My title breaks Godwin's Law from the git go. So, arrest me. The title really makes my point for writing this diary and is defensible regarding something I've seen as in common between the two villains.
This diary is inspired by this paragraph from Hunter's riff today on Mike Huckabee's statement agreeing with Tea Party CT that Hitler took away everyone's guns. Hunter said he wasn't going to get into the true history of gun control under Hitler.
Getting the first thing out of the way, no, it's not true; the Nazi regime weakened gun regulations, it didn't strengthen them. That's a lost cause, however, as it's one of the conservative "facts" that will stick around until long after the fall of civilization itself, and even after that, as future alien archeologists will be finding primitive cave paintings of Hitler taking people's guns away and displaying them in their alien museums as the one of the few remaining artifacts of western culture. So we're just going to ignore that part. (Emphasis supplied.)
Since Hunter expressly declined to address the historical aspects of the matter, and having a certain affinity for some lost causes, I might as well take a crack at it. Follow me out into the tall grass for some discussion and a dramatic illustration that I recently stumbled across of where a policy like Wayne LaPierre's of,
we must arm everyone because our enemies are all around us can eventually lead.
I don't approach this topic unprepared. I have avidly read history for fifty years. My personal library contains over twenty volumes focused on the disruptions and slaughters of the thirties and forties in Europe, most of which I have read more than once.
When Hitler came to power, extremely restrictive gun laws had already narrowly limited gun access for the German people. Under the Weimar Republic, gun laws imposed a universal ban on private firearms ownership. As the Nazis rose to power they fought for greater access to firearms and sponsored shooting clubs and other ruses to justify arming and training their cadres. Once Hitler rose to power, the overwhelming trend on firearms in Germany was to train and arm as many people as possible, of the right kind of Germans.
Wayne La Pierre and Adolf Hitler seem to share a vision, of their entire nation, at their backs, armed to the teeth. Why? Because our enemies are everywhere. Hence, my title. Ironically, it is LaPierre and the NRA who are largely behind the myth of Hitler taking his people's guns away. For example they paid their lawyer to publish this bit of analytical muck in the prestigious(?) Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law.
For a succinct debunking of the "Hitler was a Gun Grabber" meme, by an actual legal scholar, see this quote from On Gun Registration, The NRA, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars (A Call to Historians), by Bernard Harcourt, a Law Professor at the University of Chicago:
Nevertheless, if one reads the Nazi gun laws closely and compares them to earlier German gun legislation, as a straightforward exercise in statutory interpretation, several conclusions become clear. First, in 1938, the Nazi regime reenacted strict gun control laws and regulations that required licensing and reporting for the acquisition, transfer, or carrying of handguns, and for dealing and manufacturing in firearms and ammunition In this respect, the Nazis had in place stringent gun regulation, including strict reporting requirements.Second, the Nazi gun laws of 1938 specifically banned Jewish persons from obtaining a license to manufacture firearms or ammunition. In this respect, the Nazi gun laws were more restrictive than those under the Weimar Republic. Third, with regard to possession and carrying of firearms, the Nazi regime relaxed the gun laws that were in place in Germany at the time the Nazis seized power. The Nazi gun laws of 1938 reflect a liberalization of the gun control measures that had been enacted by the Weimar Republic with respect to the acquisition, transfer, and carrying of firearms. In this regard, Hitler appears to have been more pro-gun than the predecessor Weimar Republic. Fourth, approximately eight months after enacting the 1938 Nazi gun laws, Hitler imposed regulations prohibiting Jewish persons from possessing any dangerous weapons, including firearms. The Nazi regime implemented this prohibition by confiscating weapons, including guns, from Jewish persons, and subsequently engaged in genocide of the Jewish population.
When they argue against gun registration and control, by pointing to the Nazis disarming the Jews, the gun lobbyists hope everyone ignores the historical context of that. The bigger point is that minorities like German Jews were completely stripped of their all of their civil rights by German law under Hitler; that this should include firearms rights, as enjoyed by the population at large, should surprise no one. But this isolated corner of the German gun laws does nothing to illuminate either the cause or effect of German firearms policies under Hitler. As far as history is concerned, what Hitler wanted most was to arm as many as possible as quickly as possible. Wayne LaPierre and the NRA seem to dream of doing the same here, now, in the USA.
I recently saw a film that shed some light on this for me about where this kind of thinking can lead. I was scrounging around for something to stream on Netflix during my daily train commute and came up with the German language film from 2004.Downfall The film has English subtitles. Critics acclaimed the film in which Germans themselves, finally, portray, some say definitively, the final hours of Hitler and the Third Reich in 1945. Wayne LaPierre dreams of an America armed to the teeth. Hitler dreamed of such a Germany. Here is where those kind of dreams can lead:
Wow! Universal, mandatory gun ownership down to the last pre-teenager. If this is not the end of Wayne LaPierre's vision for America, then where will he draw the line? How many guns, of how large a caliber, is enough? Wayne? Adolf? Anyone . . . anyone?