Bush and Guns

Refman--You got the year right, but there's so much propaganda coming out from the pro-gun forces, please allow me to expand on your answer.

There is a quote that hangs at just about every NRA convention:

"This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!" -- Adolf Hitler, 1935

Clayton Cramer, a pro-gun advocate who thinks the case can be made without propaganda has this to say:

"This quotation, often seen without any date or citation at all, suffers from several credibility problems, the most significant of which is that the date given (*in alternate versions, the words "This year..." are replaced by "1935...") has no correlation with any legislative effort by the Nazis for gun registration, nor would there have been a need for the Nazis to pass such a law, since gun registration laws passed by the Weimar government (in part to address street violence between Nazis and Communists!) were already in effect. The Nazi Weapons Law (or_Waffengesetz_) which further restricted the possession of militarily useful weapons and forbade trade in weapons without a government-issued license was passed on March 18, 1938. The citation usually given for this quote is a jumbled mess, and has only three major clues from which to work. The first is the date, which does not correspond (even approximately) to a date on which Hitler made a public speech, and a check of the texts of Hitler's speeches does not reveal a quotation resembling this (which is easily understandable when you realize that "Hitler" is commenting on a non-existent law). The second clue is the newspaper reference, which if translated into German resembles the title of a newspaper called _Berliner Tageblatt,_ and a check of the issue for that date reveals that the page and column references given are to the arts and culture page! No Hitler speech appears in the pages of_Berliner Tageblatt_on that date, or dates close to it, because there was no such speech to report. Finally, the citation includes a proper name "Eberhard Beckmann," which is sometimes cited as "by Einleitung Von Eberhard Beckmann," which is an important clue itself, because it reveals that the citation was fabricated by someone who had so little knowledge of the German language that they were unaware that "Einleitung" isn't the fellow's first name! The only "Eberhard Beckmann" which has been uncovered thus far did indeed write introductions, but he was a journalist for a German broadcasting company after WWII, and he wrote several introductions to_photography books,_ one of which was photos of the German state of Hesse (or Hessia), which may be the source of the curious phrase "Abschied vom Hessenland!" which appears in the citation. This quotation, however effective it may be as propaganda, is a fraud."

Another aspect is the group "Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership." Here's some info taken from the history net German History List:

I have not yet seen any letters to the editor about Nazi roots of
gun control since the Oklahoma city bombing, but I ran across the
claim in an op-ed piece in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about two
years ago. Incensed, I called the editorial writer and discovered
his source. He provided me with a booklet entitled "Gun Control,
Gateway to Tyranny: The Nazi Weapons Law, 18 March 1938. Original German Text and Translation, with an Analysis that Shows U.S.`Gun Control' Laws Have Nazi Roots." The authors are Jay Simkin and Aaron Zelman, who are from an organization called "Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. America's Aggressive Civil Rights Organization," located in Milwaukee. The booklet purports to show that the legislative history to the U.S. Gun Control Act of 1968, passed after the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert
Kennedy, were consciously modelled after Nazi legislation. The essence of the argument is that gun control in the U.S. is a Nazi plot to attack Jews.

This piece of lunacy was picked up in an article in the May 1993 issue of "Guns and Ammo" magazine (not part of my regular reading list,but something furnished to me by the editorial writer, who, frighteningly, appears to believe this drivel). I contemplated drafting an op-ed piece myself, despite the fact that it is far afield from my own research into nineteenth and early twentieth century German social history, and even from my work on German Rechtsanwaelte between 1878 and 1933. I concluded that the people who believe this stuff are so deluded that reason will not reach them.

Prof. Kenneth F. Ledford, Department of History, Case Western
Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7107
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Finally, here's the scoop on German gun control laws and potential German and Jewish armed resistance from N. A. Browne. I think his conclusion is right on:

Gun control, the Law on Firearms and Ammunition, was introduced to Germany in 1928 under the Weimar regime (there was no Right to Arms in the Constitution of 1919) in large part to disarm the nascent private armies, e.g. the Nazi SA (aka "the brownshirts"). The Weimar government was attempting to bring some stability to German society and politics (a classic "law and order" position). Violent extremist movements (of both the Left and Right) were actively attacking the young, and very fragile, democratic state. A government that cannot maintain some degree of public order cannot sustain its legitimacy. Nor was the German citizenry well grounded in Constitutional, republican government (as was evidenced in their choices at the ballot box). Gun control was not initiated at the behest or on behalf of the Nazis - it was in fact designed to keep them, or others of the same ilk, from executing a revolution against the lawful government. In the strictest sense, the law succeeded - the Nazis did not stage an armed coup.

The 1928 law was subsequently extended in 1938 under the Third Reich (this action being the principal point in support of the contention that the Nazis were advocates of gun control). However, the Nazis were firmly in control of Germany at the time the Weapons Law of 1938 was created. Further, this law was not passed by a legislative body, but was promulgated under the dictatorial power granted Hitler in 1933. Obviously, the Nazis did not need gun control to attain power as they already (in 1938) possessed supreme and unlimited power in Germany. The only feasible argument that gun control favored the Nazis would be that the 1928 law deprived private armies of a means to defeat them. The basic flaw with this argument is that the Nazis did not seize power by force of arms, but through their success at the ballot box (and the political cunning of Hitler himself). Secondary considerations that arise are that gun ownership was not that widespread to begin with, and, even imagining such ubiquity the German people, Jews in particular, were not predisposed to violent resistance to their government.

