the century of mass murder. On the other hand Americans, if they will, can avoid that plague in the new millenium.

Between 1900 and 1987 governments murdered more than 169 million innocents, five times more than the 34 million combatants and civilians killed in war during the same period. To put 20^th century killing in perspective a mid-range estimate is that pre-20^th century governments murdered 133 million, whereas from the 30^th century BC to the 19^th century 41 million perished in war. The historian Rummel concludes that, "Whatever the true statistics, there is no need to know the actual number killed to see that government has been truly a cold-blooded mass murderer, a global plague of man's own making." Nor would one-world government be less bloody, to judge by the murder and torture inflicted by United Nations troops in Rwanda and Somalia.

Compared to the "dekamegamurderers" (Rummel's term for regimes that murdered more than 10 million: the Soviet Union, 62 million; Communist China, 35 million; Nazis, 21 million; Nationalist China, 10.1 million) the United States government seems benign. Still its record is doleful -- "surely tens of thousands of Filipinos" were murdered in the Spanish-American war; hundreds of thousands of noncombatants were killed in the bombing of German and Japanese cities; 5500 or 6000 were murdered in Vietnam; 60,000 were murdered in Cambodia . This is not to unduly criticize our government, which is one of the more restrained. It simply illustrates what government -- any government, including our own -- is capable of. Nor is such killing necessarily confined to military operations abroad if the actions of federal police in the 1990s are any indication.

Why didn't 169 million victims fight back? A few did, notably the Warsaw Jews -- with a half dozen revolvers. But most lacked the means to do so. The 20^th century unfortunately validated George Mason's 18^th century observation that "to disarm the people [is] the best and most effectual way to enslave them." Mason and the other framers feared what government could do. They realized that "it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms."

In the spirit of life, therefore, the New Jersey Militia herewith offers to distribute to your congregation the booklet enclosed. Racist gun control, the subject of the booklet, was a prerequisite to the lynching of 3,446 blacks in this country and the murder of six million Jews overseas. Fortunately today all Americans have the right -- some would say the obligation -- to defend themselves, and their neighbors, from attacks like those that have so stained our century. If you are interested please let us know how many copies of the booklet you would like.

Sincerely,

New Jersey Militia