So its pretty interesting. What else . Well, i think ive about worn out my welcome. I appreciate you guys coming out, especially on a friday when theres lots of things to do in the local area. So i hope you enjoy the book. If any of you want to and you want me to sign it, ill be happy to, and ive got, ive got the standard web site. Harpercollins has a Facebook Page for me if you want to ever get ahold of me direct. I do get back to everybody who contacts me. It may take a while, but i do. They put videos on there, interviews and other things, and ill answer any questions that you may think of later. Anyway, thanks very much for coming, and i enjoyed it. [applause] thank you so much. And thank you for coming. I would invite you to line up on that side and come around in the front of the desk if you would like to have your book signed. And thanks again for coming out on a friday night. [inaudible conversations] booktv is on twitter and facebook, and we want to hear from you. Tweet us, twitter. Com booktv, or post a comment on our Facebook Page, facebook. Com booktv. Up next, attorney Stephen Halbrook argues that the nazi government in germany used gun control to disarm and repress its enemies and consolidate power. He spoke at the independent institute in oakland, california. Its about 90 minutes. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is david thoreau, and im the founder and president of the independent institute. Im delighted to welcome you this evening. This is another meeting of a program of ours called the independent policy forum, and in addition to our audience here and our Conference Center in oakland, california, i want to welcome our viewers on cspan and also those who are joining with us worldwide who are Live Streaming online. The independent policy forum is a series of lectures, seminars, debates and other discussions held here at the independent institute. We are delighted to have our old friend dr. Steven halbrook with us who will be speaking on are there lessons for us today from nazi gun control. And that, of course, is based on his new Landmark Book called gun control in the third reich disarming the jews and, quoteunquote, enemies of the state. You can find information in your registration packets or online about our program. To provide some background, the institute is a nonprofit, scholarly Public Policy research institute. We sponsor indepth studies of social and economic issues. And the purpose is to boldly advance peaceful, process produce and prosperous and free societies grounded in a commitment to human worth and dignity. The results of this work are published as books such as dr. Halbrooks and form the basis for numerous conference and media projects. One of our other publications is the quarterly journal the independent review. This is the current issue. For those of you who we could interest in becoming a subscribe iser, i think youll find you will not be sorry. If you go online, you can subscribe and get a free copy of the book called crisis and leviathan. We seek, nor we neither seek, nor accept government funding. The institute draws all of its support from private contributions, memberships and the sale of books and events such as tonight. With tragic shootings in the u. S. , weve seen a triggering of a new debate over gun control. But are there lessons from history that we should be mindful of . Based on recently discovered secret documents from german archives, diaries and newspapers of the time, dr. Halbrook has now written an unprecedented new history of how violence in the liberal Democratic Society or system of pre1930 germany, prenazi germany led to gun control measures that that werer utilized by the National Socialists to repress opponents and consolidate power. Ironically enough, the countless books on the third reich and the holocaust have failed even to mention the laws restricting firearms ownership with very few exceptions. And these policies rendered political opponents, including jews who were viewed as political opponents, powerless. A skeptic could surmise that a better armed populace would make no difference, but the nazi regime certainly did not think so. It ruthlessly suppressed, literally crushed gun ownership birdies favored groups. By disfavored groups. It spans two decades from 1918 through crystal knot or, quoteunquote, night of the broken glass, unquote, in 1938 and the pertinent events during world war ii regarding the effects of disarming policies. Research fellow at the independent institute, dr. Steven halbrook is the renowned constitutional legal scholar, attorney and author who has won three cases before the Supreme Court, testified before numerous congressional committees, been interviewed on cnn, fox, court tv and elsewhere and been published in the wall street journal, usa today and many other publications. His many books in addition to the gun control in the third reich include the founders Second Amendment, securing civil rights, that every man be armed, and target switzerland. So im very pleased to introduce steven halbrook. [applause] thank you, david. Its a real pleasure to be here. Its getting rather deja vu. I cant remember exactly how many times weve done this, but and thank you all for coming out tonight. And i just want to have special thanks and recognition to my wife, brenda, and my daughter, melissa, who just graduated from high school. Theyre in the audience in the back if youll wave or something. [applause] i got interested in this summit, actually, in about 1968 subject, and there was a big political debate in this country about federal and state gun control laws, and there was a federal law that passed, gun control act of 1968. And its probably not well remembered now, but there were many proposals at that time to require registration of either all firearms or all handguns in the u. S. , a federal law that would do that and would have criminal penalties for failure to do that. And there was a historic debate that actually took place between congressman john dingell, whos still there, and a senator named tidings from maryland and also representative dodd, chris dodds father, who had been a prosecutor at nuremberg. And congressman dingell suggested that, i heene, the war had