Following on the resounding success that was Canada’s long gun registry, Germany picked the tenth anniversary of a school shooting to enact their own exercise in waste and uselessness. “‘This brings about a new dimension,’ German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said. He said, however, that the registry wouldn’t necessarily prevent another massacre from taking place.” Maybe not, but Deutchlanders will feel so darned good paying for it and knowing it’s there. Expensive empty gestures über alles. But wait, it gets much worse . . .

The Germans plan to register all guns, getting ahead of the game in order to comply with a future Eurozone firearms data base requirement. But the the new law doesn’t stop at employing meticulous Teutonic record keeping, a skill at which they’re famously adept. Police will also have new power to enter homes unannounced to insure weapons are properly stored. And as everyone knows, nothing’s more comforting than answering a knock at the door and finding a German in uniform carrying a gun.

As Tony Bernardo, spokesman for the Canadian Shooting Sport Association, told torontosun.com “The last time Germany insisted on a central database for their firearms was in 1938 and we know what happened next: the state disarmed the law-abiding populace, because they knew where the guns were, and then rolled right over them.” What could possibly go wrong?

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80 COMMENTS

    • “Those that do not learn from history…”

      ….deserve to suffer the consequences of repeating it.

      • …Like the victims of columbine and VT deserve to have been shot because they were just too mean to those two kids. Right.

        • If they were one of the ones being jerks to them, yes. Contrary to popular myth, actions have consequences.

  2. “The last time Germany insisted on a central database for their firearms was in 1938 and we know what happened next: the state disarmed the law-abiding populace, because they knew where the guns were, and then rolled right over them.”
    —–
    In before MikeB’s claim that “it couldn’t happen today”.

    • Completely agree. It’s amazing how sheeple are so quick to forget how their ancestors were oppressed.

      It also amazes me how many Jewish folks live in NYC/NY with that city-state’s draconian gun control laws while still making sure the rest of us remember the Holocaust.

      • Nate,

        Great rhetorical question. I ask it of myself and my fellow Jews on occasion. I think there is far too much emphasis placed by the Jewish conservatives on endless religious studies and commandments and by liberal Jews on social justice causes, and not enough on activities such as mastering self-defense for the next anti-Semitic wave. You’d think they’d have learned after 2,000 years…

        • Ahron and Nate, have you fellows seen the video on YT, “No Guns For Jews”, put out by “Jews For the Preservation of Firearms Ownership”?

          It’s a great video. It answers the question I always had, namely; how can American Jews clamor for more military aid to Israel on the one hand; and work to deny and deprive Americans of their Second Amendment rights on the other.

  3. With the German people sticking their head in the sand about the events of WWII I suppose that enough of their “greatest generation” have passed away for the current one to make the same, stupid mistake.

    Germany does not have a proud history despite the jolly nature of their people…smart, but more short-sighted than anyone in this world.

  4. Vee are vrom zee government, und vee are here to inspect zee veapons. You vill submit to zis, for vee haf veys of gaining your compliance.

  5. “Police will also have new power to enter homes unannounced to insure weapons are properly stored”.

    Is this going to be an active part of the new law or is it going to be an unenforced part the busy police will ignore? If active, how frequently? Either way, it now gives police a legit excuse to enter the homes of any law abiding German citizen. A few months ago, I read that there is an estimated 20 million ‘illegally’ owned guns in German homes that are left overs from wars or purchased on the black market by usually law abiding German citizens for various reasons.

  7. Nazi comparisons are so tired. I don’t even know what kind of statement you want to make with that, a firearms registry leads to Jews being tossed in an oven again? No? What other deeply intellectual and relevant argument were you trying to make with that then?

    As for the ’38 gun registry, gun grabbing was imposed on Germany by the victors of WW1 through the treaty of Versailles, encoded in laws around ’20. Legislation up to and including the ’38 one actually relaxed the severity of gun control.

    I’m also not sure as to your prowess in being able to ascertain how interactions between police officers in Germany in our current day usually unfold. Personally they have for me been less intimidating then encounters in the US. You’ll also want to read up on the checks and balances in place. To bring it to a point, German law enforcement make the US by comparison look like a police state.

