Nazi Germany and Gun Control

I hear it over and over again, things that suggest Hitler had outlawed gun ownership in Nazi Germany and that this is the reason he was able to do the evil things he did. The citizens of Germany were unarmed, so they had no means to stop him. That’s the belief anyway.

It’s not true.

To be fair, there was a time when I thought gun ownership was outlawed in Nazi Germany too, but then I looked into it. I found out that gun laws in Nazi Germany were very lax. Citizens of Germany were encouraged by the government to own guns.  Just about every German citizen was a legal gun owner.

It’s true that the Jewish and other minorities were not allowed to own guns, but they were not considered to be German citizens. Hitler had their citizenships revoked.

In discussions on the subject, some people have said that German citizens who opposed the government were not permitted to own guns. That’s also true, but if you were a German citizen at the time and you expressed disagreement with the government, you were likely to be in trouble anyway.