(WWJ) – The Michigan GOP is facing backlash after a series of controversial social media posts on Wednesday likening proposed gun reform legislation to the Holocaust.
A photo posted to the party’s Twitter and Facebook pages appears to match an image stored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, showing rings taken from Jewish prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp.
Along with the photo is a meme-style caption that reads “before they collected all these wedding rings… they collected all the guns.” The post was met with opposition from both Republicans and Democrats.
After hours of receiving criticism over the posts online, Chairwoman Kristina Karamo held a press conference. But not to apologize for the posts.
Karamo rather doubled down on the message that was sent.
“We have a team, we have a fantastic communications team and the thing about it is… I stand behind the statement,” Karamo said during the press conference. “As I mentioned, I am a student of history. As I mentioned before, growing up with Blacks and immigrants and hearing their stories about government abuse, it is important that we look to history to learn for the future. There’s a reason the quote ‘history repeats itself’ is so common. Because for whatever reason, people refuse to learn from it.”
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Speaking live on WWJ Wednesday evening, Executive Director of the Jewish Community Council, Rabbi Asher Lopatin says he believes Karamo has the wrong approach.
“I was very saddened, I was disappointed,” Lopatin said. “Because it showed a complete lack of sensitivity to the hurt in the Jewish community of using the Holocaust for a political cause.”
“If I drew a comparison between the abuse and the mass murder of Native Americans, would there be any controversy? No there wouldn’t be,” Karamo said in the press conference. “So, the Democratic Party, in order to distract away from the issue, wants to drum up false controversy. There are people of all religions, races, to protect their Second Amendment rights and that’s what we’re gonna fight to protect.”
Karamo also made similar comments in a social media post earlier Wednesday, referencing the enslavement of Black Americans, disarming and killing of Native Americans and putting Japanese Americans in internment camps.
“I disagree with her. I think if there were to be a picture of a slave ship and she would say ‘this is the same thing as the legislation that’s coming through on gun reform,’ I think African-Americans would be horrified,” Lopatin said on WWJ.
“I know that Chairwoman Karamo is interested in history. And that’s great. And condemning, of course, the murder of six million Jews, but to use that for a political pawn is unacceptable and is painful and I wish that she would have listened to that and would take it down. And my understanding is that it’s not down yet,” he said.”
As of 8:30 p.m. Wednesday all posts remained on Michigan GOP and Karamo’s personal Twitter pages.
Lopatin says he plans to reach out to Karamo to try and educate her and the GOP on why the tweets and ensuing press conference were hurtful for the Jewish community.
In the days after the deadly shooting on the Michigan State University campus the Michigan legislature introduced a package of gun reform bills that would add universal background checks, requirements for safe storage and extreme risk protection orders, otherwise known as “red flag laws.”
Red flag laws are intended to temporarily remove guns from people with potentially violent behavior through a judge's order and at the request of law enforcement or family members in hopes of preventing them from hurting themselves or others, according to the Associated Press.
The package of bills was passed by the Senate last week and is now before the Michigan House of Representatives.
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