An Alaska Republican who is the most senior member of the U.S. House of Representatives argued against gun control by wondering how many Jewish people "were put in the ovens" because they were not armed.
Rep. Don Young, who has a history of off-the-cuff remarks that sometimes draw criticism, made the comments last week in response to a question about what the federal government and cities can do to stop school shootings.
"How many millions of people were shot and killed because they were unarmed? Fifty million in Russia because their citizens weren't armed. How many Jews were put into the ovens because they were unarmed?" Young, 84, said at a meeting of the Alaska Municipal League, a lobbying group for local communities, in the state capital of Juneau.
The comments were "taken entirely out of context," Young spokeswoman Murphy McCollough said Wednesday.
"He was referencing the fact that when Hitler confiscated firearms from Jewish Germans, those communities were less able to defend themselves," she said. "He was not implying that an armed Jewish population would have been able to prevent the horrors of the Holocaust, but his intended message is that disarming citizens can have detrimental consequences."
Jewish groups denounced the remarks.
"It is mind-bending to suggest that personal firearms in the hands of the small number of Germany's Jews (about 214,000 remaining in Germany in 1938) could have stopped the totalitarian onslaught of Nazi Germany when the armies of Poland, France, Belgium and numerous other countries were overwhelmed by the Third Reich," the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement Wednesday.
Young showed a "tremendous lack" of understanding of the history of the Holocaust and how the Nazis treated Jewish people, said Rabbi Michael Oblath of Congregation Beth Sholom in Anchorage, the state's oldest and largest synagogue.
"It's misleading, it's misrepresentative of the events, and I think it's cold," Oblath said.
The Alaska Democratic Party's executive director said the comments show it is time for residents to vote out Young.
"Don Young continues to show he is completely divorced from reality," Jay Parmley said.
However, the longtime lawmaker is rarely in danger of being unseated in the heavily Republican state.
Young is not the first House Republican to face criticism for comments made after the Feb. 14 high school massacre in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 students were killed.
U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney of New York said on a radio program last week that "many" people who commit mass murder turn out to be Democrats. She offered no evidence.
Young's comments emerged when Dimitri Shein, a Democrat who asked the initial question, posted a video of the lawmaker's response on YouTube.
Young intimated that violent video games might play a role in gun violence. A former schoolteacher, he said children 40 years ago had brought guns to schools "and they didn't shoot anybody."
"Something's happened, it's easy to blame an object," Young said. "Why don't we look at the mental concept and the family structure?" He noted that he supports arming teachers.
Young, who was first elected in 1973, has the task of ensuring civility in the U.S. House after receiving a largely ceremonial title earlier this year given to the longest-serving member of the chamber.
He has faced blowback for other remarks.
Several years ago, he had to apologize for using a racial epithet when referring to Hispanic migrant workers and also backtracked when he said a female colleague "doesn't know a damn thing what she's talking about."
His staff had to apologize in 2014 after he spoke at an Alaska high school a day after a student's suicide. When asked what his office was doing to combat the state's high suicide rate, he stunned the audience by saying suicide showed a lack of support from family and friends.
