No Exceptions to the Right to Bear Arms?

[RandyWayne]

I hate to agree with ol Light, but he is mostly right here.

There was already strong gun control before Hitler took power, both in Germany and most of the European states (except Switzerland of course). This did go a long way toward making his initial invasion vastly easier. During the 30's, Adolph didn't NEED to remove guns from the hands of German citizens (assuming they even had them) because the majority of the population loved him. Of course he WOULD have taken the weapons from the citizens (who would have gladly complied) had he needed too.

FURTHER THOUGHTS

It occurred to me, with the help of a sharp-eyed member of the Teeming Millions, that I didn't completely answer this question, but instead focused on the part about the quote. I did this because the quote had been circulating for so long and provoked Mr. Greenwood's question. However, he and the Teeming Millions deserve a fuller answer.

Most of the answer can already be found above. Hitler didn't need to impose gun control because gun laws were already in effect (ironically, those original laws were in part designed to disarm the Nazis). Gun control helped the Nazis keep weapons out of the hands of their enemies, but as Cramer notes, it wasn't a major factor in Hitler's success.

That said, and a bit tangential to this question (but I'd hate to leave something out AGAIN), Cramer says the Nazis did benefit significantly from gun control in Eastern Europe in terms of "the inability of their victims to fight back." He cites The Holocaust, a book by Leni Yahil (translated by Ina Friedman and Haya Galai, Oxford University Press, 1990), which has a chapter discussing armed resistance by Jews, including rebellions with just a few firearms and a lot of courage. In addition, he talks about Israel Guttman's book, Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which discusses the difficulty the Jews faced in obtaining weapons.

Cramer believes that "if the population of Eastern Europe were as well armed as the average American, the Nazis would have lost much of their military capacity attempting to implement the Holocaust." I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it's certainly difficult to have an uprising without weapons.

You can read the whole article here:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...-gun-ownership

[RandyWayne]

I would suggest reading the whole article on the link above but here is the final two paragraphs:

To summarize, Hitler did "effect total gun control," but only for the Jews, and only after his regime had been in power for several years. For the rest of the population he relied on laws already in place.

To focus exclusively on gun control is to lose sight of the larger picture. The Nazis controlled EVERYTHING. If you went through the Bill of Rights you'd find that most of them were abridged in Hitler's Germany. Did the loss of one particular right have more impact than the others? That's a question we here at the Mailbag can't answer. I doubt anybody can.

— David