Conservative Libertarian Outpost

Source: http://www.jpfo.org/GCA_68.htm

Are you tired of being told that “gun control” is a chronic pain that you have to accept because there’s no cure? Do you — a law abiding person — want to be free: to own whichever firearms you want to own, regardless of where in America you live; from waiting periods, gun bans, magazine capacity restrictions, etc.; to spend your time on the range or in the field, rather than fighting “gun control”?

Are you tired of giving hard earned bucks to efforts that have at best only slowed the gun grabbers’ push toward firearms registration and confiscation? If you have had enough of death by a thousand cuts, you are ready to take action to wipe out “gun control” — now.

Members of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) consider “gun control” to be an aggressive cancer. JPFO has a cure, a way to destroy “gun control”. JPFO has hard evidence that shows that the Nazi Weapons Law (March 18, 1938) is the source of the U.S Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA ’68). Adolph Hitler signed the Nazi Weapons Law. The Gestapo (Nazi National Secret Police) enforced it. In “Gun Control”: Gateway to Tyranny we present the official German text of the Nazi Weapons Law and a side-by-side translation into English. Even more deadly: a side-by-side, section-by-section comparison of the GCA ’68 with the Nazi Weapons Law. If you have this in your hands, no one can tell you that you’re imagining things.

The clincher: JPFO knows who implanted into American law cancerous ideas from the Nazi Weapons Law.

The likely culprit is a former senator, now deceased. We have documentary proof — see below — that he had the original text of the Nazi Weapons Law in his possession 4 months before the bill that became GCA ’68 was signed into law.

This former senator was a senior member of the U.S. team that helped to prosecute Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, Germany, in 1945-46. That is probably where he found out about the Nazi Weapons Law. He may have gotten a copy of it then, or at a later date. We cannot imagine why any U.S. lawmaker would own original texts of Nazi laws. To find out his name, read on.

With this hard evidence in your hands and in your head, you can destroy cancerous “gun control”. You can challenge anyone who backs “gun control”. You can show them the Nazi ideas, line by line.

The parallels between the Nazi law and GCA ’68 will leap at you from the page. For example, law abiding firearm owners in Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey must carry identification cards based on formats from the Nazi Weapons Law. Nazi based laws have no place in America. Thousands of Americans died or were wounded in the war to wipe out the Nazis. They did not suffer or die so that Hitler’s ideas could live on in America and kill more Americans. Remember Killeen, Texas! The 23 who died in Luby’s Cafeteria there died because they obeyed Nazi inspired “gun control” laws. The law forced them, unarmed, to face an armed madman.

To destroy “gun control” before more law abiding Americans are murdered by criminals or madmen helped by “gun control”, you need to get hold of the evidence as presented in “Gun Control”: Gateway to Tyranny. You can then challenge the media, the most aggressive backers of “gun control”. Ask media personalities in your city or town why they back Nazi based laws. You can help to erase “gun control”, Hitler’s last legacy.

GCA ’68 puts your life at risk right now. You have a constitutional civil right to be armed in order to protect yourself, because under U.S law the police have no duty to protect the average person:

“There is no constitutional right to be protected by the state (or Federal) against being murdered by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect its residents against such predators but it does not violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, or, we suppose, any other provision of the Constitution. The Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: it tells the state (gov’t) to let people alone; it does not require the federal government or the state to provide services, even so elementary a service as maintaining law and order”
(Bowers v. DeVito, U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, 686F.2d 616 [1982]).

The Supreme Court last dealt with this issue in 1856; the 1982 decision states the position in modern language. The laws of virtually every state parallel federal law (see JPFO Special Report Dial 911 and Die! covered in Guns & Ammo, July 1992). This has been so ever since the Constitution was adopted in 1791. As a result, the framers of the Second Amendment deliberately created (guaranteed) an individual civil right to be armed. It is your only reliable defense against criminals. GCA ’68 ties your hands and keeps you from carrying out your legal duty to ensure your own self defense. GCA ’68 thus undermines a pillar of U.S. law and helps criminals to kill law abiding Americans. Hitler would be pleased.

Thus, GCA ’68 marked a new approach to “gun control”. It replaced the Federal Firearms Act (June 30, 1938), which was based on the federal power to regulate interstate commerce. The 1938 law required firearms dealers to get a federal license (which then cost $1). Only dealers could ship firearms across state lines. Ordinary people could receive shipments from dealers.

