Gun Control… A Precursor to Tyranny?
Gideon D. Asche
Is Gun Control really a Precursor to Tyranny?
Well….What does history have to say about it?
A quick perusal of the history of the major tyrants of our time should answer that question.
If you Google “dictators who disarmed their citizens” you end up with a list of really questionable, crappy and false information – remember Google sorts by a logarithm that does NOT take accuracy into account. Of the first 20 results, every one of them is false. If you waste your time with political sites like National Review, TPNN, Breitbart or other un-vetted and inaccurate sources like Wikipedia, you might come away thinking that Gun Control was employed by g gets it blatantly wrong – some by design, I assume.
Is it so hard to check facts? Any grammar-schooler could establish the facts with 4 or 5 clicks of the mouse.
Granted all but one of the sites I mentioned have no obligation to the truth and wiki-fools has enough disclaimers that they can not be expected to worry about accuracy. The rest have no significant relationship to truth and acknowledging the truth, in this case, would hurt each of their causes.
The alt-right’s attempt to paint the NSDAP as socialist and that Hitler employed gun control and seized weapons are nothing more than an attempt to separate themselves from the history of their ideology.
I can’t think of any other reason that the truth is not enough… but it appears to be impossible for any right-wing printed “news” sites to even attempt to include the truth.
If you were to scroll a page or two further, the first site that gets it right is a commercial Gun education site that has some great information and turned out to be a great site.
Legitimate sites start popping up after the high traffic and ALt-right and other white supremacist nonsense.
It is no surprise so many people buy the myth.
So… is gun control a precursor to tyranny?
Didn’t the father of our nation say “
“A free people ought not only be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.” — Gen. Geo. Washington
and didn’t Ben Franklin warn us with the 2 wolves parable?
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote” — Ben Franklin
Didn’t Hitler himself say:
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
Well actually…. NO!
Those are all fake quotes made up for various Right-wing political campaigns.
They have no connection to the truth and were never uttered in real life. To top it off, I can’t find a single tyrant that implemented any kind of gun control legislation. None — Not Hitler, Not Mao, Not Stalin, not even Mussolini or Saddam.
It doesn’t make much sense, does it?
It seems like disarming the citizen would be the first move a tyrant would make, but that would be wrong – an invader disarms the people when they occupy a new territory, and that makes a lot of sense, but any tyrant would be foolish to implement gun control.
Historically tyrants come to power by whatever means is accepted as legal – Hitler and Stalin used democracy to gain and maintain power – even Lenin waited until he had populist support and the backing of the German Government before he ever left Austria and went to Moscow.
The Soviets and NAZIs had nothing ideological or economic in common, NAZIs had a Capitalist economy with a Republican form of government, and the USSR was a Socialist economy with a Democratic Socialist Government. Exact Opposites extremes, both politically and economically. Remeber Hitler was elected on a platform of promising to eradicate Socialism in Europe.
The one thing Socialists and NAZIs had in common was they didn’t care about gun control and never enacted any gun control laws.
A couple of you probably already asked your Facebook buddy and you’re both about to put your errant conclusion in the comments section.
Check your facts… Let me guess you found: The German Gun Control act of 1938. It is not titled the Gun Control act and does not implement gun control… but what can you expect from wiki-fools?
If you dug really deep into Breitbart or some other Alt-Right political outlet you might have come up with a document that is supposed to be a NAZI anti-gun law, it even has a fake reference number, but a quick check will prove it to be a fake.
Consider your source – Wiki-fools is only as good as the high schooler who made the entry… and if you believe any article from National Review, Breitbart or the likes has any merit – you are sadly mistaken – articles on these political outlets are easily debunked.
For the sake of space and boredom, I’m only going to address the best-known tyrant of our time – The NSDAP and Adolf Hitler. Everyone knows he disarmed the people and implemented extreme gun control so he could be a dictator. – Right?
Wrong!
While having some right-leaning tendencies, I consider anyone so far right as to be a Nationalsocialist to be the lowest form of life on earth… but the fact remains… Hitler didn’t bother with gun control.
Any claim that Hitler enacted or implemented any gun control is simply false.
Germany was saddled with extreme gun legislation imposed by the allies after WW1; everyone wanted the Kaiser’s army and his people disarmed after the War.
In 1919, existing Weimar republic laws were enhanced with a series of gun confiscation orders and legislation designed to disarm the citizenry, then the military and finally declare a moratorium on all private gun ownership.
