Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 16:49:16 -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: Kenneth Ledford A reply to Ron Shearer's inquiry about Nazi Gun Laws. I have not yet seen any letters to the editor about Nazi roots of gun control since the Oklahoma city bombing, but I ran across the claim in an op-ed piece in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about two years ago. Incensed, I called the editorial writer and discovered his source. He provided me with a booklet entitled "Gun Control, Gateway to Tyranny: The Nazi Weapons Law, 18 March 1938. Original German Text and Translation, with an Analysis that Shows U.S. `Gun Control' Laws Have Nazi Roots." The authors are Jay Simkin and Aaron Zelman, who are from an organization called "Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. America's Aggressive Civil Rights Organization," located in Milwaukee. The booklet purports to show that the legislative history to the U.S. Gun Control Act of 1968, passed after the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, were consciously modelled after Nazi legislation. The essence of the argument is that gun control in the U.S. is a Nazi plot to attack Jews. This piece of lunacy was picked up in an article in the May 1993 issue of "Guns and Ammo" magazine (not part of my regular reading list,but something furnished to me by the editorial writer, who, frighteningly, appears to believe this drivel). I contemplated drafting an op-ed piece myself, despite the fact that it is far afield from my own research into nineteenth and early twentieth century German social history, and even from my work on German Rechtsanwaelte between 1878 and 1933. I concluded that the people who believe this stuff are so deluded that reason will not reach them. I have copies of this stuff if anyone wishes to inquire further. -- Prof. Kenneth F. Ledford, Department of History, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7107 e-mail: kxl15@po.cwru.edu .