In GCA ’68 the government required that in almost all cases only dealers could send and receive firearms across state lines. This ended “mail order” sales of firearms by law abiding persons who are not licensed dealers. GCA ’68 hits you even harder. Congress gave federal bureaucrats in Washington D.C., the power to decide what kinds of firearms you can own. The framers of GCA ’68 borrowed an idea — that certain firearms are “hunting weapons” — from the Nazi Weapons Law (Section 21 and Section 32 of the Regulations, page 61 and page 73, respectively, of “Gun Control”: Gateway to Tyranny). The equivalent U.S. term, “sporting purpose,” was used to classify firearms. But it was not defined anywhere in GCA ’68. Thus, bureaucrats were empowered to ban whole classes of firearms. They have, in fact, done so.

We wanted to know the source of these new ideas. On reading “Dial 911 and Die!” a JPFO member told us he had seen an article — by Alan Stang in ‘Review of the News,’ October 4, 1967 (pages 15-20) — the author of which felt that the Nazi Weapons Law was the model for GCA ’68. We found the article. But Stang did not reproduce the Nazi law, so we could not check his conclusions.

We started to hunt for the text of the Nazi Weapons Law. We eventually found it, in the law library of an Ivy League university.

Until 1943-44, the German government published its laws and regulations in the ‘Reichsgesetzblatt,’ roughly the equivalent of the U.S. Federal Register. Carefully shelved by law librarians, the 1938 issues of this German government publication had gathered a lot of dust. In the ‘Reichsgesetzblatt’ issue for the week of March 21, 1938, was the official text of the Weapons Law (March 18, 1938). It gave Hitler’s Nazi party a stranglehold on the Germans, many of whom did not support the Nazis. We found that the Nazis did not invent “gun control” in Germany. The Nazis inherited gun control and then perfected it: they invented handgun control.

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.

Given the parallels between the Nazi Weapons Law and the GCA ’68, we concluded that the framers of the GCA ’68 — lacking any basis in American law to sharply cut back the civil rights of law abiding Americans — drew on the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938.

Finding the Nazi Weapons Law whetted our appetite. We wanted to know who implanted this Nazi cancer in America. We began by probing the backgrounds of lawmakers who championed “gun control”. We focused on those whose bills became part of GCA ’68. GCA ’68 as enacted closely tracks proposals dating to August 1963. We felt that if the culprit were a lawmaker — or a congressional staffer — he or she would know Germany, German law and possibly even speak German. He or she probably would have spent time in Germany on business or during military service. Alternatively, if the culprit were not a member of Congress or a staffer, there would be testimony at the hearings to that effect.

Most potential suspects were quickly eliminated; they had no apparent ties to Germany. But one lawmaker caught our attention.

An old “Who’s Who” entry showed he had been a senior member of the U.S. team that prosecuted German war criminals at Nuremberg in 1945-46. Thus, he had lived in Germany just after the Nazi period. His official duties required him to look at Nazi records, including Nazi laws. In 1963 he led the effort to greatly expand the Federal Firearms Act of 1938.

We then got a break. We told a legal scholar of our findings. He was intrigued. He sent us an extract from the record of hearings held a few months prior to the enactment of GCA ’68. At the end of June 1968, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee to investigate Juvenile Delinquency — chaired by Thomas J. Dodd (D-CT) — held hearings on bills: (1) “To Require the Registration of Firearms” (S.3604). (2) “To Disarm Lawless Persons” (S.3634) and (3) “To Provide for the Establishment of a National Firearms Registry” (S.3637), among others.

U.S. Representative John Dingell (D-MI) testified at these Senate hearings on “gun control”. Senator Joseph D. Tydings (D-MD) chaired some of these hearings, in Dodd’s absence.

Rep. Dingell expressed concern that if firearms registration were required, it might lead to confiscation of firearms, as had happened in Nazi Germany. Tydings angrily accused Rep. Dingell of using “scare tactics”:

“Are you inferring that our system here, gun registration or licensing, would in any way be comparable to the Nazi regime in Germany, where they had a secret police, and a complete takeover?”

Rep. Dingell backed away.

(Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary, 90th Congress, 2nd Session, June 26, 27 and 28 and July 8, 9 and 10. 1968, pp. 479-80, 505-6 cited as Subcommittee Hearings.)

Tydings later inserted into the hearing record various documents, “concerning the history of Nazism and gun confiscation.”

Exhibit No. 62 (see reproduction) is fascinating. This letter — dated July 12, 1968 — is to Subcommittee Chairman Dodd from Lewis C. Coffin, Law Librarian at the Library of Congress. Coffin wrote:

” … we are enclosing herewith a translation of the Law on Weapons of March 18, 1938, prepared by Dr. William Solyom-Fekete of [the European Law Division — ed.] as well as the Xerox of the original German text which you supplied” (Subcommittee Hearings, p. 489, emphasis added).

This letter makes it public knowledge that at the end of June 1968 — 4 months before GCA ’68 was enacted — Senator Thomas J. Dodd, now deceased, personally owned a copy of the original German text of the Nazi Weapons Law.

