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A lesson in Democracy from Venezuela
American Thinker ^ | 21 Apr, 2017 | Russ Vaughn

Posted on 04/21/2017 7:55:19 AM PDT by MtnClimber

The socialist government of Venezuela has just provided American gun owners with an excellent lesson in why it is of paramount importance never to let the government take our guns. Back in 1998, after four decades of the Latin American variety of democracy, military leader Hugo Chávez, a moderate leftist, was elected president. From that time until his death in 2013, he continued to take Venezuela further left, founding the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in 2007, which has remained the ruling party to the present, inexorably moving the country into a quagmire of socialist poverty. Chávez died in 2013, but one of his last acts is now coming into full play in a way that provides our lesson.

In 2012, Chávez and PSUV began consolidating their hold on the Venezuelan people by banning guns in public places using the usual leftist excuse of reducing crime. Since that first gun control measure, those in charge have incrementally, to the point of recent total confiscation, taken away gun ownership rights until the only legally owned firearms are those of the military, the police, and favored security organizations, and they can obtain those only through government sources. The civilian populace of Socialist Venezuela has been effectively disarmed.

...unless your political views align with the socialist leadership, that is. Chávez's handpicked strongman successor, Nicolas Maduro, has decided to hand out military-grade weaponry to those civilians who agree with him politically – that is, his hard-left socialist supporters.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: guncontrol; socialists

1 posted on 04/21/2017 7:55:19 AM PDT by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

All I have to say is Molon Labe.


2 posted on 04/21/2017 7:55:49 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of Colorado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

One of the key things he did was to set up competing security groups. For any institution there is another parallel institution. He has the army, and an “army reserve” that answers to his brother, police, “national guard” who are militarized police, he has Cubans in Venezuelan uniforms and Cubans in Cuban uniforms, and then he has mobs armed with military weapons to do dirty work that the others won’t do.

For a while he disarmed the Caracas police, simply because he didn’t trust them.

It becomes very difficult to mount a coup because you can never get control of all the competing armed forces, and there are too many ways for the planning to leak out.


3 posted on 04/21/2017 8:12:53 AM PDT by marron
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To: marron

And Cuba being in the mix does not help. They have decades of experience in controlling the population.


4 posted on 04/21/2017 8:32:53 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of Colorado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

Bill Gates wants socialism to save the world. Socialism gives you Venezuela.


5 posted on 04/21/2017 7:32:39 PM PDT by Mike Darancette (Make lemonade.)
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