many people had unregistered weapons dating from World War I.

When they came to power, the Nazis used whatever gun records they had to seize weapons from their enemies, but Ellerbock told us the files included very few of the firearms in circulation.

"In my records, I found many Jews who well into the late 1930s possessed guns," Ellerbock told us.

So registration was spotty, confiscation was selective and Nazi allies found it easier, not harder to get weapons.

Much later, in 1938, the Nazis passed a new law that liberalized gun ownership in many respects, while simultaneously banning ownership and manufacture by Jews.

June 1934

Simmons brought up June 30, 1934, when Hitler "sent out his secret police and murdered all of his political opponents." That was the night of Operation Hummingbird, Hitler’scrackdown on a very specific group – the Sturmabteilung that he had nurtured and encouraged to intimidate any group that stood in his way.

The paramilitary group’s leader Ernst Röhm was eager to consolidate his power, and that set him on a collision course with established leaders in the German military and Hitler’s top advisers. They persuaded Hitler that Röhm was planning a coup.

Over a span of several days, Röhm and scores of Sturmabteilung leaders were arrested and executed. The Nazis killed at least 85 people, most but not all associated with Röhm.

Specific to Simmons’ remark, the incident had more to do with internecine fighting among the Nazi community than with going after disarmed citizens. Quite the opposite, the Nazi leaders knew full well that they were going up