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a system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie - Lenin

This quote can be found all over the internet, but I can't find any reliable sources for it.

Two examples for where it's used:

Patriots of Treason by David Thomas Roberts

This meme:

enter image description here

You can google it and will find a lot more usages of the quote, most of them from pro-gun activists. None of the mentions I found have any more information, such as the speech or publication it's from, or the year Lenin supposedly said this.

So my questions are:

  • Did Lenin really say this?
  • If so, when and where did he say it? I'm assuming after the October Revolution?
  • And what's the context for it?
tim
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    FWIW, I tried googling several variants of Russian translation and couldn't find anything. – Kreiri Aug 09 '15 at 11:00
  • Context would be nice. Apparently there was a period of time when the bourgeoisie (economic ruling class) were disenfranchised, so could be from then. Note that the long-term plan was to get everybody to be part of the proletariat (working class), so the "common" person wouldn't be affected by a naïve reading of this statement. – Clockwork-Muse Aug 09 '15 at 13:55
  • Would this quote be spread in favour or in opposition to gun control? – gerrit Aug 10 '15 at 09:49
  • @gerrit It puts the Extreme Right in an interesting position of agreeing with Lenin. – DJClayworth Aug 10 '15 at 17:07
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    @DJClayworth how's that? I would think that the far right is against gun registrations, and against denying gun ownership to the bourgeoisie. I think that's the main reason for the popularity of the quote among pro-gun people; the logic being "Lenin was an evil dictator AND Lenin wanted to regulate guns => regulating guns is evil". I'm just a little surprised that Lenin would hold such as position, as I would think that he - as a revolutionary - would be pro people owning guns (and deal with counter-revolutionaries with force instead of gun regulations). – tim Aug 10 '15 at 17:33
  • @tim Taking this way too seriously. – DJClayworth Aug 10 '15 at 17:34
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    the only citation I could find is `exploited class not looking for owning of guns and not knowing how to use them would be a servant class` letter to D. Veinkop 49, pg. 104 (my translation), so yes, he was pro people owning guns. – Eugene Petrov Aug 10 '15 at 22:53
  • Lenin was in favour of gun ownership. That makes things even more interesting for the Extreme Right. – DJClayworth Aug 10 '15 at 23:17
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    Found translation of the letter [here](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/jul/00dw2.htm) The letter to "Veinkop" was actually to David Wijnkoop. `An exploited class which did not strive to possess arms, to know how to use them and to master the military art would be a class of lackeys.` – Eugene Petrov Aug 11 '15 at 00:38
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    @EugenePetrov You should post that as an answer. – mjs Aug 14 '15 at 06:52
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    @mjs This doesn't look like an answer - it only shows he wished working class to be armed, although he still could say that the ruling/exploiting bourgeoisie class can/should be denied from owning guns by licensing and registration. Also note the fact Lenin was an idol, a god substitute for almost a century, all info about him is pretty much checked and purified and I believe something was added too - so we can not be sure whether he was saying anything of this. – Eugene Petrov Aug 15 '15 at 02:13
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    I don't believe there ever was a system of systematic gun registration in the USSR, was there? Many rural peasants and ex-soldiers owned guns informally. They did mass confiscations as part of repressing specific communities they saw as a threat, e.g. restive Kolkhoz farmers and in royalist areas, but it was local and case-by-case. Unfortunately I can't find a good reference, it's just what I remember from history class, but it seems like the best hope for an answer - "no-one can find an original ref, even in Russian, and he didn't even pursue a nationwide policy like this" – user56reinstatemonica8 Jan 31 '16 at 15:09
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    The alleged quote is not found here too-https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/quotes.htm ! – pericles316 Feb 01 '16 at 10:02
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    "The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that it's often very difficult to verify their authenticity." -- Abraham Lincoln – Mason Wheeler Feb 01 '16 at 19:58
  • "Lenin... Vladimir Lenin." — Vladimir Lenin – Reinstate Monica -- notmaynard Sep 20 '16 at 15:12

1 Answers1

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According to the book They Never Said It : A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions

That Lenin, who died in 1924, had anything to say of use for opponents of firearms-registration in the United States in the late 20th century is highly improbable.

What Lenin did say about disarmament is:

The result of all bourgeois revolutions is: first arm the proletariat and then disarm it to prevent it from going any further.

Speech on the Cancellation of the Demonstration, Delivered at a Meeting of the Petrograd Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.), June 11 (24), 1917

See also The “Disarmament” Slogan published in Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata No. 2, December 1916. Signed: N. Lenin.

excerpt:

Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.

DavePhD
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