Gun laws and policies, collectively referred to as firearms regulation or gun control, regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, and use of small arms by civilians. Laws of some countries may afford civilians a right to keep and bear arms, and have more liberal gun laws than neighboring jurisdictions. Countries that regulate access to firearms will typically restrict access to certain categories of firearms and then restrict the categories of persons who may be granted a license for access to such firearms. There may be separate licenses for hunting, sport shooting, self-defense, collecting, and concealed carry, with different sets of requirements, permissions, and responsibilities.
Kristallnacht (German pronunciation:[kʁɪsˈtalnaχt]lit. 'crystal night') or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (German: Novemberpogrome, pronounced[noˈvɛm.bɐ.poˌɡʁoːmə] ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary and Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening. The euphemistic name Kristallnacht comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues were smashed. The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris.
Herschel Feibel Grynszpan was a Polish-Jewish expatriate born and raised in Weimar Germany who shot the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath on 7 November 1938 in Paris. The Nazis used this assassination as a pretext to launch Kristallnacht, the antisemitic pogrom of 9–10 November 1938. Grynszpan was seized by the Gestapo after the Fall of France and brought to Germany; his further fate remains unknown.
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of gun rights in the United States and to encourage Americans to understand, uphold, and defend "all of the Bill of Rights for all Citizens." The group was founded by U.S. Navy veteran, former FFL dealer, and author Aaron S. Zelman in 1989. Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership recognizes the Second Amendment as protecting a pre-existing natural law right of individuals to keep and bear arms. It is based in Bellevue, Washington.
Aryanization was the Nazi term for the seizure of property from Jews and its transfer to non-Jews, and the forced expulsion of Jews from economic life in Nazi Germany, Axis-aligned states, and their occupied territories. It entailed the transfer of Jewish property into "Aryan" or non-Jewish hands.
The Nuremberg Laws were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households; and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens. The remainder were classed as state subjects without any citizenship rights. A supplementary decree outlining the definition of who was Jewish was passed on 14 November, and the Reich Citizenship Law officially came into force on that date. The laws were expanded on 26 November 1935 to include Romani and Black people. This supplementary decree defined Romanis as "enemies of the race-based state", the same category as Jews.
Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany comprised several laws that segregated the Jews from German society and restricted Jewish people's political, legal and civil rights. Major legislative initiatives included a series of restrictive laws passed in 1933, the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, and a final wave of legislation preceding Germany's entry into World War II.
In Germany, access to guns is controlled by the German Weapons Act, which was first enacted in 1972, and superseded by the law of 2003. This federal statute regulates the handling of firearms and ammunition as well as acquisition, storage, commerce and maintenance of firearms.
Israelitisches Familienblatt was a Jewish weekly newspaper, directed at Jewish readers of all religious alignments. Max Lessmann and Leo Lessmann founded the Familienblatt, which was published by the printing and publishing house Buchdruckerei und Verlagsanstalt Max Lessmann first in Hamburg, and then in Berlin (1935–1938). The Familienblatt was the only newspaper dealing with majorly Jewish issues in Germany which was run by a private business not aligned to a Jewish organisation of any kind. The editorial and printing offices were located in ABC-Straße 57 in Hamburg. The Hamburg agglomeration, consisting of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, the Danish-Holsteinian cities of Altona and Wandsbek as well as the Hanoverian city of Harburg upon Elbe, had been an important Jewish centre in Europe and in number with c. 9,000 persons, the biggest in Germany. Only by the first third of the 19th century did Berlin, Prussia's capital, overtake with Jews migrating from the former Polish provinces, which Prussia annexed in the Polish Partitions. Originally directed to readers in Hamburg's metropolitan area the Familienblatt gained more and more readers and spread nationwide in Germany. Israelitisches Familienblatt was prohibited to appear any further after the November Pogroms on 9–10 November 1938.
The Nazi gun control argument is the claim that gun regulations in Nazi Germany helped facilitate the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust. Historians and fact-checkers have characterized the argument as dubious or false, and point out that Jews were under 1% of the population and that it would be unrealistic for such a small population to defend themselves even if they were armed.
The Reich Flight Tax was a German capital control law implemented in 1931 to stem capital flight from the German Reich. After seizing power, the Nazis used the law to prevent emigrants from moving money out of the country.
Gun Control in the Third Reich is a non-fiction book by lawyer Stephen Halbrook. It describes the gun control policies used in Germany from the 1918 Weimar Republic through Nazi Germany in 1938. The book aims to explore the role of firearms laws, and in particular those pertaining to civilian ownership of small arms, as they relate to the prevention—or enablement—of mass atrocities such as the Holocaust. The book references German archives, diaries, and newspapers that attest to restrictions on firearm ownership for Jews and enemies of the state. It is published by the Independent Institute.
Heinrich Otto Seetzen, called Heinz Seetzen, was a German jurist, SS-Standartenführer and police colonel. Seetzen was a perpetrator of the Holocaust, responsible for the mass murder of civilians in Ukraine and in Belarus.
The Control Council Law No. 1 – Repealing of Nazi Laws was a law enacted by the Allied Control Council for post-World War II Germany on 20 September 1945.
Leipzig is the largest city in the German state of Saxony, and one of the largest cities in Germany. It is located in the northern half of Germany, south of Berlin. The history of Leipzig from 1933 to 1939, is affected by the actions of the Nazi regime. From the beginning of the Nazi Party's rise to power in 1933, to the beginning of World War II in 1939, Leipzig was an important city to the regime. Thousands of Jews were transported to and from this city as Adolf Hitler's plans for the Jewish people evolved. Between the years of 1933 to 1939, Jews suffered from the implementation of over 400 anti-Jewish policies, laws, and regulations. However, other than the history of the Holocaust, Leipzig has a rich Jewish history and culture.
From 1933 to 1945, the Nazi regime ruled Germany and, at times, controlled almost all of Europe. During this time, Nazi Germany shifted from the post-World War I society which characterized the Weimar Republic and introduced an ideology of "biological racism" into the country's legal and justicial systems. The shift from the traditional legal system to the Nazis' ideological mission enabled all of the subsequent acts of the Hitler regime to be performed legally. For this to succeed, the normative judicial system needed to be reworked; judges, lawyers and other civil servants acclimatized themselves to the new Nazi laws and personnel. As of 2021, a few laws from the Nazi era still remain codified in German law.
Austrian law allows firearm possession on shall-issue basis with certain classes of shotguns and rifles available without permit. With approximately 30 civilian firearms per 100 people, Austria is the 14th most armed country in the world.
The Judenvermögensabgabe was an arbitrary special tax imposed on German Jews under the Nazi dictatorship. The tax was only a part of a larger series of actions taken by the Nazis to systematically plunder Jewish assets.
The Holocaust in Germany was the systematic persecution, deportation, imprisonment, and murder of Jews in Germany as part of the Europe-wide Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany. The term typically refers only to the areas that were part of Germany prior to the Nazi regime coming to power and excludes some or all of the territories annexed by Nazi Germany, such as Austria or the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
Like other areas under Nazi Germany, Jews were persecuted in the northernmost German state Schleswig-Holstein. Before the Nazis came to power in 1933, an estimated 1,900 Jews lived in Schleswig-Holstein, mostly in Lübeck and Kiel. By the time of Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945, many of Schleswig-Holstein's Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust.
