You know who else got a splash on the Drudge Report? twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew…

— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) January 9, 2013

Well, we have known for a long time that Matt Drudge has been scraping the bottom of the barrel. Whether it’s catering to the Alex Jones conspiracy set with link after link to Infowars and similar conspiracy nut sites, or feeding links to white supremacists and racists, his promoted links have jumped the proverbial shark.

So, it’s not particularly surprising that he’s decided to come out and directly compare President Obama’s suggestion that he might use executive orders to move ahead with gun control (not gun confiscation) measures in the wake of a series of mass murders with the actions of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

I’m rather surprised he left off Mao and Pol Pot from the trumped up nonsense.

Never mind that the comparisons are specious and misleading. For starters, the gun lobby’s favorite quip about Nazi Germany and confiscation of guns is pretty much wrong. It’s reached the level of myth that the Nazis banned guns before undertaking the Second World War and Holocaust.

Germans had no right to bear arms between the 1919 constitution and the 1928 Gun Law. That was in the aftermath of World War I. Hitler rose to power in 1933, and Hitler’s government further revised gun regulations in 1938 to deregulate ownership and transfer of rifles and shotguns.

Nazi Germany did restrict guns, but specifically directed the restrictions against Jews (along with the rest of the Nuremberg Laws that were designed to treat Jews as subhumans).

Now, there are some on the right who are gleefully pointing out the irony that some on the left are dismayed by Drudge’s comparison of Hitler to Obama when some on the left made the Bush=Hitler comparison. That’s weak tea and meant to divert attention from the fact that Obama isn’t doing anything even approaching what two of the worst tyrants of the 20th Century did. It’s a further demonization of President Obama and meant to undermine the President’s potential ability to shape the gun control debate.

After all, the President and US Supreme Court (including most recently in Heller) have recognized the sanctity of the individual right to bear arms. The difference is that most Americans actually understand the need to regulate the right and to keep firearms out of those who should not be allowed near them. It means tightening up existing laws and regulations, improved enforcement, and working with lawful firearms owners to make sure that those weapons don’t fall into the wrong hands.

Gun control is not gun confiscation.