only i mean, the war had only been over 22 years at that point, 23 years, and kind of like havent we heard this before . It sounds like nazi germany. And the proponents of the legislation said that, no, the nazis never registered guns, and they would never have used registration records for anything naughty. [laughter] and so the administration commissioned a library of Congress Study, and it came back stating that registration of guns was not something that nazi germ had anything to do with germany had anything to do with, and theres no records that guns were ever confiscated that had been registered. And when they invaded other countries, there was no information that they ever used registration records to locate gun owners. And they didnt do Much Research to come to the conclusions. But anyway, i got interested in it way back when, and what was incredible to me was that no historian deals with this subject, its virtually unmentioned whatsoever. And if you see any mention, i think there might be one of the two books that might have a footnote or something. But thats about it. And i want to say right at the beginning the title of this presentation has to do with are there lessons to be learned. And i think the lessons speak for themselves. I will not engage in the kind of discourse in which i would say that some proponent of some legislation, that thats nazilike or that these are gestapo tactics or anything like that. I dont think we need to engage in that kind of rhetoric. Theres too much of that that goes on. But one thing that is clear is that theres been a lot of denial about what took place in nazi germany, and its time that the historical record be made clear, and thats what i set out to do in the book many years ago. I actively wrote the book and did research for it for about 15 years because being that the sources are either in english or german, published sources dont deal with this topic. It was necessary to do a lot of Archival Research in germany. I did some myself. I also retained one of the best Archival Researchers in germany who does this topic who knows these record groups very well. And we came to some very interesting conclusions that are presented in the book. But historically, the way it all started was right at the end of the great war. 1918, 1919 there were communist uprisings in germany. The monarch fell, the republic was established, and there was a virtual civil war. And i will do a little bit of show and tell. I dont have any of the Street Scenes to show you from that period, but if youve ever seen any documentaries on it, youll see people running every which way and machine guns in the streets and the fight corps which was the, basically, voluntary group that sided with the government to repress the communist uprisings. Like had taken place in russia, a bolsheviktype coup. And so there was quite a lot of chaos. And then under the versailles treaty, there was the idea in germany that either all arms or all military arms had to be surrendered including by civilians. There were actually legal interpretations in germany that no civilian could own any gun, and they all had to be turned in. There were actually court cases about this during the early 1920s. But things calmed down somewhat. But then we head to 1923, you have the great inflation, and you have a communist uprising in hamburg which was ruthlessly put down, and then you have hitlers nubble in munich where [inaudible] in munich where they actually succeeded in seizing a beer hall, but they didnt succeed in seizing the state. [laughter] so then he goes and writes mein kampf when hes in prison, and things calm down. 1928, however, the reichstag passed a gun control law that was the first of its kind in germany, and it required a lot of recordkeeping. Thatthere was no registration system, but there were records to be kept that could be subject to police inspection. And a curious thing about it is there was no debate in the legislature or the reichstag. It passed without any debate whatever, which would be a phenomenon in itself. But things started getting, raring up again as we approached the 30s. And in 1931 for the first time, germany adopted a legislation or a decree, there were legislative decree that is the executive branch could make that the executive branch could make, and it called for a registration of the german state that is adopted it. So you had, like, berlin and most of the large jurisdictions adopting firearm registration, and some areas did not do so. But by and large, most places did. Because in 1931 before this took place, there were the nazi party had declared itself in favor of legal elections by that point. But there was an incident, there was a hotel called boxheimer, and there was an individual named werner best, and he was heavily involved with the sa, the stormtroopers. And the document had purported to deal with if there was a communist revolt and the nazis needed to seize power, which many people interpreted to mean this was a plan for a nazi seizure of power, and it had things like there would be rationing of food, jews would not get any food supplies. And it had a provision that everyone would be ordered to turn in their firearms within 24 hours, or they would be executed. So this individual, werner best, actually would go on to become an official in the gestapo, and well hear from him a little bit more this evening. But these documents were discovered, and they werent taken too seriously. Nonetheless, there was still a lot of street fighting going on between the communists and the nazis. They were basically armed thugs in the streets. And so it was decided in december of 1931 that the executive branch would decree these firearm registration legislation. Now, at that time the republic, the executive branch could rule by decree. You hear a lot about executive decrees today. Well, this allowed the executive branch, basically, to not bother consulting the legislative branch at all and simply make decrees, and this was one of em. In fact, this decree covered a lot of subjects, and the consulate at that time and now well test my electronic abilities heinrich bruning, basically the head of the german government, and there was something called the enabling act which