The Third Reich did not need gun control (in 1938 or at any time thereafter) to maintain their power. The success of Nazi programs (restoring the economy, dispelling socio-political chaos) and the misappropriation of justice by the apparatus of terror (the Gestapo) assured the compliance of the German people. Arguing otherwise assumes a resistance to Nazi rule that did not exist. Further, supposing the existance of an armed resistance also requires the acceptance that the German people would have rallied to the rebellion. This argument requires a total suspension of disbelief given everything we know about 1930s Germany. Why then did the Nazis introduce this program? As with most of their actions (including the formation of the Third Reich itself), they desired to effect a facade of legalism around the exercise of naked power. It is unreasonable to treat this as a normal part of lawful governance, as the rule of law had been entirely demolished in the Third Reich. Any direct quotations, of which there are several, that pronounce some beneficence to the Weapons Law should be considered in the same manner as all other Nazi pronouncements - absolute lies. (See Bogus Gun Control Quotes and endnote [1].)

A more farfetched question is the hypothetical proposition of armed Jewish resistance. First, they were not commonly armed even prior to the 1928 Law. Second, Jews had seen pogroms before and had survived them, though not without suffering. They would expect that this one would, as had the past ones, eventually subside and permit a return to normalcy. Many considered themselves "patriotic Germans" for their service in the first World War. These simply were not people prepared to stage violent resistance. Nor were they alone in this mode of appeasement. The defiance of "never again" is not so much a warning to potential oppressors as it is a challenge to Jews to reject the passive response to pogrom. Third, it hardly seems conceivable that armed resistance by Jews (or any other target group) would have led to any weakening of Nazi rule, let alone a full scale popular rebellion; on the contrary, it seems more likely it would have strengthened the support the Nazis already had. Their foul lies about Jewish perfidy would have been given a grain of substance. To project backward and speculate thus is to fail to learn the lesson history has so painfully provided.

The simple conclusion is that there are no lessons about the efficacy of gun control to be learned from the Germany of the first half of this century. It is all too easy to forget the seductive allure that fascism presented to all the West, bogged down in economic and social morass. What must be remembered is that the Nazis were master manipulators of popular emotion and sentiment, and were disdainful of people thinking for themselves. There is the danger to which we should pay great heed. Not fanciful stories about Nazi's seizing guns.

 

Part of a column from Tom Paine.com that captures the idiocy of the far right gun nuts follows.

What I find interesting is the thesis that guns are needed in case the government gets too uppity and we need to fight back. I can just imagine a bunch of guys in the backs of pickups storming the local Air Force Base.

The other thing that always comes out when it's boiled down is that we cannot do anything about violence, therefore we should not do anything. (People kill people, only criminals will have guns, etc.) Anybody besides the NRA and criminals happy with the status quo?

(As an aisde, does anyone besides me think there is some deep-rooted phallic need being expressed by the gun advocates?)
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The NRA, though, blasts ballistic fingerprinting as "yet another costly diversion from the real problem -- the lack of prosecutions of armed, violent offenders." It’s difficult to see how more prosecutions of criminals would deter the madman sniper in my neighborhood or do much to assist the police in nabbing him. The NRA fears a database linking bullet and shell-casing markings to the serial numbers of new firearms would amount to a national gun registry. Yet what’s wrong with a national gun registry? The gun-lobby paranoids worry that if the federal government had a list of the guns out there, it could one day use that information to seize those weapons. As former Senator James McClure, an Idaho Republican and gun-rights fan, once declared, "Gun registration is the first step toward ultimate and total confiscation." And, according to some gun aficionados, American citizens need to retain their guns in case the feds become so tyrannical that the populace has to fight back.

Does that sound a little extreme to you? The gun-nuts can be imaginative. As Mark Brown, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times reported a few days ago, the Illinois chapter of the NRA put out a newsletter suggesting the D.C.-area sniper killings are part of an anti-gun conspiracy. In case you cannot believe that, here’s what the newsletter said:

"Far be it from us to advance conspiracy theories, but the timing of this sniper activity is unsettling. Maryland has one of the hottest governor’s races in the country, certainly hotter than that in Illinois. The central theme of the Maryland race is gun control. Things heat up. There is this off the wall series of sniper killings. Murder made to order for the antigunners. Hmmm, weren’t there some other high-profile mass gun killings at strangely convenient times."

Doesn’t that make sense? Gun-controllers are murdering innocent people to win support for their preferred candidate. Contacted by an outraged Brown, the president of the Illinois State Rifle Association, Richard Pearson, defended this wackiness, adding, "We know how unscrupulous the other side can be."
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Now, THAT is a leader and an organization in the mainstream.