In early 1930s Germany, few citizens owned, or were entitled to own firearms with the Weimar Republic having strict gun control laws. When the Nazi party gained power, some aspects of gun regulation were loosened for Nazi party members only.: 672 The laws were tightened in other ways, such as specifically banning ownership of guns by Jews. Nazi laws systematically disarmed so-called "unreliable" persons, especially Jews while relaxing restrictions for Nazi party members.: 670, 676 The policies were later expanded to include the confiscation of arms in occupied countries.: 533, 536
The Nazi gun control argument has been used as a "security against tyranny" argument in U.S. gun politics.
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?"
Fact-checkers have described this theory as "false" or "debunked".
Because mainstream scholars argue that gun laws in Germany were already strict prior to Hitler, gun-control advocates may view the hypothesis as a form of reductio ad Hitlerum. 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.: 669–670 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.": 679–680 According to Harcourt, "Nazis were intent on killing Jewish persons and used the gun laws and regulations to further the genocide,": 676 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.: 671, 677 He says that gun rights advocates disagree about the relationship between Nazi gun control and the Holocaust, with many distancing themselves from the idea. Political scientist Robert Spitzer said (in the same law review as Harcourt, who stated the same thing) the quality of Halbrook's historical research is poor. In reference to Halbrook's hypothesis 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.": 728
Regarding the "Nazi gun control theory", anthropologist Abigail Kohn wrote in her 2004 book:
Works that argue that gun control serves as a necessary, though not sufficient condition, for Genocide
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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. Archived from the original on June 11, 2014. Retrieved April 26, 2014. http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4029&context=flr
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. Archived from the original on June 11, 2014. Retrieved April 26, 2014. http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4029&context=flr
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. Archived from the original on June 11, 2014. Retrieved April 26, 2014. http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4029&context=flr
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. Archived from the original on June 11, 2014. Retrieved April 26, 2014. http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4029&context=flr
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