The Lies About the “Hitler Gun Control Lie”

[Charles Kozierok]

Ever since the execrable propagandist Matt Drudge splashed Adolph Hitler across his front page, articles like this one have been popping up around the Internet. But as much as I personally find using the Nazis to make this sort of argument a distasteful approach, that doesn’t automatically make the argument invalid. And in particular, some of the arguments being made against claims that Hitler’s gun control led to war and genocide are weak, if not flatly dishonest.

Let’s start with this:

The 1938 law signed by Hitler that LaPierre mentions in his book basically does the opposite of what he says it did. “The 1938 revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as well as ammunition,” Harcourt wrote. Meanwhile, many more categories of people, including Nazi party members, were exempted from gun ownership regulations altogether, while the legal age of purchase was lowered from 20 to 18, and permit lengths were extended from one year to three years.
​

Okay, so exactly what sort of point is being made here? The Nazis never tried to disarm the general German populace, or Nazi party members. This is a surprise how, exactly? Hitler never intended to wage war on his own party, nor the general populace, did he? And in fact, he knew he was about to start a war. So why would he disarm his own people?

The very next paragraph begins:

The law did prohibit Jews and other persecuted classes from owning guns, but this should not be an indictment of gun control in general.
​

So, after all that protestation, what we have here is an admission of the core point of raising Hitler in the first place, followed by a rather classic begging of the question. The author admits that Hitler did disarm the Jews, the main group he wanted to exterminate, and then proceeds without any argument whatsoever to his conclusion.

Continuing:

Does the fact that Nazis forced Jews into horrendous ghettos indict urban planning?
​

Comparing forced ghettoization to urban planning is such an embarrassingly poor and dishonest analogy that it doesn’t even deserve a response.

The silliness continues:

Should we eliminate all police officers because the Nazis used police officers to oppress and kill the Jews?
​

No, we should eliminate police offers who oppress and kill, obviously. But more to the point, when it becomes obvious that a police force is being used to oppress and kill, what options do the people have to fight back if they’ve been told for years to not own guns and just let the police protect them?

And still more:

If guns don’t kill people, then neither does gun control cause genocide (genocidal regimes cause genocide).
​

Leaving aside the “cake and eat it too” argumentation here — since gun control advocates reject the “guns don’t kill people” argument — the claim never was that gun control causes genocide. The claim is that gun control makes genocide easier by creating a class of victims with no ability to resist.

The author later moves on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising:

Proponents of the theory sometimes point to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as evidence that, as Fox News’ Judge Andrew Napolitano put it, “those able to hold onto their arms and their basic right to self-defense were much more successful in resisting the Nazi genocide.” But as the Tablet’s Michael Moynihan points out, Napolitano’s history (curiously based on a citation of work by French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson) is a bit off. In reality, only about 20 Germans were killed, while some 13,000 Jews were massacred. The remaining 50,000 who survived were promptly sent off to concentration camps.
​

Well, of course the Jews were wiped out. They were badly outnumbered and outgunned and living in squalid conditions besides. The point of mentioning the Warsaw uprising isn’t to show that the Jews could have held off the Nazis had they only been armed — that’s a straw man. The points are:

1. Even if only a handful of Germans died while thousands of Jews were killed, that’s still better than what would have happened absent the uprising. All of those Jews were going to die anyway. At least they took a few of the enemy with them.
2. Those small bands of brave men tied up thousands of Nazi troops, thus disrupting the war effort even if in some small way.
3. The fighters in the ghetto had only a small collection of arms and munitions that they were able to smuggle in. Yet even with as little as they had, they kept the Nazis occupied for weeks.
4. If not for having been totally disarmed in advance, Jews could have conducted similar uprisings in many more places and possibly hampered the Nazis further.

Moving on the next straw man:

Robert Spitzer, a political scientist who studies gun politics and chairs the political science department at SUNY Cortland, told Mother Jones’ Gavin Aronsen that the prohibition on Jewish gun ownership was merely a symptom, not the problem itself. “[It] wasn’t the defining moment that marked the beginning of the end for Jewish people in Germany. It was because they were persecuted, were deprived of all of their rights, and they were a minority group,” he explained.
​

No, prohibiting gun ownership wasn’t the moment that “marked the beginning of the end for Jewish people in Germany”. It was the moment that marked the end of Jews having any ability to resist what was about to happen to them.

