Fascism: A History Lesson in Gun Control

Almost from the moment, Donald Trump announced his intention to run for President, the progressive left proclaimed he and his supporters to be “fascist.”

The word “fascism” has recently reemerged as a key piece of political terminology – one which, few who use it understand what the term means. That is most unfortunate since the history of fascism offers a warning all legal gun owners should pay attention to.

If you know the history of socialism and fascism at all, the irony is hard to miss. Historically, the two hate each other and claim the other to be the root of all national decline.

When an outsider like Trump came along, those on the left knew they couldn’t tag him as socialist – that’s what they are – so fascist served their purpose.

Headlines immediately after Donald Trump’s election were predominated by the singular question first asked by Newsweek, “Is Donald Trump a Fascist?” The Washington Post answered, “Donald Trump is actually a Fascist”, but then qualified its answer with a question of its own, “How Fascist is Donald Trump?”

Lost in using terms like socialist and fascist is that the two are opposite sides of the same coin. Both are totalitarian and both have one disturbing thing in common – gun control.

In their work, Death by Gun Control, authors Aaron Zelman and Richard W. Stevens drive home one irrefutable truth – an unarmed citizenry is at the mercy of both fascist and socialist ideologies.

What distinguishes America from countries like Italy, Germany, and Russia is something called the 2nd Amendment. Our forefathers understood that self-defense is an inalienable right. The Bill of Rights doesn’t give us rights – it protects what we already have!

While we focus on mass shootings in the current gun control debate, as horrendous as they are, the Parkland shooting and others pale compared to what evil governments have done to their own citizens.

A historical fact is that governments (both left and right) wiped out 170 Million innocent non-military lives in the 20th Century alone. That means that governments killed four times as many unarmed civilians as died in all domestic and international wars during the same time period.

How did this happen? Because those governments held the power and ensured there could be no resistance. Those in power controlled the guns, and the citizens did not.

A brief history of the 20th Century shows this:

• Ottoman Turkey (1915-1917) – private ownership of guns banned by proclamation in 1915. One and half million Armenians (mostly Christians) slaughtered.
• Soviet Union (1929-1945) – total ban on private firearms in 1926. 20 million political opponents murdered.
• Nazi Germany & Occupied Europe (1933-1945) – Total ban on private ownership in 1938. 20 million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and political opponents killed.
• Chinese Nationalist (1927-1949) – Final total ban on private gun possession in 1935. 10 million killed by government.
• China Under Communist Rule (1949-1952 1957-1960 1966-1976) – inherited gun control laws on private ownership. 20-35 million “enemies of the state” killed.

By tagging Trump or the Tea Party with the term fascist, their opponents confuse the matter.

Every government that perpetrated genocide during our last century did so by taking the same path. They chose a victim population which had already been disarmed or eliminated private ownership.

Less than a week after Hitler’s triumphant Anschluss of Austria in March 1938, the Nazis enacted their own firearms laws. They didn’t create a gun ban in a vacuum but rather layered new regulations on the existing and democratically enacted Weimar law of 1928.

Hitler enacted gun control laws in this progression: persons under eighteen forbidden to buy firearms, a special permit introduced for handguns, Jews barred from businesses that involved firearms, Nazi officials exempted, twenty-two caliber cartridges with hollow points were banned, and firearms which could fold or break down “beyond the common limits of hunting and sporting activities” made illegal, and final confiscation of all “illegal” firearms.

After Germany’s defeat in World War I, the democratically elected Weimar government feared (with good cause) that either Communists or the far right would seek to overthrow the government. The result was a gun ban that enabled Hitler to control socialists and fascists alike.

Beware of focusing on manufactured labels (Trump is a fascist) while missing the left’s endgame. Doing away with the one thing protects us from the atrocities of the past – the 2nd Amendment.