Whether they would be successful in cracking down I don’t know. I don’t think they realize that literally they are playing with fire.

“So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.” — Orwell

As for gun rights in Germany, I never had interest in firearms at the time I was living there, granted, but I suspect that in practice, it’s much like here in the sense that there is probably very tight gun control in the cities (at least for law-abiding natives, though I’m sure the local Turks, Chechens, etc. have fewer supply problems when it comes to weaponry), while out in the country, one can still find some folks who keep things up with firearm use, though of course not routinely to the extent or in the variety that we do here. Given that knives are a common weapon involved in urban crime in Germany these days, it strikes me that urban citizens there, be they ever so upstanding, have about as slim a chance of being legitimately armed as in the urban UK.

Just at random, I looked for any old shooting club and found one at http://sg-oberasbach.de/ , which has a range not too far outside of Nuremberg. It looks like they have activities and competitions mostly with air guns rather than our more ‘dramatic’ kind of firearms. So people do still do shooting sports.

On the subject of German patriotism, I have a couple of points to make about the big protest in Berlin last week, but have to stop in at work for a while first.

I don’t think they’re looking that far ahead. They are just seeing how they can exploit the chaos now by blaming it on Trump, and think (or at least, initially thought) that this will cause him and other Republicans to lose the election. After that, they’ll see. They’ll be in control, and if they want to crack down really hard to save their cities, I think they may be willing to do that. But not now.

Whether they would be successful in cracking down I don’t know. I don’t think they realize that literally they are playing with fire. They have allayed themselves with a dangerous group of people who would turn on their benefactors (the left) in a heartbeat.

Reading through the comments at your link, that appears to be true in German.
Judging from recent charges against some people here, the same is probably true in America as well.

That is a great story and set of observations. Mostly sad but hopeful for the little German boy at least. Maybe he will enjoy his taste of freedom enough to leave the rest behind.

I’m married to a German and I see what you describe in my wife’s extended family. My wife and her father are very “American” in outlook, her mother less so. But her cousins sound very much like the couple you describe. They’re pleasant people. They enjoy sending letters and gifts, even in this day and write meticulously.

Even the younger members (25-30) act the way you describe when they come over to visit. And almost none of them are having children. One second cousin had a little boy last year. That’s it. My wife’s family was already very small. Only two families in the US with her maiden name and only six in Germany. The name is going extinct.

Has Germany paid its NATO dues?
Is Germany an ally in anything other than name, to serve itself? Will it, can it defend itself as US troops are withdrawn? No; it wants US troops for the money they spend in Germany.
It’s becoming near-totally dependent on Putin for its energy, mostly natural gas since Merkel has sentenced all nuclear power plants to death within a decade.”

I have not been to Germany and know few Germans except in the context of business. I am generally impressed by their standard of technical competence even in areas such as sales engineering, where day to day engineering skills may not be called for. What impressed me less was a certain blinkered perspective, and insistent behavior, which to be fair, was probably the more or less understandable fall out from a justifiable pride in this competence.

Recently, I met a couple over here on a research project. Well, she is, he is accompanying her. She is a pleasant, slim, blond woman who laughs easily and engages readily with others. He, is an affable, slightly built, prematurely balded male who, if given half a chance opens up and speaks reasonably and knowledgeably about a number of subjects; including his youth in the GDR. It seems he has become enthused at the prospect of hunting, which is a positive mark for him in my book.

They seem like perfectly normal people. And I think that they are. But they lived in a country with limitations they just came to accept.

On the Fourth, we were all having a cook-out in the yard. My sister and brother-in law had brought out cheesy fireworks suitable for young kids, and flags, and sparklers and that stuff. I gave them various Nerf guns, and giant water syringes.

The little mop headed German boy – who looks just as you would imagine he does – was excitedly following my nephew around, jumping up and down, and waving American flags; one in each hand. His mother laughed, and said, “You see, in Germany we would have none of this, and no one would wave the flag, or think to celebrate our country in such a way.”

What was left unstated, and I let alone, was the probable reason for it. But still, it seems such a depressing thing to be skeptical of the very value and goodness of your political existence. How completely oppressive, and unrewarding.

To see the unreflective happiness on that little German boy’s face to just be celebrating something good about life without being made to feel guilty, or bear the neuroses of others on his back, made me realize what we still had left, and how little reason there was to even pretend to accommodate those legions of mentally and morally ill progressives who would drag us all down into the sump of their resentment.

That’s my impression as well. But when I searched I did find fairly robust self-defense laws on the books. I would guess they probably are only on the books, however.