 

[Jaskalas]

One should always disarm a people before exploiting them.

It's a moot point for America, we've more guns than voters and that's not going to change. Attempts to change this by force will merely mean the end of civil discourse and the beginning of civil unrest.

 

[jackstar7]

The problem I have with the whole of this argument in a modern context is that weapons able to be owned by the civilian populace are so far outmatched by those used by the government, that an uprising would only last as long as it takes the government to declare that it needs to end.

Ever since the Whiskey Rebellion the government has had the ability to quash groups.

Also, this extreme example simply does not line up with any serious position being advocated in the discourse. Even the "legitimate" people who might talk about a gun ban are dismissed due to the absurdity of their position.

Perhaps I'm wrong and this refutation was warranted, but given a modern context, I simply don't see the value.

 

[nehalem256]

The problem I have with the whole of this argument in a modern context is that weapons able to be owned by the civilian populace are so far outmatched by those used by the government, that an uprising would only last as long as it takes the government to declare that it needs to end.

Ever since the Whiskey Rebellion the government has had the ability to quash groups.

Also, this extreme example simply does not line up with any serious position being advocated in the discourse. Even the "legitimate" people who might talk about a gun ban are dismissed due to the absurdity of their position.

Perhaps I'm wrong and this refutation was warranted, but given a modern context, I simply don't see the value.

Imagine Iraq 2003-2008 except with a better armed resistance, and where you have to worry about the whether your soldiers are willing to fight their own citizens.

Obviously if you line up with your AR-15s across the field from the modern US Army you will get your ass handed to you. Which is why you don't do that.

 

[fskimospy]

One should always disarm a people before exploiting them.

It's a moot point for America, we've more guns than voters and that's not going to change. Attempts to change this by force will merely mean the end of civil discourse and the beginning of civil unrest.

I notice a continuing theme of civil unrest/civil war in your posts. You do realize how insanely unlikely that is to happen, right?

 

[Anarchist420]

@ OP: Okay then... would you rather live like the Russians did under Stalin?

The Nazis did support gun control heavily anyway, because they were militarists. We have more gun control in this country than any other country has because of how large our military is.

 

[WackyDan]

OP... The Hitler/Nazi MEME or "quotes" are indeed wrong.

However, the fact remains that before the Nazis came to power, the Weimar Republic indeed invoked strict gun control on the entire population of Germany including full registration of every firearm. The German legislature in 1919 passed a law that effectively banned all private firearm possession, leading the government to confiscate guns already in circulation. In 1928, the Reichstag relaxed the regulation a bit, but put in place a strict registration regime that required citizens to acquire separate permits to own guns, sell them or carry them.

The Nazis did in fact benefit from those controls and absolutely benefited from the registration of every firearm. They exploited it.

So I ask you... They may not have made the laws, but they certainly were fortunate to have a population that was still largely disarmed, and a list of every Jew who owned a potential weapon.

Thoughts?

 

[Doppel]

I find this discussion interesting. What happened in Russia? How successful was gun control and more importantly, do we have good reason to believe that an armed populous would have prevented or stymied these genocides? I still suspect that most people avoid conflict with their government even when it becomes hideously behaved and so I wonder really if, for example, Stalin would have had much more difficulty killing millions even if they were all armed.

 

[blankslate]

No way. the NRA wouldn't lie. Go back to you're cave librul

 

[WackyDan]

I find this discussion interesting. What happened in Russia? How successful was gun control and more importantly, do we have good reason to believe that an armed populous would have prevented or stymied these genocides? I still suspect that most people avoid conflict with their government even when it becomes hideously behaved and so I wonder really if, for example, Stalin would have had much more difficulty killing millions even if they were all armed.

It is a fair point. Radio was the quickest method of news back then... Gov't could put down isolated pockets of rebellion more quickly?