Why did Dodd own the original German text of any Nazi law? Why did he make known that he owned it?

The Library of Congress then had (and still has) the ‘Reichsgesetzblatt’ in its collection. The Library of Congress translator, Dr. Solyom-Fekete, could easily have used the Library of Congress’ own copy.

Any member of Congress who wanted to read the Nazi Weapons Law need only have asked for it to be produced from the shelves of the Library of Congress and for it to be translated by Library of Congress experts. Why should any member of Congress ever have owned the original German text of the Nazi Weapons Law?

Without access to Tom Dodd’s personal papers, archived under his heirs’ control, we unfortunately cannot offer definite answers.

Dodd could have acquired the German text of the Nazi Weapons Law during his time at Nuremberg. But he had no need to do so.

Dodd did not personally handle the prosecution of Nazi Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, who signed the Nazi Weapons Law. The case against Frick was presented by Robert M.W. Kempner, Assistant Trial Counsel for the United States (see ‘Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal,’ cited as TMWC, Vol. V, pp. 352-67, Nuremberg, Germany, 1947).

Nor should the Nazi Weapons Law otherwise have come to Dodd’s attention. The Nazi Weapons Law was not used as evidence against Frick (see Kempner’s speech, TMWC, V, pp. 352-67 and ‘Index of Laws, Decrees, Orders, Directives, and the Administration of Justice in Nazi Germany and Nazi Dominated Countries’, TMWC, Vol. XXIII, pp. 430-33). The Nazi Weapons Law is not listed among documents submitted as evidence to the Tribunal by the American prosecutors (see Vol. XXIV, pp. 98-169).

The prosecutors at Nuremberg doubtless knew of the Nazi Weapons Law. They probably saw it in the ‘Reichsgesetzblatt.’ On the same day that Nazi Interior Minister Frick signed the Weapons Law, March 18, 1938, he signed another law governing security measures in newly annexed Austria. This law concerning Austria appeared in the ‘Reichsgesetzblatt’ — directly in front of the Weapons Law — and was introduced into evidence at Nuremberg (‘Reichsgesetzblatt’ 1938, I, p. 262; the Nazi Weapons Law was published in the same volume, p. 265; see TMWC, Vol. V, p.358 for reference to law concerning Austria).

Thus, the Nazi Weapons Law appeared to have no historical merit at Nuremberg and should not have attracted anyone’s notice, certainly not to the extent of causing anyone to want to keep a copy of it as a separate document.

If Dodd got his copy of the original German text of the Nazi Weapons Law during his time at Nuremberg, it likely was part of a collection of documents, for example, issues of the ‘Reichsgesetzblatt’.

But if he acquired the original German text of the Nazi Weapons Law after his service at Nuremberg, he must have done so for a very specific reason. The Nazi Weapons Law plainly did not figure at Nuremberg.

We may safely conclude it had little, if any, interest for those interested in the history of the Nazis’ rise to power. For example, the Nazi Weapons Law is not mentioned at all in William L. Shirer’s very thorough study of Nazi Germany, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1950).

At the hearings held by Dodd’s subcommittee at the end of June 1968, Rep. Dingell had objected to the firearms registration provision then being discussed. Dodd may have offered his copy of the Nazi Weapons Law to show that the specific proposal did not resemble anything in the Nazi law.

He may not have realized that he was revealing a broader truth; that the whole fabric of GCA ’68 was based on the Nazi Weapons Law, even if the specific registration proposal was not so based.

Alternatively, Dodd may not have cared whether or not anyone knew that he had the German text of the Nazi Weapons Law. He doubtless knew that months would pass before the hearing record was printed and so generally available for scrutiny. Thus, even if anyone then noticed the parallels between the two laws, the bill would already have become law.

Rep. Dingell does not appear to have pursued the matter: the firearms registration provision was not included in GCA ’68. The Congress was stampeded on “gun control” by public enthusiasm. Martin Luther King had been murdered on April 4, 1968, and Robert F. Kennedy had been murdered on June 6, 1968.

We are not the first to have seen this hearing record. But we appear to be the first to have recognized its importance. This hearing record suggests strongly that the late Senator Thomas J. Dodd (D-CT) himself implanted the Nazi Weapons Law into American law, or, at very least, helped others to do so.

Now you know the ugly truth about the roots of GCA ’68. But you need to see — with your own eyes — the hard evidence of the Nazi roots of “gun control” in America presented in “Gun Control”: Gateway to Tyranny.

If you want to destroy “gun control”, you can use this book to do it.

The Nazi Weapons Law of March 18, 1938, cleared the way for World War II and Nazi genocide against the Jews, Gypsies and 7,000,000 other people.