In which John violates Godwin’s Rule in the interest of history
May 24, 2008 – 11:28 pm by JohnThose familiar with Godwin’s Law might be able to guess why I usually refer to it as Godwin’s Rule: the Rule is that you shouldn’t break Godwin’s Law by comparing any person, group, ideas, or practices to Hitler or the Nazis, lest your argument be delegitimized immediately. Well, when the connection to Hitler and the Nazis really is there, you can be excused for comparing them.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 was largely copied from a gun-control act passed by the Nazi government in 1938. This account from the Free Republic is really quite fascinating. It goes into much detail about Sen. Thomas Dodd (D-CT), father of current Sen. Christopher Dodd, who had a copy of the 1938 German law and inserted, or helped insert, large parts of it into gun-control and gun-registration bills.