Today we have instantaneous news. Whether it is accurate or not is one element, and we have plenty of evidence of gov't manipulation of the media. Most of us are happy with our high speed internet and T.V.. Civilized society such as ours is probably less likely to uprise as the gov't oppression and programming is far more effective and I might add, subtle.

 

[amyklai]

I very much doubt that increased gun ownership would've changed anything about Nazi Germany.

First, decades and centuries Prussian-style educations had created an "Obrigkeitsstaat" where people generally did what they were told. The "Captain of Köpenick" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Voigt) is a good example for this. It was basically the wrong population for a successfu revolution.

Second, lots of people supported Hitler. It wasn't a situation like Iraq, where most people would've been opposed to the regime.

Third, with the SA, Hitler anyway had the meanest brute squad around, even before he got into power. And Hitler was the first one to try a putsch. So, if I had to bet on anyone pulling a successful revolution between 1918 and 1945 with the help of more guns, It would rather have been Hitler to do that than his enemies.

And on top of that, the Gestapo with their Blockwart regime and Hitler's methods like Sippenhaft (punishing / killing the relatives when he didn't get the person they were after) were cruel enough that most people wouldn't have dared to oppose him even if they had wanted to, no matter how many guns they had.

 

[FelixDeCat]

I very much doubt that increased gun ownership would've changed anything about Nazi Germany.

First, decades and centuries Prussian-style educations had created an "Obrigkeitsstaat" where people generally did what they were told. The "Captain of Köpenick" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Voigt) is a good example for this. It was basically the wrong population for a successfu revolution.

Second, lots of people supported Hitler. It wasn't a situation like Iraq, where most people would've been opposed to the regime.

Third, with the SA, Hitler anyway had the meanest brute squad around, even before he got into power. And Hitler was the first one to try a putsch. So, if I had to bet on anyone pulling a successful revolution between 1918 and 1945 with the help of more guns, It would rather have been Hitler to do that than his enemies.

And on top of that, the Gestapo with their Blockwart regime and Hitler's methods like Sippenhaft (punishing / killing the relatives when he didn't get the person they were after) were cruel enough that most people wouldn't have dared to oppose him even if they had wanted to, no matter how many guns they had.

The Nazis were gun grabbing atheists. He voilated every one of the ten commandments and then took everyone's guns away.

Your gun grabbing arguments are weak and you are foolish to espouse them.

 

[cwjerome]

The problem I have with the whole of this argument in a modern context is that weapons able to be owned by the civilian populace are so far outmatched by those used by the government, that an uprising would only last as long as it takes the government to declare that it needs to end.

Ever since the Whiskey Rebellion the government has had the ability to quash groups.

Also, this extreme example simply does not line up with any serious position being advocated in the discourse. Even the "legitimate" people who might talk about a gun ban are dismissed due to the absurdity of their position.

Perhaps I'm wrong and this refutation was warranted, but given a modern context, I simply don't see the value.

If there were some terrible situation where the people revolted against the government or vice versa, think of it this way: We (along with local and foreign help) can barely police a region smaller than Texas right now in Afghanistan. Now take an area 12 times bigger with a population of 310 million and a shit-ton of guns (and easily made improvised warfighting devices). Such a guerilla war in not winnable, especially since at least half the military wouldn't fight against the people, cutting its combat effectiveness by 2/3.

 

[WHAMPOM]

Ever since the execrable propagandist Matt Drudge splashed Adolph Hitler across his front page, articles like this one have been popping up around the Internet. But as much as I personally find using the Nazis to make this sort of argument a distasteful approach, that doesn’t automatically make the argument invalid. And in particular, some of the arguments being made against claims that Hitler’s gun control led to war and genocide are weak, if not flatly dishonest.

