Why can't we be like France? How the right to bear arms got left out of the declaration of rights and how gun registration was decreed just in time for the Nazi occupation.

AuthorHalbrook, Stephen P.
PositionIII. The French Declaration of Rights of 1789: How the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Got Left out through Conclusion: Be Careful What You Wish For, with footnotes, p.1666-1681 - Gun Control and the Second Amendment: Developments and Controversies in the Wake of District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago
  1. 1935: PRIME MINISTER PIERRE LAVAL DECREES FIREARM REGISTRATION

    Having no historical recognition of a fundamental right to keep and bear arms, it would not be difficult for the French government to require that firearms be registered, which would make it easier to confiscate them. Prime Minister Pierre Laval decreed such a law in 1935, just five years before he would become the chief collaborator with Nazi Germany of occupied France. (180) The firearm registration records would be available to the French police who administered Nazi occupation policies, including the death penalty for possession of firearms. (181)

    France in the mid-1930s experienced conflict between political factions and the collapse of governments. (182) The most volatile disturbances rocked Paris on February 6, 1934, in which police and Mobile Guards opened fire on civilians, killing sixteen. (183) One policeman was killed. (184) To politicians, clamping down on civilian gun ownership appeared to be a remedy.

    On June 8, 1935, the Chamber of Deputies passed an enabling act that granted Prime Minister Pierre Laval, whose cabinet included moderates and Radical-Socialists, the power to rule by decree-law. (185) In opposition to rightist groups such as the Croix de Feu (Cross of Fire), the Radicals joined with the Socialists and Communists in the Front Populaire. (186) By fall, the leftist press warned that the Croix de Feu was planning to seize power, seeking to alarm the Radical party conference meeting held from October 24-27. (187) To allay that fear, the government decreed the strengthening of the game mobile mandated that authorities be notified of public meetings and restricted firearm possession. (188)

    The Laval law decree (decret-lois) was proclaimed on October 23, 1935, by the Cabinet without legislative action under the enabling act of June 8. (189) Introduced by the previous government, it was reported by Chauvin as a bill concerning demonstrations on public streets, and commerce, import and possession of arms. (190) Leon Berard, Minister of Justice, and Joseph Paganon, Minister of the Interior, formally proposed the law. (191)

    The decree defined and restricted "war" weapons, restricted importation of firearms, extended recordkeeping requirements by firearms manufacturers and dealers, including the keeping of daily registers, and prohibited sale of firearms by flea market vendors. (192) Its most radical provisions required registration of firearm owners and punished violators without regard to any evil intent. Specifically, Article 9 stated:

    Each person in possession of a firearm at the enactment of the present decree must make a declaration of it to the prefect or the sub-prefect of the place of his residence within the time limit of one month. Anyone after the enactment of the present decree who receives a firearm must make a declaration of it to the prefect or the sub-prefect of the place of his residence within the time limit of 8 days. Receipts of the declarations referenced in the two previous paragraphs will be delivered to the concerned parties. Each violation of the requirements of the first two paragraphs of the present article shall be punishable by a fine of 100 to 1,000 Francs. The court in addition will order the forfeiture of the weapon.... Failure to comply with this order shall be punishable with imprisonment of from six months to two years.... (193) However, the registration requirement did not apply to hunting guns or to historic or collectable firearms. (194)

    It was prominently publicized that the decree requires anyone in possession of arms to declare his place of residency to the prefect or his assistant. (195) The deadline for registration of arms was one month, expiring on November 24, 1935. (196)

    Regulations to implement the above decree were promulgated on November 22, 1935. (197) Registration of a firearm included one's name, date and place of birth, nationality, profession, domicile, and description of the firearm-type, caliber, manufacturer, and serial number if it existed. (198) Registrations were transmitted to and kept by prefectures. (199)

    Excepted from the registration requirement were governmental agents--various officials, the police, and persons required to possess firearms. (200) Antique and obsolete rifles and carbines were excepted, including percussion weapons 6mm and lower, and--for persons in approved associations--two obsolete service rifles, the Fusil Gras and the Lebel. (201) The Fusil Gras Modele 1874 M80, a single-shot blackpowder cartridge rifle, had been replaced by the then equally-obsolete Lebel bolt-action rifle in 1886. (202)

