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The Nazi gun control theory states that gun laws in Nazi Germany were a significant component of the Third Reich's plan, and that victims, especially Jews, might have more effectively resisted repression if they had been armed or better armed. It is often framed as a "security against tyranny" argument in U.S. gun politics, although it can also be viewed as a form of Reductio ad Hitlerum. When discussing the theory, adherents sometimes cite other authoritarian regimes like the Khmer Rouge and Stalinist Russia, which they suggest could have been inhibited by more private gun rights and gun ownership.

Questions about the validity of the theory and the motives behind its inception have been raised, because of its prevalence and use being primarily limited to U.S. gun-rights advocates. Discussion of this theory is often politically charged, and aimed at certain U.S. gun laws and policies. The theory is not supported by mainstream historical, legal, or political science scholarship.

Nazi gun control theory arguments

The earliest references to the Nazi gun control theory are in the U.S. Congressional hearings for what became the Gun Control Act of 1968. It is suggested that Nazi confiscation of weapons from their opponents rendered disfavored groups (e.g. Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and Poles) helpless and prepared the way for the Holocaust. A counterfactual history question is sometimes asked that states: What if the Nazis had not disarmed the German Jews and other groups? The theory suggests that victims might have successfully resisted Nazi repression if they had been armed - or better armed.

Gun rights advocates such as gun law litigator Stephen Halbrook, National Rifle Association (NRA) leader Wayne LaPierre, and Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) leader Aaron S. Zelman , have argued that Nazi Party policies and laws were an enabling factor in the Holocaust that prevented its victims from implementing an effective resistance. Their arguments refer to laws that disarmed "unreliable" persons, especially Jews, but relaxed restrictions for "ordinary" German citizens, and to the later confiscation of arms in countries it occupied.

In the article "Nazi Firearms Law and the Disarming of the German Jews" published in 2000, Halbrook said that he was presenting "the first scholarly analysis of the use of gun control laws and policies to establish the Hitler regime and to render political opponents and especially German Jews defenseless." In the article he cites the Adolf Hitler quote, "the most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms."

Advocates of Nazi gun control arguments propose a counterfactual history in which the Nazis did not disarm groups like the German Jews and other suppressed populations. In a newspaper opinion piece, legal scholar and historian Robert Cottrol asked:

Could the overstretched Nazi war machine have murdered 11 million armed and resisting Europeans while also taking on the Soviet and Anglo-American armies? Could 50,000-70,000 Khmer Rouge have butchered 2-3 million armed Cambodians? These questions bear repeating. The answers are by no means clear, but it is unconscionable they are not being asked.

A 2011 open letter from Dovid Bendory, who was the rabbinic director of JPFO, to then New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, asked: "Are you aware that the Nazis disarmed Jews prior to Kristallnacht and that those same Nazi gun laws are the foundation of the U.S. Gun Control Act of 1968?"

Some cite the Nazi gun control argument as a "security against tyranny" argument in U.S. gun politics. For example, in May 2013, James W. Porter II, president of the NRA, said that every U.S. citizen should be trained to use common military guns to defend themselves against tyranny. Gun-control advocates view this as a form of Reductio ad Hitlerum.

Reactions to the arguments

Law professor Mark Nuckols says Nazi gun control arguments are part of a "shaky intellectual edifice" underlying "belief in widespread gun ownership as a defense against tyrannical government." He says the idea is "gaining traction with members of Congress as well as fringe conspiracy theorists." Fellow law professor Adam Winkler says: "This radical wing of the gun rights movement focuses less on the value of guns for self-defense against criminals than on their value for fighting tyranny." He says the militia groups that grew in number across the U.S. after the early 1990s organized "to fight off what they saw as an increasingly tyrannical federal government and what they imagined was the inevitable invasion of the United States by the United Nations." Winkler wrote that " some on the fringe," the Brady bill "was proof that the government was determined to deprive Americans of their constitutional rights."

Nazi gun control theories are not supported by mainstream scholarship.