Let’s start with this:

The 1938 law signed by Hitler that LaPierre mentions in his book basically does the opposite of what he says it did. “The 1938 revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as well as ammunition,” Harcourt wrote. Meanwhile, many more categories of people, including Nazi party members, were exempted from gun ownership regulations altogether, while the legal age of purchase was lowered from 20 to 18, and permit lengths were extended from one year to three years.
​

Okay, so exactly what sort of point is being made here? The Nazis never tried to disarm the general German populace, or Nazi party members. This is a surprise how, exactly? Hitler never intended to wage war on his own party, nor the general populace, did he? And in fact, he knew he was about to start a war. So why would he disarm his own people?

The very next paragraph begins:

The law did prohibit Jews and other persecuted classes from owning guns, but this should not be an indictment of gun control in general.
​

So, after all that protestation, what we have here is an admission of the core point of raising Hitler in the first place, followed by a rather classic begging of the question. The author admits that Hitler did disarm the Jews, the main group he wanted to exterminate, and then proceeds without any argument whatsoever to his conclusion.

Continuing:

Does the fact that Nazis forced Jews into horrendous ghettos indict urban planning?
​

Comparing forced ghettoization to urban planning is such an embarrassingly poor and dishonest analogy that it doesn’t even deserve a response.

The silliness continues:

Should we eliminate all police officers because the Nazis used police officers to oppress and kill the Jews?
​

No, we should eliminate police offers who oppress and kill, obviously. But more to the point, when it becomes obvious that a police force is being used to oppress and kill, what options do the people have to fight back if they’ve been told for years to not own guns and just let the police protect them?

And still more:

If guns don’t kill people, then neither does gun control cause genocide (genocidal regimes cause genocide).
​

Leaving aside the “cake and eat it too” argumentation here — since gun control advocates reject the “guns don’t kill people” argument — the claim never was that gun control causes genocide. The claim is that gun control makes genocide easier by creating a class of victims with no ability to resist.

The author later moves on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising:

Proponents of the theory sometimes point to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as evidence that, as Fox News’ Judge Andrew Napolitano put it, “those able to hold onto their arms and their basic right to self-defense were much more successful in resisting the Nazi genocide.” But as the Tablet’s Michael Moynihan points out, Napolitano’s history (curiously based on a citation of work by French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson) is a bit off. In reality, only about 20 Germans were killed, while some 13,000 Jews were massacred. The remaining 50,000 who survived were promptly sent off to concentration camps.
​

Well, of course the Jews were wiped out. They were badly outnumbered and outgunned and living in squalid conditions besides. The point of mentioning the Warsaw uprising isn’t to show that the Jews could have held off the Nazis had they only been armed — that’s a straw man. The points are:

1. Even if only a handful of Germans died while thousands of Jews were killed, that’s still better than what would have happened absent the uprising. All of those Jews were going to die anyway. At least they took a few of the enemy with them.
2. Those small bands of brave men tied up thousands of Nazi troops, thus disrupting the war effort even if in some small way.
3. The fighters in the ghetto had only a small collection of arms and munitions that they were able to smuggle in. Yet even with as little as they had, they kept the Nazis occupied for weeks.
4. If not for having been totally disarmed in advance, Jews could have conducted similar uprisings in many more places and possibly hampered the Nazis further.

Moving on the next straw man:

Robert Spitzer, a political scientist who studies gun politics and chairs the political science department at SUNY Cortland, told Mother Jones’ Gavin Aronsen that the prohibition on Jewish gun ownership was merely a symptom, not the problem itself. “[It] wasn’t the defining moment that marked the beginning of the end for Jewish people in Germany. It was because they were persecuted, were deprived of all of their rights, and they were a minority group,” he explained.
​

No, prohibiting gun ownership wasn’t the moment that “marked the beginning of the end for Jewish people in Germany”. It was the moment that marked the end of Jews having any ability to resist what was about to happen to them.

POINT:Hitler used the records from a strict gun registration program to remove German Jews legally owned arms.
Just what is your post about? Semantic argument or what?

 

[jackstar7]

If there were some terrible situation where the people revolted against the government or vice versa, think of it this way: We (along with local and foreign help) can barely police a region smaller than Texas right now in Afghanistan. Now take an area 12 times bigger with a population of 310 million and a shit-ton of guns (and easily made improvised warfighting devices). Such a guerilla war in not winnable, especially since at least half the military wouldn't fight against the people, cutting its combat effectiveness by 2/3.