    You are free to have your opinion, but as you seem rather far removed from the current realities in Germany I’d not put much value on them.

    • So, the proposed law doesn’t actually allow police to enter your home unanounced? So, registration was not followed by confiscation? I understand that present-day Deutchland is far removed from Nazi Deutchland. What unnerves me is when the two appear to move closer.

      • The law permits that. A law enacted by the democratically elected representatives of the German republic. There is no general dissent concerning the law. I fail to see how this can lead to Nazism. If a country wants to limit the amount of firearms in their society, they are free to do so.
        Just as given the daily local news reports about armed home invasions, robberies or gang shootouts mean I wouldn’t be without a gun here, the overwhelming lack of such crimes in Germany meant I never felt a need to own a gun while living there.
        In that respect the US and Germany are apples and oranges.

        • “A law enacted by the democratically elected representatives of the German republic.”

          Nazism was a democratic movement–fully supported by the German people. Read “They Thought They Were Free.”

          • that’s nice, now feel free to point out to me how a gun registry in today’s Germany leads to Nazism or why, given the public support for currently instituting the registry, the government should go against the will of the people.

            • This kind of thinking is the hopeful “maybe they will get it right this time…”

              Good luck with that.

              • thank you for your deep, meaningful and well articulated thought on the matter which greatly benefited the fact based argument on this topic.

              • It’s a simple matter of “We’ve done this before and seen how it turns out”. It’s like dating the same person, over and over again, when every time before you broke up because they cheated on you – you’re a damn fool to keep going back and redoing the same mistakes.

                Germany, as brilliant as their engineers and scientists are and as hard working as their people are, keeps making the same mistakes of voting in an all powerful government and then being surprised when the government abuses that power. This time won’t be any different.

              • you are aware that gun ownership in Germany has been severely restricted for the last 67 years with this latest addition to the books not really making much of a difference?

          • PS: your view is rather simplistic if you overlook the involvement and tactics employed by the SA to facilitate that outcome of the election.

            • There was well more than one election. Even after the war ended the majority of the Germans supported Nazism.

              One can argue about the govt doing the will of the people in this matter, to which all I can really say is thank God our founders made the 2nd Amendment.

      • As an American who’s German grandparents survived being hunted by the Nazi’s before moving to the US after WWII, it unnerves me that the US keeps passing more laws reminiscent of the Third Reich, as well as the blatant worship of the military / government in the US.

    • Given that anti-Semitism is once again in vogue throughout Europe I don’t see a reason why a second holocaust isn’t possible.

        • I don’t see a rise in secessionist sentiment in the South. I do see a rise in Nazi-like anti-Semitism in Europe.

          • I see both and consider neither to be happening in the foreseeable future *shrug*

            • Then you are blind to the problems in Europe.

              The only state talking seccesion these days is Vermont.

              • Just because European leaders don’t swallow AIPAC’s BS like the US does, and just because European leaders are not fearful of calling out Israel for its utterly disgraceful behavior like the US is, does not mean antisemitism is on the rise in Europe.

                Anti Islamic sentiment is on the rise, sure, but as far as Jewish folk are concerned I see little to support your case of a “Nazi like rise”.

              • Did I say anything about Israel? Sounds to me that you are revealing your own preferences.

                While there is a justified rise in anti-Muslim sentiment throughout Europe the elites are solidly in the Islamic camp and that has given them cover to once again practice their anti-Semitism.

                The Anti-Muslim groups are by and large philo-Semitic and the elite tries to marginalize them as “rightwing extremists” and neo-Nazis.

              • Europe is pro islam, Obama is a communist, 9/11 was an inside job and the moon landing was fake.

      • My father has spent a long time looking into our family genealogy (we’re of Dutch descent) and a few years back he ran into a cousin who was also into it, and had gone back to Holland to meet our by now very distant relatives. He told my father he has asked them about the rumor of there being a Jewish side of the family. They told him to shut up about that, they wanted to keep that quiet.

    • Civilian gun grabbing was initiated by the NAZIS. It mostly targeted the Jews and protected the rights of the elites and/or NAZI supporters to continue owning guns. The victors of WW1 did not apparently go after civilian ownership of guns.

