Nazi Survivor: “Keep your guns and buy more guns.”

A survivor of Nazi-occupied Austria who sees parallels between that dark period and the United States of today has a word of warning and advice to Americans: “Keep your guns and buy more guns.”

Katie Worthman spoke earlier this year of what she witnessed as a child in Austria during Adolph Hitler’s rise to power, which was followed by Soviet occupation of the country. She said the Nazi takeover happened gradually, as opposed to media accounts to the contrary, according to NRA News, which reported that Worthman said:

In 1938, the media reported that Hitler rode into Austria with tanks and guns and took us over. Not true at all. The Austrian people elected Hitler by 98 percent of the vote by means of the ballot box. Now you might ask how could a Christian nation… elect a monster like Hitler. The truth is at the beginning Hitler didn’t look like or talk like a monster at all. He talked like an American politician.

Worthman said gun control also began gradually, before the Nazis eventually confiscated every firearm. According to NRA News, she said:

We also had gun registration. All the Austrian people… had guns. But the government said, “the guns are very dangerous. Children are playing with guns. Hunting accidents happen and we really have to have total controlled safety. And we had criminals again. And the only way that we can trace the criminal was by the serial number of the gun.”
So we dutifully went to the police station and we registered our guns. Not long after they said, “No, it didn’t help. The only way that we won’t have accidents and crimes [is] you bring the guns to the police station and then we don’t have any crimes anymore and any accidents. And if you don’t do that: capital punishment.”
So that’s what we did. So dictatorship didn’t happen overnight. It took five years. Gradually, little by little to escalate up to a dictatorship.

Worthman quoted Thomas Jefferson make her biggest point.

“When the people fear the government, that’s tyranny. But when the government fears the people… that’s liberty,” she said. “Keep your guns. Keep your guns and buy more guns.”

This post was used with the permission of Bizpac Review.