Outside Germany, armed Jewish resistance to the Nazis merely underlined its futility, and the fatuity of the claims of anti-gun control activists. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising in the Spring of 1943 ended with 13,000 Jews dead, while the Nazis who crushed it lost just 20 lives.
Anti-gun control advocates are fond of suggesting that gun control enabled the rise of the Nazis and led to the extermination of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.
Let's investigate some fact-checking done on this assertion. First, let's turn to the work that Politifact did in response to this kind of assertion made by then-Presidential candidate Republican Ben Carson in October 2015.
Anti-gun control advocates are fond of suggesting that gun control enabled the rise of the Nazis and led to the extermination of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.
Let's investigate some fact-checking done on this assertion. First, let's turn to the work that Politifact did in response to this kind of assertion made by then-Presidential candidate Republican Ben Carson in October 2015.
"While Hitler did attempt to take weapons away from Jews, Communists and Social Democrats, he also armed private citizens to better terrorize those same political opponents. To reduce Nazi gun policy to confiscation of weapons is to miss at least half the story.
Further, the gunowner registry from 1928 that Hitler relied upon was limited and far from comprehensive. It was so incomplete, in fact, that many Jews retained their weapons.
Dagmar Ellerbrock, an expert on German gun policies at the Dresden Technical University, states that, 'In my records, I found many Jews who well into the late 1930s possessed guns.'"
Next, let's look at some fact-checking The Telegraph did in response to the same assertion.
"Even if arms had been distributed to every member of Germany's Jewish population — which in the early 1930s numbered some 500,000 out of a total population of 65 million — they would have been severely outgunned by their vicious and far more numerous enemies.
Outside Germany, armed Jewish resistance to the Nazis merely underlined its futility, and the fatuity of Carson's call to arms. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising in the Spring of 1943 ended with 13,000 Jews dead, while the Nazis who crushed it lost just 20 lives."