      “The Nazi Weapons Law of 1938 replaced a Law on Firearms and Ammunition of April 13, 1928. The 1928 law was enacted by a center-right, freely elected German government that wanted to curb “gang activity,” violent street fights between Nazi party and Communist party thugs. All firearm owners and their firearms had to be registered. Sound familiar? “Gun control” did not save democracy in Germany. It helped to make sure that the toughest criminals, the Nazis, prevailed.

      The Nazis inherited lists of firearm owners and their firearms when they ‘lawfully’ took over in March 1933. The Nazis used these inherited registration lists to seize privately held firearms from persons who were not “reliable.” Knowing exactly who owned which firearms, the Nazis had only to revoke the annual ownership permits or decline to renew them.

      In 1938, five years after taking power, the Nazis enhanced the 1928 law. The Nazi Weapons Law introduced handgun control. Firearms ownership was restricted to Nazi party members and other “reliable” people.

      The 1938 Nazi law barred Jews from businesses involving firearms. On November 10. 1938 — one day after the Nazi party terror squads (the SS) savaged thousands of Jews, synagogues and Jewish businesses throughout Germany — new regulations under the Weapons Law specifically barred Jews from owning any weapons, even clubs or knives.”

      http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/GCA_68.htm

      • It was initated by the Weimar Republic, not the Nazis. It is attributed to provisions of the Versailles Treaty.

        How would a the lack of gun control in ’28 have changed the outcome? In which way is all this relevant to todays gun control? I haven’t heard about Jews being shipped to concentration camps in NY or California yet.

        • Actually, from what I read that draconian gun control was passsed by the German Government in 1919 to appease the Versailles Treaty, and was liberalized slightly in 1928. The 1938 gun control act further liberalized gun control in regards to long guns, but more or less denied misfits of the Third Reich gun rights. Of course talking to Germans who lived during WWII, it seems that if the Nazis were unhappy with a person, they sort of disappeared.

    • Curzen, it’s a removal of rights. In the US one of our bill of rights amendments protects against unreasonable search and seizure. In order for police to enter your home they either need your permission or reasonable cause. Reasonable cause has been disputed at times, but a cop still needs a judge’s opinion and approval for a warrant to let them enter. Historically and presently around the world it is seen that once rights are degraded and removed government then overstep their bounds. It doesn’t take much time for that to become the norm.

  8. A recent story about an EU history museum mentioned the complete whitewashing of history before 1946 which they referred to as “year zero” of Europe… following a European civil war (read in a different article).

    • But…that is the real problem. The Jews complaing about persecution during WWII and justifiably so…but other groups have been badly persecuted and brow beaten as well. Germany has had a bad record of violating Individual Rights for centuries.
      There is a real reason that about as many people of German descent are in the USA as in Germany.

  10. “harder…harder…HARDER!!!”

    *door gets kicked in *

    ‘Achtung!Police!Were here to inspect your gun collection!Please detach from your frau and assume the position,this won’t take long.’

  11. I’d say this comes under the “having solved all other problems…” heading, but compared to us, Germany has mostly solved its economic problems. Sad to say, on average they may not be the ones with scheisse im koepfen.

  12. A little humor:

    Angela Merkel (current Chancellor of Germany) arrives at Passport Control at Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris.

    “Nationality?” asks the French immigration officer.

    “German,” she replies.

    “Occupation?”

    “No, just here for a few days.”

  13. So, Curzen, you seem to have no problem with this. I would, there is no reason for the government to have a database of firearm owners and the ability to conduct surprise inspections at any hour. If you can’t see where this is leading, where it has led in the past, I am surprised. With the horrendous record of failure in all countries who have implemented this type of registry, the huge cost of tax money and the ripeness for abuse, I don’t see how anyone can support this. Would you also be OK with the police conducting surprise inspections of your pantry, your garage, your closet? You would have to be, because once you allow this, there is no limit on what you will allow the government to do. Either you believe in liberty and freedom or you believe you are a ward of the State and anything the State wants to do in the name of “keeping you safe” is just fine. Bureaucrats will always find new ways to abuse their power and letting this registry is another step on the road to serfdom.