In a 2004 issue of the Fordham Law Review, legal scholar Bernard Harcourt said Halbrook "perhaps rightly" could say that he made the first scholarly analysis of his Nazi-gun-registration subject, but as a gun-rights litigator, not as a historian. Harcourt called on historians for more research and serious scholarship on Nazi gun laws. "Apparently," Harcourt wrote, "the historians have paid scant attention to the history of firearms regulation in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich." According to Harcourt, "Nazis were intent on killing Jewish persons and used the gun laws and regulations to further the genocide," but the disarming and killing of Jews was unconnected with Nazi gun control policy, and it is "absurd to even try to characterize this as either pro- or anti-gun control." If he had to choose, Harcourt said, the Nazi regime was pro-gun compared with the Weimar Republic that preceded it. He says that gun rights advocates disagree about the relationship between Nazi gun control and the Holocaust, with many distancing themselves from the idea. White nationalist William L. Pierce wrote: "When you have read , you will understand that it was Hitler's enemies, not Hitler, who should be compared with the gun-control advocates in America today."

Political scientist Robert Spitzer has said—as has Harcourt—that the quality of Halbrook's historical research is poor. About Halbrook's argument that gun control leads to authoritarian regimes, Spitzer says that "actual cases of nation-building and regime change, including but not limited to Germany, if anything support the opposite position."

Regarding the Nazi gun control counterfactual history argument, anthropologist Abigail Kohn wrote:

Such counterfactual arguments are problematic because they reinvent the past to imagine a possible future. In fact, Jews were not well-armed and were not able to adequately defend themselves against Nazi aggression. Thus, reimagining a past in which they were and did does not provide a legitimate basis for arguments about what might have followed.

Holocaust scholar Michael Bryant says Halbrook, LaPierre, Zelman, Dave Kopel, and others' "use of history has selected factual inaccuracies, and their methodology can be questioned."

In January 2013, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) director Abraham Foxman said: "The idea that supporters of gun control are doing something akin to what Hitler’s Germany did to strip citizens of guns in the run-up to the Second World War is historically inaccurate and offensive, especially to Holocaust survivors and their families." Later that year, Jewish groups and Jersey City, New Jersey, mayor Steven Fulop criticized the NRA for comparing gun control supporters to Nazi Germany. The Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ released a statement saying: "Access to guns and the systematic murder of six million Jews have no basis for comparison in the United States or in New Jersey. The Holocaust has no place in this discussion and it is offensive to link this tragedy to such a debate."

See also

• Gun control
• Gun Control in the Third Reich (book)
• Gun politics in the United States