    The decree-law of October 23, 1935, had distinguished authorized weapons from unauthorized weapons. Unauthorized weapons were designated by the Minister of War on January 16, 1936 to include pistols, automatic and military pistols, and revolvers of a higher caliber than 6.5 millimeters, or of which the barrel length is over ten centimeters, as well as all other rifled firearms of six millimeter caliber and above. (203) Exceptions, as included in the regulation of December 16, 1935, included hunting, competition, salon, and fair arms. (204)

    While requiring the registration of firearms facilitates the confiscation thereof from persons who abide by the law, a timeless truism is that it fails to prevent homicide by a determined individual. Herschel Grynszpan, a teenage Polish Jew infamously illustrated this failure on November 7, 1938, by failing to register the revolver he had just bought and using it to shoot an attache at the German Embassy in Paris. (205) His ostensible motive was to avenge the mistreatment of Polish Jews, including his relatives, who were expelled from Germany. (206) The death of the attache provided the Nazis with the welcome excuse to mount the pogrom known as the Night of the Broken Glass (Reichskristallnacht). (207) Weeks before, Nazi Germany had already been disarming German Jews, including those who had registered firearms, and had been taking other actions as if to anticipate the pogrom. (208)

    The decree-law on war materiel, arms, and munitions of April (18), (1939) combined previous enactments. (209) It provided in part that the acquisition and possession of weapons or ammunition from the first or fourth category were prohibited unless authorized. (210) "War weapons" were in the first category, and they included any firearm that could fire ammunition used in any military weapon, and "defensive arms" were in the fourth category. (211) Hunting, competition, and antique arms were not included. (212)

    Few could have anticipated the hell that would break loose a year later.

  2. THE NAZI OCCUPATION

    1. Twenty-Four Hours to Surrender Firearms or Face the Death Penalty

      Imagine that you are sitting in a movie house in Germany in May 1940, and the German Weekly Newsreel comes on to show you the Wehrmacht's blitzkrieg against Holland, Belgium, and France. (213) As panzers and troops cross the border, the film shows German soldiers nailing up a poster proclaiming that all firearms must be surrendered within twenty-four hours to the nearest German post, and that the mayors must accept full responsibility for complete implementation. (214) Firearm registration records obviously would have facilitated the confiscations.

      An example of this poster put up by order of the German Army Commander in Chief in soon-to-be occupied France is entitled Decree Concerning the Possession of Arms and Radio Transmitters in the Occupied Territories. (215) It states in part:

      1) All firearms and all sorts of munitions, hand grenades, explosives and other war materials must be surrendered immediately.

      Delivery must take place within 24 hours to the closest "Kommandantur" [German commander's office] unless other arrangements have been made. Mayors will be held strictly responsible for the execution of this order. The troop commanders may allow exceptions.

      2) Anyone found in possession of firearms, munitions, hand grenades, or other war materials will be sentenced to death or forced labor or in lesser cases prison. (216)

      This poster, today on display at the Museum of the Order of the Liberation in Paris, is relatively small and inconspicuous. It has no information on the time or even date of its issuance. A Frenchman would have had no idea when the clock started ticking--a firearm surrendered a day or even an hour late could have subjected its possessor to the death penalty. (217)

      In a matter of weeks, the German war machine overran the French army, entering Paris and causing the French government to flee to Bordeaux. (218) The reins of government fell into the hands of eighty-six-year-old Philippe Petain, the World War I hero who now sought to negotiate an armistice with Hitler. (219) The newspaper Le Matin commented that Marshall Petain, the new president of the Council of the French Republic, announced in a radio broadcast to the French people that France must give up their arms. (220)

      The Franco-German Armistice Agreement was signed on June 22 at Compiegne, in the same railway car where the Germans signed the armistice ending the Great War. (221) France was divided into the German-occupied zone, including northern and western France, and the unoccupied zone, which would be ruled by Petain from Vichy. (222) The agreement required French collaboration with the occupation force:

      In the occupied parts of France the German Reich exercises all rights of an occupying power[.] [T]he French Government obligates itself to support with every means the regulations resulting from the exercise of these rights and to carry them out with the aid of French administration. All French authorities and officials of the occupied territory, therefore, are to be promptly informed by the French Government to comply with the regulations of the German military commanders and to cooperate with them in a correct manner. (223) Collaboration, in which the French police and bureaucracy...

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