    • started in repoly to nonnamous, but it fits just as well here.

      yeah, it also took a devastating depression, crushing reparations, foreign control of internal affairs, limited media, a dysfunctional government, a populace used to monarchies and a host of other reasons not in the slightest present today to turn a country towards Nazism and ultimately genocide.

      As for how things would have panned out in Nazi Germany with the lax gun laws permitting Jews as well to bear arms, them actually doing so despite a history of shunning gun ownership coupled with initially self imposed ghettoization – a violent armed uprising would have IMO made it even easier on the 3rd Reich to start concentration and extermination while making it easy to justify. Given the international reluctance to aid the Jews history might have taken a turn towards the swastika still flying from German flagpoles today.

      your argument pertaining how “where this leads” in conjuncture with similar comments by other posters (towards Nazi German No. 2): that argument makes about as much sense as saying building a new highway will inevitable lead to fascism and invasion of your neighbors.

      It doesn’t matter if you can understand how anyone can support this or whether or not I do, the people of Germany do and that is in the end all that matters.

      Police in Germany will not raid your pantry anymore than they currently do as long as there isn’t a public sentiment for the need of it resulting in pantry raids to be codified in law. But I can understand how when going from gun control to Nazism you get such silly ideas.

      I really urge you to acquaint yourself a bit more with the political system in Germany, it’s slightly more ripe with checks and balances as well as choices than the two (one?) party system in the US.

      Is it a step on the road to serfdom? Maybe, but the road to get there is still very, very long. I doubt that you’ll find many Germans who believe that road will be traveled in full or that the registry is doing much if anything to pave that way.

      It’s a different country, a different society.

      • Understand your point, but I would have a big problem with this if the US gov tried it here. If the German people want a nanny State, that is their choice. I reject it out of hand. I do want to clear up your miss-conception though; I mentioned nothing of the Nazis. However, I do feel that our US gov has already usurped too much power and abuses the Constitution to suit their agenda. Every time we let them take more of our liberties for the sorry excuse of “keeping us safe”, a bit of the spirit of freedom dies and good luck getting it back.

        • I took “If you can’t see where this is leading, where it has led in the past” as implying towards nazism.

          And I consider gun control unfeasible and detrimental to my own safety unless a fairy can magically make all guns disappear. Truth be told, I wouldn’t want that fairy to wave her wand even then.

          • Oh, all the guns will not disappear, the government and the criminals will still have them.

      • It doesn’t matter if you can understand how anyone can support this or whether or not I do, the people of Germany do and that is in the end all that matters.

        No, I do not believe the tyranny of the majority have the right to trample Individual Rights. I do not believe in a mobocracy. I believe in a Constitutional Republic with limited powers and strong Rights for the Individuals.
        What have you created?-A Republic if you can keep it.

      • yeah, it also took a devastating depression, crushing reparations, foreign control of internal affairs, limited media, a dysfunctional government, a populace used to monarchies

        Huh, you just described a society quite similar to the current Europe.

        It’s a different country, a different society.

        And sadly, every time it happens, there’s always fools claiming “this time is different”. There’s actually a book about that focused on recessions / financial crises / banking crises – it looks at over 800 years of people making the same damn mistakes over and over again and each time the “DANGER! DANGER!” signs appear, someone like you gets up and says “Ignore that! This time is different – we’re superior to our predecessors! They were fools and we’re far too smart to make their mistakes”…then you proceed to make the same exact mistake.

        • The current economic downturn in Europe is actually worse than the one in the ’30s and has now gone on for longer and shows no signs of improving, especially since the people in charge are implementing exactly all the wrong policies.

          We’re living in unstable times. Things could smooth out or they could get more chaotic. It’s hard to say. However, the longer things stay bad economically, the more likely chaos becomes.

          • With things being bad primarily because every developed country ran their finances into the ground doing what you imply are the “right” things. Brilliant logic there, just how you claim that the Depression was a major cause in the rise of the Nazis, state that it would never happen again, then state that the current situation in Europe is even WORSE.

            Seriously, MikeB Jr, do you read the things you type? Because I’m not sure you do.

            • What are you talking about? I think you have me confused with Curzen. I was making this point in support of your position that fascism could easily rise again, and that conditions are in fact uncomfortably similar to those of the 1930s.