allowed the executive branch, as i said, to issue these decrees. And thats what he did. And that was one thing that the republic adopted that was a horrible precedent, because when the nazis came to power, they could rule by decree just as well. And so this one particular decree, if i can move to that, this is like the decree about internal security, and its about misuse of weapons. But when you look at the first provision, this section one provided for registration of all firearms by all people. And then it had a provision too here which stated that anytime the officials, the authorities decided it was needed for public security, they could require everybody who registered their firearms to turn them in. Now, thats an interesting thing to put in a firearm registration law. It was quite honest, wasnt it, that they would admit because when you have firearm basically registration, you know, debated and proposed, its always, well never confiscate them. Well, here they had it right in the law that the authorities can decree a public emergency, and they can confiscate all firearms, and theres a duty to turn them in, and youll be incarcerated if you dont. So that came down right before christmas of 31, and the equivalent to our attorney general, the interior minister, gorner, cement out a directive saying sent out a directive saying you have to be very careful with these registration records. This went to the officials who were keeping them. We dont want them to fall into the hands of extremist groups or radical elements. He actually said dont keep them at the local Police Departments, put them in more centralized facilities for safekeeping. [laughter] and so that was the directive, and thats, i assume thats what they did. They didnt have computers, obviously, at that time. But they did get the ibm punchcard technology by the time the nazis came into power. How many of you remember that . I remember those very well. There was a lot, a lot of that technology in our own lifetime still before this electronic business. So they could pull registration owners for records for gun owners, jews, protestants, catholics, the whole works. They had all the records on anything. So 1933, hitler and his party comes to power, and they immediately start attacking physically their political enemies. That would be social democrats, the party who had, probably had more power than any other as a single party. But also liberal parties, conservative parties. They multiplied day by day. The more opposition that arose, the more this repression would happen. And all opposition was invariably called communist. So that if you opposed what the nazis were doing, you were a communist. And if you read the newspapers of that time, youll find on a daily basis accounts of searches and seizures of ire firearms and arrests of socalled communists. So that goes on 1933, and you had the use of the ire arm records firearms records. I have a whole chapter on this, actually, the case where i got the records of a directive from Herman Goering came down who was the high official in the nazi regime, and he basically said you need to check the political reliability of all persons with firearm permits. And so i actually found records where local authorities went through, and they would give a name, and they would say what that persons profession was and whether he was politically reliable. If hes a social democrat, hes not, and his weapon permits going to be confiscated as well as his gun. And then you go down the list, and i found there was one jew where they wanted to take his weapon permit, but there was another where they actually let him keep it, at least for that point. So political reliability meant that you supported naziism or National Socialism and that you were not politically reliable if you did not. And so these were actually records not there the registration of guns, but from the licensing. People who had license permits to possess guns, to carry guns, to purchase guns, things like that. Or ammunition. So there was some repression against jews in 1933. It was not as harsh as against the political opponents, because the dictatorship wanted to consolidate its power. It was basically use of the law and physical force in every means necessary to make sure that the nazi party became supreme. Because for all anybody knew in those days, itd be just another temporary government. During the wymar republic, the governments would rise and fall very quickly. Sometimes they would be in power a couple years and sometimes maybe just a few weeks. So adolf hitler wanted to make sure that his power was consolidated, and you had the reichstag fire more emergency decrees to justify theres this communist insurrection thats going to go on, so weve got to ban free speech, assembly, things like that. But by the way, the wymar republic did a lot of the same thing. The registration law, if you go to the provisions after gun registration, it was no public assemblies and no free speech. You could not make political, politicallysubversive speeches. So these things seemed to go together. But there was one case, there was more than one case, but one famous case of a search and seizure operation against jews in germany. This was in april of 1933. There were raids that took place in the jewish quarter in berlin. And heres actually some illustration. This picture and the next one ill show you are illustrations of that raid. This is from the nazi paper, and basically it says raid in the jewish quarter. And if you read the article that follows, it talks about the subversive literature that was seized and the guns that were seize inside this search and seizure operation. And here you see a number of uniform police thats in the jewish part of berlin at that time, and so basically it was kind of more of a sideshow, the repression of jews at that time. But the biggest actions were against the socalled communists or political opponents. And second illustration thats from the the same article, thats an elderly jewish man, and down on the left is a criminal Police Inspector interrogating him. And you see the little square in front of them, thats radio. And so theyre broadcasting this interview, and the nazis were masters of propaganda. And so theyre pu