The exact quote is Their treatment of Jewish persons was in this sense orthogonal to their gun control views Orthogonal according to Wiktionary means independent of or irrelevant to I paraphrased that as unconnected to but I m not wedded to that Having said that what Harcourt acknowledges on page 676 is that the Nazis used the gun laws and regulations to further the genocide He then goes on on the following page to say that It is absurd to even try to characterize this as either pro or anti gun control italics added In other words their use of the gun laws in this one instance is not their gun control policy I am open to suggestions as to how we express this subtlety