              As for the causes of the current situation though, financial irresponsibility was only really involved in Greece. Contractionary economic policy remains contractionary, and is still a bad idea in the middle of a recession. The policies being tried now won’t work, and they’ll keep not working no matter how hard the policy makers keep wishing.

  14. While it’s tempting to make all sorts of snarky statements about Germany and lists (e.g., like the kind the Nazis made use of), the real reasons for this registry are probably more prosaic. Here, in Canada, Montreal-based CGI Group (a division of Bell-Globemedia) made nice donations to the Liberal Party, which resulted in the fat gun registry contract. CGI later funded the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, so that the CACP would act as a lobby group for the registry. And Coalition for Gun Control maven Wendy Cukier owns Intercon Consulting: an IT company, which has had gun registry-related contracts. How much do you want to bet that Germany’s registry is a fat IT/database porkbarrel for one of Angela’s donors, wrapped up in a publically-acceptable ‘need’?

  15. Similar laws existed in the United States, too, to be enforced only against the “undesirables”. These were the so-called “Black Codes” throughout the South that forbade gun ownership. Naturally, this was not enforced against the White population, “was never intended to be”, and indeed was not. But oh, boy, was it enforced against the Black population, and yes, their guns were confiscated wherever they were found. That’s one big reason the KKK and similar terrorist groups were able to carry out their terror. We call this “Victim Disarmament”, and as we all know…”VD kills.” Now, replace “Blacks” with “Jews” in Germany, and you had the same thing in the 1930’s under the democratically-elected Nazis.

    This is really about an armed citizenry being viewed as “bad”. OK, if that’s true, then why is it that the Government of Switzerland issues a FULLY AUTOMATIC ASSAULT RIFLE to each and every male Swiss citizen? Answer that; why do they? Now, how do we stop all the resultant rampant armed crime in Switzerland? Oh, what’s that–one of the safest countries in the world, if not *the* safest? Shootings virtually unheard of there? Oops…..

    No, thanks. They can repeat the gun-registration stupidity in Germany if they want to be that dumb enough to repeat bad history. But try it in *THIS* country–the United States of America–and Homie Ain’t Playin’ That. We who actually care about freedom will fight such lunacy tooth, nail, and–God forbid it be needed–firearm if necessary. We will *NOT* have a repeat of what happened to our citizenry in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina!!

    – T
    ———————————————–
    “San Francisco Liberal With A Gun”
    http://www.sanfranciscoliberalwithagun.com

    • The United States Gun Control Act of 1968 was based on the German gun control laws of 1938. Ex-CT Sen. Thomas Dodd was the principal author of the 1968 GCA.

  16. Everything doesn’t have to be about the Nazis. This law doesn’t have to lead back to the 3rd Reich to be a bad thing. Isn’t it enough if it leads to ordinary citizens being treated like parolees?

  17. “‘This brings about a new dimension,’ German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said. He said, however, that the registry wouldn’t necessarily prevent another massacre from taking place.”
    All true, but it will make gun confiscation much easier for the New Reich.

    • Of course you have to ask yourself; if it does not increase general public safety, then why have it?
      Pork for the politico buddies?

      • If it doesn’t prevent criminal shootings then what is the point besides eroding personal freedoms? Can anyone provide a potential positive outcome from this? Will there just be a spike in muggings and killings with knives like in England? Being a cook in England is tough, all the good cooking knives are outlawed because they’re too long to be legal there.

  18. Actually, it seems Germany has had quite a history of gun control in that even after WWII, the public was legally disarmed by the Western Occupational Forces until about 1956. I am sure that the USA could have formed the new West Germany with a real Bill of Rights including 2A, but alas, they did not.

  19. In related news Hitler didn’t pay attention in history class the day they talked about Napolean’s attrition in the Russian winter.

  20. I guess the Germans have the same problems with children, criminals, and others walking into local stores and just waltzing out with guns quick as you please.
    But they don’t, it’s a maze to get guns and keep them. However nothing like a nice database for crosschecking where all the defensive hardware is.

  21. you got to love the pathetic retard attempt by writer of this blog to cllaim that Germany suddenly becomes Nazi country because of this.. hilariously moronic and pathetic…

    lame…

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