Posted on 02/04/2015 5:22:48 AM PST by marktwain
There are places in the world where the obvious, open carry of firearms is a dangerous thing to do. This occurs where life becomes cheaper than the value of a modern firearm, legal firearms are hard to obtain, and the police are held in low esteem.
I first heard of this in the early 1980's in graduate school when an erudite colleague, Norman Whisler, showed me articles from India where officers were murdered for their service firearms on a fairly regular basis. The harder a society makes it to obtain modern firearms, the more police who openly carry are put at risk; as the black market value of the firearm approaches and exceeds the average annual income, a line is crossed where targeting police for their arms becomes attractive enough to be commonplace. This is one reason that many countries with lower income levels restrict police from carrying arms off duty. Another is the tendency of the same police to "lose" the firearm to the black market, making a tidy profit in the process.
Venezuela, the budding socialist utopia, has fallen to that point. Legal handguns have been virtually outlawed for ordinary citizens. Ammunition is difficult to come by, if at all. People who are not associated with the government are only allowed to own .22 rifles or shotguns. And police officers are routinely murdered for their weapons. From panampost.com:
Soaring crime in Caracas throughout 2014 has given it the unenviable ranking of second most violent city in the world, with a murder rate of 155 for every 100,000 inhabitants, according to Mexican NGO Security, Justice, and Peace. In the Venezuelan capital, not even the states security forces are safe: during the first 29 days of 2015, criminals murdered 13 of the citys uniformed officers. Circumstances varied, but in the majority of cases, the perpetrators killed police to steal their firearms.Another important factor is the destruction of any faith in the criminal justice system and the rule of law. This is the common denominator in virtually all of the societies with homicide rates over 20 per hundred thousand; that includes some of the urban centers in the United States. In Venezuela, the faith in the criminal justice system was not very high before Chavez came to power. After his ascendancy, it has has fallen through the floor. Since 1999, the homicide rate in Venezuela has risen from roughly 15-20 per hundred thousand to 50 or higher.
Ferguson, Missouri?
This is not unusual. If a good retention holster is on the owners belt it is VERY difficult for anyone but the wearer to remove the weapon - the angle is just not right. I know even when my retention holster is off the belt it takes a few tries to release the gun.
Just curious, but are you equating Boston with
Venezuela?
But wait! On second thought that probably is a pretty good analogy.
As early as 2001, it was noted that in Venezuela there was a marked upturn in vigilantism and revenge killings, clear indicators of a breakdown of law and order. However, to maintain its power, their government effectively embraced extra-judicial violence against its opponents.
This shows the odd phenomenon of the collapse of vigilantism by honest people, when it is overwhelmed by government brutalitarianism. In effect, in a normal nation, the people are the law, but when they are beaten into submission so that they no longer do this, what follows is a descent into chaos and anarchy; which may lead to a “failed state”, like Somalia.
From where it is today, Venezuela may move in several directions. The best of these is a popular revolt that overthrows the government. However, other prospects could be awful.
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