The Nazis were vile. We can argue about whether anyone was viler–and I say the communists were at least as bad–but there’s really no debate to be had about whether or not they were bad.

That’s especially true if you’re Jewish.

I mean, when a group wants to exterminate you from the planet, you have a good reason to despise them.

When it comes to collectible firearms, I could see why a Jewish gun owner would want nothing to do with a Nazi gun. Yet for one Jewish gun owner, it’s quite the opposite.

Before anyone starts yelling and screaming how horrible of a person I am, the date stamped on the firearm is AC G 44.  That means, this gun was manufactured in June of 1944 and most probably not used in the Holocaust portion of the war.  With the Allied forces invading on June 6^th, this pistol was most probably sent to the front to some officer to fight the Americans.

That said, here is why I felt a need to purchase it, despite it being a Nazi gun. My son asked me one day to take him shooting at the range.  While there, we got to talking about the Second Amendment.  I explained to him that the Second Amendment was written into our constitution to make sure that we as Americans have the ability to defend ourselves against a tyrannical government.  My 10-year-old who is an avid reader and a bit of a history nut asked what that meant.  I explained to him, a tyrannical government takes away all the freedoms that people might enjoy in the place they live in.

I went on to explain that Hitler was a tyrant who took away Jews’ guns and then proceeded to murder six million of us.  “The Jews couldn’t fight back?” he asked.  “Well, some did.  But many did not have a chance and were killed.”

Purchasing a Walther P.38 with the Nazi insignia is the purest form of revenge.  It is also, in my opinion, the perfect educational tool to ensure freedom.  What do I mean by that?  I explained to my son after buying it that the only thing that separates a free people from a tyrannical government is the firearms that a civilian population owns.

Author Yehuda Remer, who bought the gun, makes an excellent point. It really is the ultimate form of revenge.

The fact that someone like Hitler would go nuts at the thought of a Jew having one of the guns made for his troops would make it just that much sweeter in my mind.

There are generally two reasons for people to want to own something that belonged to the Nazis. One is that they’re a Nazi themselves, in which case I don’t want to classify them as “people” anymore (and I mean real Nazis, not the “everyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi” kind).

The other is to hold onto a piece of history, a trophy of a vanquished foe.

For anyone of Jewish descent, I can imagine that draw being so much more. That’s especially true with a firearm, the very thing Hitler and his ilk wanted to be kept from the German Jews.