References

1. ^ Cottrol, Robert (November 7, 1999). "The Last Line of Defense". Los Angeles Times (opinion). Cite error: The named reference "Cottrol991107" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
2. Knox, Neal (2009). The Gun Rights War: Dispatches from the Front Lines 1966 - 2000. Phoenix, Arizona: MacFarlane. p. 286. ISBN 9780976863304.
3. Winkler, Adam (2011). Gunfight:The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 339. ISBN 9780393077414.
4. McGuire, M. Dyan (2011). "Gun Control Laws". In Chambliss, William (ed.). Courts, Law, and Justice. SAGE. p. 119. ISBN 1412978572.
5. ^ Halbrook, Stephen P. (2013). Gun Control in the Third Reich. Independent Institute. ISBN 978-1-59813-162-8.
6. ^ Harcourt, Bernard E. (2004). "On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars (A Call to Historians)". Fordham Law Review. 73 (2): 653–680.
7. ^ Halbrook, Stephen P. (2000). "Nazi Firearms Law and the Disarming of the German Jews" (PDF). Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law. 17 (3): 483–535.
8. LaPierre, Wayne (1994). Guns, Crime, and Freedom. Washington, D.C.: Regnery. OCLC 246629786.
9. Trevor-Roper, Hugh R. (2008). Hitler's Table Talk 1941-44: His Private Conversations ("new" ed.). Enigma Books. p. 321. ISBN 1936274930.
10. ^ Bryant, Michael S. (May 4, 2012). "Holocaust Imagery and Gun Control". In Carter, Gregg Lee (ed.). Guns in American Society: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, Culture and the Law. Vol. 2 (2nd ed.). Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. pp. 411–415. ISBN 9780313386701. OCLC 833189121. Retrieved March 21, 2014.
11. ^ Winkler, Adam (2011). Gunfight:The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 83. ISBN 9780393077414. Cite error: The named reference "Winkler2011p83" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
12. ^ Kohn, Abigail (2004). Shooters: Myths and Realities of America's Gun Cultures. Oxford University Press. p. 187. ISBN 0-19-515051-1.
13. Coscarelli, Joe. "Jewish Firearms Group Compares Bloomberg Gun Control to Genocide, Nazis", The Village Voice (March 9, 2011).
14. “Rabbi Defends Comparison of Gun Owners to Holocaust Victims”, WFLD, Channel 32, Fox News, Chicago (May 3, 2011).
15. "New NRA leader James Porter has history of controversial rhetoric". CBS Interactive. Associated Press. May 4, 2013. Retrieved April 19, 2015.
16. McMorris-Santoro, Evan (January 9, 2013). "Opponents Play The Hitler Card On Gun Control, Supporters Say It's Not Gonna Work This Time". Talking Points Memo. Retrieved April 21, 2015.
17. Nuckols, Mark (January 31, 2013). "Why the 'Citizen Militia' Theory Is the Worst Pro-Gun Argument Ever". The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group.
18. Winkler, Adam (2011). Gunfight:The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 84. ISBN 9780393077414.
19. Winkler, Adam (2011). Gunfight:The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 85. ISBN 9780393077414.
20. ^ Spitzer, Robert J. (2004). "Don't Know Much About History, Politics, or Theory: A Comment". Fordham Law Review. 73 (2): 721–730.
21. "ADL Says Nazi Analogies Have No Place In Gun Control Debate" (Press release). New York: Anti-Defamation League. January 24, 2013.
22. ^ Giambusso, David (December 17, 2013). "Jewish groups, Jersey City Mayor Fulop slam NRA for Holocaust comments". Star-Ledger. Retrieved April 19, 2015.

Further reading

Works that endorse Nazi gun law theories

• Beck, Glenn; Balfe, Kevin; Beck, Hannah (2013). Control: Exposing the Truth About Guns. Simon and Schuster. pp. 108–128. ISBN 1476739870.
• Halbrook, Stephen (2 December 2013). "How the Nazis Used Gun Control". National Review. Retrieved 6 April 2015.
• Kopel, David (1995). "Lethal Laws" (PDF). New York Law School Journal of International and Comparative Law. 15 (1): 355–398.
• Polsby, Daniel D.; Kates, Don B. (1997). "Of Holocausts and Gun Control". Washington University Law Quarterly. 75 (3): 1237–1275.
• Simkin, Jay; Zelman, Aaron (1992). Gun Control: Gateway to Tyranny. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. p. 139. OCLC 29535251."

Works that criticize Nazi gun law theories

• Aronsen, Gavin (January 11, 2013). "Was Hitler Really a Fan of Gun Control?". Mother Jones. Archived from the original on January 12, 2013.
• Frank, Monte (July 13, 2013). "The Holocaust taken in vain to promote gun rights". The Guardian. Guardian News and Media.
• Homsher, Deborah (2004). "Response to Bernard E. Harcourt's On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars (A Call to Historians)". Fordham Law Review. 73 (2): 715–719.
• Nuckols, Mark (January 31, 2013). "Why the 'Citizen Militia' Theory Is the Worst Pro-Gun Argument Ever". The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group.
• Robberson, Tod (January 15, 2013). "Let's stick to the facts when discussing gun control". Dallas Morning News (Opinion).
• Seitz-Wald, Alex (January 11, 2013). "The Hitler gun control lie". Salon. Salon Media Group.

• Historical revisionism
• Conspiracy theories
• Fringe theory
• Gun politics in the United States