Letters to the Editor
MacK..
Published Letters: 477 Editor's Choice: 49
-
Tempus is missing the point
[Read the article: Why Democrats dumped gun control]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First, actually, insurgencies are rarely based on the guns held by individual gun owners. To take a classic "successful" insurgency, the IRA in 1918-21. This was fought primarily with weapons which the Irish Volunteers had smuggled in pre-1914 and with guns stolen from the British military. In Afghanistan it was weapons supplied from outside to organised militias that won the war against the Russians, the insurgents in Iraq (if that works) are using guns and explosives stolen from Iraqi military arms dumps. The Spanish guerrilla war against Napoleon was armed and financed by England, etc. The Viet Cong "won" because they were armed and equiped by North Vietnam and ultimately Russia and China, and in reality the Viet Cong lost the Tet offensive, but the US was unwilling, like the British in Ireland, to continue the battle -- it was the NVA that overthrew the south, not the Viet Cong in the end.
No, popular insurgencies rarely work, and certainly I cannot think of one that worked based on citizen ownership of firearms. All insurgencies that are remotely successful rely on the insurgent organization to supply arms and equipment. The list of failed insurgencies is very long.
There is a romantic view of insurgencies, but the hard reality is that a ruthless totalitarian state can suppress them with ease. The Irish won in 1921 because the UK lacked the stomach to continue the tactics that were, militarily, winning the war for Britain, because at the end of the day, the UK was a democracy. Read any history of the Irish war of Independence and you will see that the IRA was essantially defeated after the Customs House battle.
The American War of Independence was not won as a popular insurgency, it was won with an Army, fighting pitched battles and by the French Navy -- it was also far from popular, most of the population of the colonies stayed on the sidelines. Where the Americans fought the British as insurgents the outcome was fairly uniformly negative for the American side.
-
Gun Control In Nazi Germany
[Read the article: Why Democrats dumped gun control]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Nothing the Weimar Government did had any substantial effect, in particular the 1928 law. The Friecorps, the Nazis and the Communists did not register their guns, nor did most people. The Nazis may have searched for some guns when they gained power, but guns were in fact all over the place in Germany before 1933 and still in 1945, and it did little to stop the Nazi's coming to power. The law also had nearly no impact on firearms already held as was enforced in a very limited way even post 1932 (in part because the Nazi's had genuinely popular support until 1943-44.) In fact the gun-fueled political violence and anarchy that took over Germany was what helped Hitler take power and armed the Stormtroopers (the SA.) Germany in 1918-45 was dripping with firearms -- indeed a lot of German soldiers when they left the front in 1918, took their guns home with them (to a large degree the German Army just went home rather than surrendering.) Thje basic point is simple, civil ownership of guns did not stop the Nazis.
If you want a photographic example of how widespread private gun ownership remained in 1945, look for a photo of Goebels as Gauleiter of Berlin taking the oath of allegience from the German Home Guard and look at the weapons they are carrying -- a few Panzerfausts, but mostly a motely collection of civilian firearms -- shotguns, hunting rifles, etc.
-
Tempus -- I have to disagree with you
[Read the article: Why Democrats dumped gun control]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hitler did get elected -- but the circumstances that got him elected are important. Germany from the late 1920s to 1932-3 was in a state of pretty near anarchy. All the political groups were armed to the teeth and all were engaging in street fighting, the Friecorps, the Communists, the Anarchists, the Nazis.
The biggest attraction the Nazis had was that they offered a chance of order, as the baddest, most heavily armed group on the streets. The Nazis steadily subsumed most of the rest of the rightwing Freicorps.
So the bottom line was that the democractic Weimar government had failed, and a major reason it failed was the heavily armed lunacy which had taken over the German street. The 1928 law was an effort, and an unsuccessful one, to put the brakes on the lunatic left and the lunatic right. It failed because the government that passed it lacked both the ability and the political will to enforce it and disarm the armed groups, and because it was too little too late. And down that path led the 1932 election when Germans would vote for anything to end the ongoing chaos, and voted in the end for the lunatic right (though the left came close.)