The perennial gun-control debate in
America did not begin here. The same arguments for and against were made in the
1920s in the chaos of Germany’s Weimar Republic, which opted for gun
registration. Law-abiding persons complied with the law, but the Communists and
Nazis committing acts of political violence did not.
In 1931, Weimar authorities
discovered plans for a Nazi takeover in which Jews would be denied food and
persons refusing to surrender their guns within 24 hours would be executed.
They were written by Werner Best, a future Gestapo official. In reaction to
such threats, the government authorized the registration of all firearms and
the confiscation thereof, if required for “public safety.” The interior
minister warned that the records must not fall into the hands of any extremist
group.
In 1933, the ultimate extremist
group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power and used the records to identify,
disarm, and attack political opponents and Jews. Constitutional rights were
suspended, and mass searches for and seizures of guns and dissident
publications ensued. Police revoked gun licenses of Social Democrats and others
who were not “politically reliable.”
During the five years of repression
that followed, society was “cleansed” by the National Socialist regime.
Undesirables were placed in camps where labor made them “free,” and normal
rights of citizenship were taken from Jews. The Gestapo banned independent gun
clubs and arrested their leaders. Gestapo counsel Werner Best issued a
directive to the police forbidding issuance of firearm permits to Jews.
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