The penalty for owning a firearm in 1919 was 5 yrs prison and a 100,000 Mark fine. Average take-home wage in 1919 was 450 to 500 Marks per year – The penalty for having a gun pre-Hitler was the equivalent of about 2000+ year’s wages.
On August 7, 1920, the government enhanced the law to include random disarmament of individual people, circumstance by circumstance. This led to large groups being disarmed until The NSDAP took partial Power in 1928.
One of Hitler’s first moves was to rescind the gun law enhancements making Germany’s gun legislation the most liberal and relaxed in modern history. Once Hitler consolidated his power he added a quasi-licensing requirement that only applied to his opposition – those who opposed him or were undesirable, of the wrong religion or race were required to have a permit… but only those who were Proper Germans per The Fuhrer’s rules had automatic permits.
With Hindenburg’s death, Hitler replaced the supreme court and passed the enabling act giving the Fuhrer complete power over the law, government, and negated the German version of a Constitution. So that’s when he implemented gun control… Right? – WRONG.
It wasn’t until 1938 that the NSDAP enacted any legislation regarding weapons and it wasn’t gun control legislation – as with previous weapons regulations, the 1938 Weapons Act, the actual title was “Regulations Against Jews’ Possession of Weapons – 11 November 1938” applied only to those the Fuhrer deemed to be a lesser human and not qualified to be a citizen –Jews, Zigeuners, Socialists, etc.
In addition, the standard protections under German law were also stripped from these undesirables paving the way for the KZ.
The rest of the German people age 18 or older were free to purchase own and shoot whatever firearms they chose. A Permit requirement was on the books and used in some cities, but it was no harder to get a gun permit than a library card… Unless you were one of the undesirable races.
The NSDAP Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, again enhanced the 1938 anti-Jew legislation to make it a crime for any Jew to own any type of firearm for any reason. The only other Gun regulation implemented between 1924 and 1945 was in Poland by the occupation force. The odds are that Hitler never even knew of that one.
Such things were delegated to the SS. Once the order was given to liquidate the Ghettos, the local commander wrote a weapons registration and confiscation order requiring all Jews in the Ghetto to give up any guns or other weapons… I guess the “Brave” Gestapo didn’t want to risk facing armed Jew women and children.
That last regulation is the one you find most misquoted along with some of the Weimar Republic laws and Pre-WW2 occupation laws but the Fact of the matter is Hitler never implemented any anti-gun legislation or regulations. It seems like every fake news site and political outlet that thinks they have something relevant to say about the evils of Gun control relies on that Pre-WW1 law or the Polish occupation order to pass off as Hitler’s gun control.
I could have written an almost identical narration of Mao and Stalin’s gun
control efforts, but it would be even more boring…
They didn’t seem to bother with it either.
BUT WHY?
Why didn’t they use gun control? Why didn’t they try to disarm the public? Because they were smart and understood how easy the average sheeple is lead astray.
Any elected tyrant would be committing political suicide if they enacted gun laws.
First, it doesn’t take a genius to see that gun control is relatively useless, and second: targeting the other guy, the one your followers already believe is the source of all evil is much more effective.
Most tyrants gain power via Democratic process or Coup. First world tyrants like Hitler, Mao, and Stalin always gain and maintain power via Democracy and have populist support.
Each of them implemented regulations or legislation to outlaw a group of people and thereby restricted their ability to own weapons and defend themselves. It actually made almost no difference in WW2 Europe – Most Jews, and Zigeuners didn’t own guns, and the Socialists were resisting so they wouldn’t have complied anyway.
Is Gun Control a precursor to Tyranny – No absolutely not.
It is an idiot policy and is unconstitutional under the republic the Founders envisioned, but if you consider history any indication, you must conclude that Gun Control is unnecessary for tyranny.
Once you have all the right labels and have properly educated your followers, society will naturally separate into your followers and everyone else. All you need is a steady propaganda push to keep the hatred alive. It took 9 years, a deconstruction of legal rights under the law, a partnership with the Christian Church and the top industrial Capitalist and business leaders, for Hitler to get things to the point he could declare himself supreme master and force what was left of German dignity accept it.
People control is the first warning sign of tyranny. When the discrimination becomes law, tyranny is knocking at the door.
Gid.
Gideon D. Asche 