But these 310 million have not endured generations of invaders/war. I'd feel safe wagering that 2/3's of the population would do just about anything to keep a status quo rather than be pushed into an armed revolution.

 

[Genx87]

But these 310 million have not endured generations of invaders/war. I'd feel safe wagering that 2/3's of the population would do just about anything to keep a status quo rather than be pushed into an armed revolution.

And what about the other 1/3rd?

 

[jackstar7]

And what about the other 1/3rd?

Only about 1/3 of them will be armed.

I'm sure there will be stories about all those dead people though...when things inevitably go that way.

 

[Genx87]

Only about 1/3 of them will be armed.

I'm sure there will be stories about all those dead people though...when things inevitably go that way.

What an insane policy. So 1/3rd of 1/3rd? About 30 million people armed and ready to fight? This is your best case scenario? Talk about a nightmare.

 

[Zargon]

Only about 1/3 of them will be armed.

I'm sure there will be stories about all those dead people though...when things inevitably go that way.

because the police and military are mindless killing robots that will glady mow down Us civilians during a time of political and civil unrest

rest assured that most of the military and police forces are comprised of second amendment advocates and do not want to go around collecting guns and shooting citizens

What an insane policy. So 1/3rd of 1/3rd? About 30 million people armed and ready to fight? This is your best case scenario? Talk about a nightmare.

with estimates in the 200+ million rang efor privately owned firearms......I would say a 1/3 or a 1/3 is a little low

 

[jackstar7]

with estimates in the 200+ million rang efor privately owned firearms......I would say a 1/3 or a 1/3 is a little low

While that is the number of firearms, the number of people who own them is nothing like that. And I'm figuring a majority of gun owners don't want to stage an insurrection.

All of this is stupid anyhow, since it's nothing more than kook fantasy.

No one is coming to take your toys/blankies.

 

[jackstar7]

What an insane policy. So 1/3rd of 1/3rd? About 30 million people armed and ready to fight? This is your best case scenario? Talk about a nightmare.

What policy? And who said best case? I think I'm being extremely generous is those numbers with regards to people who would actually fight. Also, it's not going to happen.

Do you guys just need people to fight or something?

 

[Genx87]

What policy? And who said best case? I think I'm being extremely generous is those numbers with regards to people who would actually fight. Also, it's not going to happen.

Do you guys just need people to fight or something?

I dont need anybody to fight. I have been telling people civil war is a terrible idea. You are the one bringing up 1/3rd of 1/3rd who will resist.

 

[jackstar7]

I dont need anybody to fight. I have been telling people civil war is a terrible idea. You are the one bringing up 1/3rd of 1/3rd who will resist.

And I didn't bring up the idea of an armed insurrection.

What's your point?

Also, I don't think it's a terrible idea; I think it's a fantasy. It's never going to happen.

And I know people who have children buried at the Waco compound. A large-scale armed revolution isn't coming and any small-scale one will be quickly put down.

 

[Nintendesert]

The problem I have with the whole of this argument in a modern context is that weapons able to be owned by the civilian populace are so far outmatched by those used by the government, that an uprising would only last as long as it takes the government to declare that it needs to end.

Ever since the Whiskey Rebellion the government has had the ability to quash groups.

Also, this extreme example simply does not line up with any serious position being advocated in the discourse. Even the "legitimate" people who might talk about a gun ban are dismissed due to the absurdity of their position.

Perhaps I'm wrong and this refutation was warranted, but given a modern context, I simply don't see the value.

Riight. Tell that to the people of Afghanistan that have taken on the two super powers and won. Both the Soviet Union and the USA went to die a slow death in that country and they are fighting with late 19th century rifles and early 20th century rifles.

 

[jackstar7]

Riight. Tell that to the people of Afghanistan that have taken on the two super powers and won. Both the Soviet Union and the USA went to die a slow death in that country and they are fighting with late 19th century rifles and early 20th century rifles.

Right. People born and raised in war know how to fight.

Americans are born and raised to be fat. Not the same thing.