2016 presidential campaign.

Simmons’ statement misses several historical facts.

Hitler was both a giver and a taker

By the time Hitler took power in 1933, Germany had been operating under the 1928 Law on Firearms and Ammunition. The measure relaxed strict controls imposed after World War I that banned all gun ownership, and created a system to register and sell firearms.

Columbia University law professor Bernard Harcourt translated a couple of key provisions in the law that exempted "officials of the central government, the states, as well as the German Railways Company" and "community officials to whom the highest government authority has permitted acquisition without an acquisition permit."

Dagmar Ellerbrock, an expert on German gun policies at the Dresden Technical University, told us in 2015 that the Nazis introduced a collective gun licensefor members of Nazi organizations. One of the main beneficiaries was the paramilitary Sturmabteilung, or brownshirts.

After the German parliament, the Reichstag, granted Hitler emergency powers in March 1933, he had a free hand.

"Under totalitarian rule, it took just a few weeks to drastically increase the number of Germans who held private weapons," Ellerbock said.

An armed member of the Sturmabteilung guards Communists arrested in Berlin following a key parliamentary Nazi victory March 5, 1933. (German Federal Archives via Wikicommons)

At the same time, the German state confiscated weapons from Jews, Communists, Social Democrats and unions that refused to affiliate with the Nazi Party. Did the 1928 registration law make this easier?

Perhaps, but Ellerbock’s research showed many holes in the system. For the most part, it recorded only new sales, while