Guns and Hitler

In addressing Ben Carson's Holocaust gun canard, Alan Steinweis is somewhat ahistorical himself when he limits the origins of the Nazi dictatorship to "the authoritarian legacy of the German Empire, the inability to cope with defeat in World War I and failure to achieve political compromise during the Wiemar Republic."   In fact a large and aggressive armed German leftwing movement had much to do with the rise and ultimate triumph of the Nazis.  The German populace was heavily armed immediately after WWI, in part as a result of soldiers taking weapons home with them when the German army collapsed.  Armed uprisings in Germany and Bavaria against what the left viewed as oppressive regimes legitimatized for many Germans the existence of armed rightwing militias, Freikorps,  that put down the leftist rebellions.  These rightwing militias became the shock troops who brought Hitler to power. Gun ownership did not stop Hitler's rise or place a roadblock on the road to the Holocaust.

Similarly armed leftwing revolt and resistance in Austria and Hungary could not prevent rightwing authoritarian regimes from taking power.  Notably in Spain, even the infusion of Soviet arms could not keep the rightwing "loyalists" from overthrowing the leftwing government.