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Comment by WFHRenaissance | Hacker News Reader

No ban, just increasingly restrictive laws on ownership and use that end up resulting in something tantamount to a ban. Look at gun ownership in most countries in Europe if you want an idea of what the future could look like.

Then give some thought to what Europe was like in the early 20th century!

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As is typical, you know nothing of what you are talking about. Most guys I know here in the Austria boonies have a hunting rifle.

You might want to actually look at gun ownership numbers before repeating tired and very wrong Right talking points

Austrians owning guns is only helping his point about not having guns during ww2 being a problem.

> Most guys I know here in the Austria boonies have a hunting rifle.

First of all, Austria is the only country in the European Union where firearms are only partially licensed.

Second of all... Sorry, what I really meant was to say was that European gun ownership (broadly speaking) is very different from USian gun ownership. Europeans generally need permits, reasons for ownership, training, et cetera just to own a firearm. Carrying is heavily discouraged, and often illegal without a permit... which the state is under no obligation to give you. Magazine size restrictions are rampant.

In the United States, in many territories, we don't have equivalent policies. Many states allow for entirely permit-less ownership and carrying of firearms. We don't need to ask permission – that's the difference I'm trying to indicate here.

As always, correlation doesn't imply causation. It's not clear that gun laws themselves even enabled the rise of fascism or that they had any negative impact on quality of life. With widespread gun ownership early 20th century Europe could have been even worse.

This argument is so tired it has it's own Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gun_control_argument

> "The Jews of Germany constituted less than 1 percent of the country's population. It is preposterous to argue that the possession of firearms would have enabled them to mount resistance against a systematic program of persecution implemented by a modern bureaucracy, enforced by a well-armed police state, and either supported or tolerated by the majority of the German population. Mr. Carson's suggestion that ordinary Germans, had they had guns, would have risked their lives in armed resistance against the regime simply does not comport with the regrettable historical reality of a regime that was quite popular at home. Inside Germany, only the army possessed the physical force necessary for defying or overthrowing the Nazis, but the generals had thrown in their lot with Hitler early on."

That argument is a bit of a straw-man though. Nobody is realistically claiming the Jews, or East Germans, or Soviet citizens, or Syrian citizens, could defeat their government with personal weapons.

The more reasonable version of the argument is that the unofficial purges, before the evil becomes fully embraced by the government (the Nazis), or where hidden and unofficial (the KGB), can be deterred by armed civilians. If you know the Stasi are coming to take you away in the night to certain death you'll be willing to fight, and if armed you have a real chance at inflicting casualties. And if every raid leads to dead troops and PR disasters the state is less likely going to get to the point where the terrorists adopt the mantle of government (Nazi Germany) and can then bring the sum total of state forces to bear.

tl;dr the argument is more about resisting unsanctioned or non-governmental terrorism so it doesn't become governmental.

Events such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising showed some Jews really were willing to defend themselves with arms. The Jews were not cowards and the characterization as people who won't "mount resistance" is woefully wrong. It may be true they may have not been able to successfully overthrow the Nazis, but it is possible some of the oppressed may have survived another 10 or 15 minutes (in the Warsaw Ghetto, days) after initiating self defense and even if them being armed would have made things worse for them, that should have been their choice to make and not yours.

There is some sort of fundamental honor as well to allow to allow someone the tools to at least maybe shoot a Nazi on their way out, as one last act of resistance before certain death. Arms are a right even when desperate circumstance make it almost only symbolic.

Edit: also some may enjoy this amusing bumper sticker, created by a Jewish organization in America who themselves criticize Nazi gun control (https://store.jpfo.org/40-large_default/-all-in-favor-of-gun...).

> The Jews were not cowards and your characterization as people who won't "mount resistance" is woefully wrong.

Careful. I pasted a quote. Those are not my words. I didn't accuse anyone of being cowardly.

Glad to know you're distancing yourself from the absurd opinion of this wikipedia article, which totally is a quote you never meant to support even though you intentionally framed it as part of your counterargument to the "tired" nazi gun control argument. I changed it to "the" rather than "your."

Laws so restrictive only a lucky 100 million americans have managed to purchase one legally!

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