Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 09:02:39 -0500 Reply-To: H-NET List on German History Sender: H-NET List on German History From: H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers Subject: Re: Query: Nazi Gun Laws Submitted by: Walter Felscher I do not know how precisely the legal situation was, but I remember what was going on in practise. There was no legal change from the situation as it had prevailed in the Weimar republic. Firearms had to be licensed by the police (both possession and acquisition), and such licenses were granted only to (a) hunters (aa) for use on their own territory if that included huntable forests, or (ab) registered with a hunting club [these clubs after 1933 being centralized with, if I recall correctly, Goering as 'Reichsjaegermeister'], (b) persons who could prove to be endangered by their profession such as to warrant the possession of a handgun for self defense. Clause (b) included not only certain bank employees; I recall the case - from before '33 - of Mr. Graf, owner of our town's finest coffee house, who, in that establishment, was attacked by an armed hoodlum and shot him to death with the handgun he legally owned (a case rare enough to have remained in everyone's memory). In so far, arms legislation under the NS government brought no change; claims to the contrary are ridiculous. What may have changed was the implementation of granting licenses under clause (b), and what certainly did change was severity with which the unlicensed possession of arms (handguns) was prosecuted. The years before 1923 and between 1929-1933 both brought a considerable rise of armed robbery, and so the one or other small storekeeper illegally kept a handgun handy. After 1933 both the improved economic conditions and the ruthless imposition of penalties (Zuchthaus followed by indeterminate 'Sicherungsverwahrung') sharply reduced armed robbery, and so those illegally owned handguns were stashed away in hidden places (and taken out only at the end of the war, thrown away or hidden in a deep hole dug in the garden, in order to prevent their discovery by the occupation forces). A point which may warrant additional investigation concerns the firearms handed out to their members by both the (illegally armed) civil-war forces of the NSDAP (i.e. the SA) and the KPD before January 1933. Thorough disarmament of the SA members took place the latest after July 1st 1934. W.F. .