Posted on 04/25/2014 7:02:22 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In June 2012, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez banned all sales of firearms and ammunition to civilians:
With Chavez’s new gun-control law, only the Venezuelan army, police officials and certain groups such as security and private detective firms are allowed to buy firearms, and then only from state-owned weapons manufacturers and importers. …
According to a press statement, the Chavez government initiated a gun amnesty of sorts in order to phase in the new law and encourage people to give up their weapons peacefully and without incident in order to avoid necessary action such as house-to-house searches and arrests for illegal gun possession.
President Chavez … says the goal of his gun program is to simply disarm all civilians.
The United Nations hailed Chavez’s campaign to get guns out of the hands of ordinary Venezuelans.
Now, socialist Venezuela is in a state of collapse, with rampant inflation and shortages of basic necessities, like food. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, probably millions, have taken to the streets to demonstrate against the government’s corrupt incompetence. The socialist government, now headed by Nicolas Maduro, has responded with a brutal crackdown in which dozens of anti-socialist Venezuelans have been murdered by government forces or paramilitary, pro-government gangs that–who could have guessed?–are heavily armed, despite the country’s “progressive” firearms laws.
Until I became something of a gun guy a couple of years ago, I didn’t have a good sense of the relationship between the right to keep and bear arms and the other freedoms that we take too much for granted in the Age of Obama. The American Left would love to follow the example of Venezuela. (If that seems inexplicable, bear in mind the fact that Venezuelans who are tightly connected with the socialist government are filthy rich, and have stashed most of their wealth in other countries.) I have come around to the view that if we don’t want our society to devolve into a tyranny like Venezuela’s, it is a good idea to be armed.
The National Rifle Association has an NRA News video channel that posts consistently interesting material about firearms and the Second Amendment. The video below features Gabby Franco, a Venezuelan who is an Olympic shooter and became an American citizen. She lived through the Chavez disaster, and her message is: don’t let it happen here.
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
I don’t know to what state the people were armed, if it was anything like here, but if they were disarmed by the government why would it be different here? I like to think armed citizens could convince them it isn’t going to happen, but I bet the people of Venezuela never thought it would happen to them either.
How would you disarm the public here? It isn’t even working in deep blue New York and Connecticut.
At no point in history has any government ever wanted its people to be defenseless for any good reason
~ nully’s son
The government is afraid of the people.
Disarming the population has been one of the first necessary steps to takeover by every totalitarian regime since firearms became readily available. It’s no coincidence that we have the 2nd amendment.
It won't happen here and the libs know it. I'll be damned if I'll give up MY GUNS and I KNOW I speak for my parents, Mr. & Mrs. Progunner, and my sister. The civil disobedience has just begun. All the anti-gun commies can shove it.
^^^^^What he said.
Exactly what our forefathers intended.
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