National Weapons Law

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The German Weapons Law (German: Waffengesetz) of March 18, 1938, was a gun control law that was enacted by Germany's National Socialist government.

Pre-existing Firearms Restrictions in Germany

Before the Nazi regime took power, the liberal Weimar Government had enacted the Law on Firearms and Ammunition in 1928. The 1928 Law established broad national regulations on firearms ownership. The 1928 Law required persons to get a "firearms acquisition permit" from the authorities to buy, trade, inherit, trade, or receive a firearm as a gift. To buy ammunition required an "ammunition acquisition permit." Hunters were required to obtain an "annual hunting permit." All firearms were required to bear a serial number a mark of the maker or dealer.

As a result of the 1928 Law, the national German government knew the owner and location of every legally-held firearm in the country. This law afforded to the Nazi regime that took power in 1933 the information needed to conduct searches and seizures of firearms from political opponents and other targets. Raids of homes started in 1933; even Albert Einstein's apartment was searched in the quest to take any firearms he might have owned.

In addition, Nazi authorities banned the importation of handguns by order in June, 1933, and they refused to issue firearms permits to persons deemed untrusthworthy. In 1935, the Citizenship Law was decreed, which excluded Jews from civil rights. Local police were commanded in late 1935 not to issue firearms permits to Jews.

The 1938 Law

A first reading of the the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938 might suggest that it effectively lessened handgun control and other restrictions from what they were under the Law on Firearms and Ammunition of 1928. Firearms ownership was restricted to, "...persons whose trustworthiness is not in question and who can show a need for a (gun) permit". Some view this language as excluding only criminals and persons under the age of eighteen from ownership. One writer has claimed that the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938 effectively liberalized firearms ownership in Nazi Germany. [1]

Analyzing the Nazi Weapons Law using principles of the Nazi legal system, however, shows that any apparent "liberalizing" of the gun ownership restrictions operated to enable Nazi police, military and other pro-Nazi personnel to obtain and possess firearms. Much of the German population was already disarmed by 1938, and the Jews' citizenship rights were already revoked. There is no evidence of an expansion of legal, citizen ownership of firearms in Nazi Germany as a result of the 1938 Law. The detailed explanation of these facts, with citations to legal and historical references, appears in Part IV of "Gun Control": Gateway to Tyranny [2].

The 1938 Law expressly barred Jews from businesses involving firearms. On November 11, 1938 [3], new regulations were issued barring Jews from owning any weapons, even clubs or knives. The new regulations coincided with the national night of violent persecution of Jews and destruction of Jews' synagogues and businesses, known as Krystallnacht.

References

The full texts of the 1928 law and the 1938 law, with English translations, are available in the book entitled "Gun Control": Gateway to Tyranny [4] republished in 2006. Dr. Stephen Halbrook has extensively analyzed the history of German and Nazi laws and policies toward firearms in his article, Nazi Firearms Law and the Disarming of the German Jews, 17 Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, No. 3, 483-535 (2000) [5]