It never will happen again. And gun control had absolutely NOTHING to do with the Holocaust. When he came to power Adolf Hitler LOOSENED gun regulations.
Obviously, this is lunacy. But is there even a kernel of truth to the idea that Hitler’s gun control laws somehow allowed the Holocaust to happen?
The answer is more nuanced than a simple “no.” In 1938, one day after Kristallnacht (a state-sanctioned pogrom that led to the burning of synagogues, destruction of Jewish businesses and property, and is generally considered to have been the beginning of a new phase of anti-Jewish violence), the German government issued a decree banning Jews from “acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons,” and requiring those who owned such weapons to turn them in to authorities. The punishment was imprisonment.
Indisputably, then, the Nazis opposed ownership of guns by Jews. But – as hardly needs to be said – Nazis opposed Jews in general, and laws designed to disenfranchise and drive them out of Germany were implemented long before 1938, when the genocide began in earnest.
Moreover, gun control in Germany did not begin under the Nazis. In fact, except for bans on gun ownership by Jews and other perceived enemies, experts generally agree that the Third Reich’s gun laws were overall more relaxed than those enacted under its predecessor government, the Weimar Republic.
Bernard Harcourt, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, traced the evolution of German guns laws between 1919 and 1938 in an excellent 2004 working paper, “On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars.” Harcourt notes that the Weimar Republic, reflecting the Treaty of Versailles’ “draconian” restrictions on weapons possession, banned gun ownership outright in 1919. Its gun laws were relaxed in 1928, but continued to require that all weapons be registered. The 1938 weapons law enacted under Hitler “represented a further liberalization of gun control regulations” [emphasis added] – deregulating the acquisition and sales of guns and ammunition, exempting entire groups from the permit requirement, lowering the age at which it was legal to own a gun from 20 to 18, and extending the validity of permits from one to three years.
“[W]ith regard to disarming the Jews, there is no dispute that the Nazis did disarm the Jews aggressively,” Harcourt concluded. But “Hitler intended to liberalize gun control laws in Germany for ‘trustworthy’ German citizens, while disarming ‘unreliable’ persons, especially opponents of National Socialism and Jews, [so] [i]t is absurd to even try to characterize this as either pro-or anti-gun control. But if forced to, it seems fair to conclude – at least preliminarily – that the Nazis were in favor of less gun control than the Weimar Republic for the ‘trustworthy’ German citizen – while disarming and engaging in a genocide of the Jewish population.”
It never will happen again. And gun control had absolutely NOTHING to do with the Holocaust. When he came to power Adolf Hitler LOOSENED gun regulations.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=557183
From http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/11/29/ammo-company-fudge-facts-and-taste-to-sell-its-wares/
Obviously, this is lunacy. But is there even a kernel of truth to the idea that Hitler’s gun control laws somehow allowed the Holocaust to happen?
The answer is more nuanced than a simple “no.” In 1938, one day after Kristallnacht (a state-sanctioned pogrom that led to the burning of synagogues, destruction of Jewish businesses and property, and is generally considered to have been the beginning of a new phase of anti-Jewish violence), the German government issued a decree banning Jews from “acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons,” and requiring those who owned such weapons to turn them in to authorities. The punishment was imprisonment.
Indisputably, then, the Nazis opposed ownership of guns by Jews. But – as hardly needs to be said – Nazis opposed Jews in general, and laws designed to disenfranchise and drive them out of Germany were implemented long before 1938, when the genocide began in earnest.
Moreover, gun control in Germany did not begin under the Nazis. In fact, except for bans on gun ownership by Jews and other perceived enemies, experts generally agree that the Third Reich’s gun laws were overall more relaxed than those enacted under its predecessor government, the Weimar Republic.
Bernard Harcourt, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, traced the evolution of German guns laws between 1919 and 1938 in an excellent 2004 working paper, “On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars.” Harcourt notes that the Weimar Republic, reflecting the Treaty of Versailles’ “draconian” restrictions on weapons possession, banned gun ownership outright in 1919. Its gun laws were relaxed in 1928, but continued to require that all weapons be registered. The 1938 weapons law enacted under Hitler “represented a further liberalization of gun control regulations” [emphasis added] – deregulating the acquisition and sales of guns and ammunition, exempting entire groups from the permit requirement, lowering the age at which it was legal to own a gun from 20 to 18, and extending the validity of permits from one to three years.
“[W]ith regard to disarming the Jews, there is no dispute that the Nazis did disarm the Jews aggressively,” Harcourt concluded. But “Hitler intended to liberalize gun control laws in Germany for ‘trustworthy’ German citizens, while disarming ‘unreliable’ persons, especially opponents of National Socialism and Jews, [so] [i]t is absurd to even try to characterize this as either pro-or anti-gun control. But if forced to, it seems fair to conclude – at least preliminarily – that the Nazis were in favor of less gun control than the Weimar Republic for the ‘trustworthy’ German citizen – while disarming and engaging in a genocide of the Jewish population.”