A lesson in Democracy from Venezuela
The socialist government of Venezuela has just provided American gun owners with an excellent lesson in why it is of paramount importance to never let the government take our guns. Back in 1998 after four decades of the Latin American variety of democracy, military leader, Hugo Chavez, 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. Chavez died in 2013 but one of his last acts is now coming into full play in a way that provides our lesson.
In 2012, Chavez and PSUV began consolidating their hold on the Venezuelan people by banning guns in public places using the usual leftist excuse of reducing crime and 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. Chavez’ 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. From an excellent accounting at Washington Free Beacon:
“A gun for every militiaman!” Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro said to uniformed militia members outside the presidential palace, Fox News reported on Tuesday. The Bolivarian militias, created by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez, already number in the hundreds of thousands and are being used to supplement the regime’s armed forces. Maduro is boosting the number of armed supporters in hopes of keeping control over the country from what he labels “imperialist aggression.”
Therein lies your lesson, American gun owners: The American left constantly pushes for more gun control, never satisfied, slowly chiseling away at our 2d Amendment rights, even to the point that a President Hillary admittedly would have considered the Australian buyback form of voluntary gun confiscation. With the American Left moving ever more radically in that direction, who is to say that a future, dedicated-socialist president like Elizabeth Warren might not stack the Court and get the reading of the 2d Amendment that the Democrats have long wanted: that the only legal guns in America, like Venezuela, are those in the hands of government?
And who’s to say that an even more rabidly socialist successor to a President Warren might not decide that she feels her position threatened, like President Maduro, and decides to issue arms to her loyalists? Thanks to our recent election victory, we are now enjoying a respite from liberal gun grabs and fears of a liberal dominated Supreme Court. However, as the Democrats have recently learned regarding national power, nothing is forever.
Crossposted at American Thinker
Category: Politics
Gun Control Laws and the politicians that pass them do little more than aid, abet and embolden violent criminals by assuring them via the law that law-abiding people will be conveniently unarmed VICTIMS, ditto with tinpot dictators like Maduro. MOLON LABE!
NY State Governor Cuomo basically banned all semi automatic rifles and forced those who wanted to keep them to register them among a host of other regulations.
To help “reduce” crime.
Almost no one followed these new laws.
Instantly hundreds of thousands of law abiding citizens were made felons.
But they are mostly republicans. So all the better.
How the left works.
Sandy Hook was a godsend to the NY governor and legislature and stands as a testament to the progressive belief that a crisis is an opportunity. The heart-wrenching tragedy of Sandy Hook greased the rails and permitted the most onerous and restrictive firearms laws to sail through the NY Assembly. Time was of the essence, as emotions cool and intellect resumes its predominant place in the decision making process. The progressives knew this and, consequently, the so-called SAFE Act was submitted as an emergency measure. The haste with which it was written, passed, and signed into law created a number of problems. These were pooh-poohed by the governor who assured retired LEOs, for instance, that although the law made them criminals, they would not be prosecuted. That’s no way to do business. This year, one legislator introduced a bill that would require gun owners to carry a minimum of $250,000 worth of liability insurance. In other words, the gun grabbers aren’t satisfied and will not be satisfied until New York is a gun-free state–but for government agents, that is.
Same in Maryland- people ignored the new, draconian Firearm Safety Act in droves, and our local Sheriff flatly refuses to enforce it.
The “SAFE” Act was so poorly drafted that it initially made all LEOs felons because it failed to include a law enforcement exemption. It then needed to be amended again because the way the Act was written, it prohibited the use of movie props.
Do it for the children.
It’s always “for the kids”…
Yep. The standard Leftist goto for any number of agendas.
Remember, the Nazis didn’t confiscate *all* privately-owned weapons in Germany. They were far more insidious than that.
They only confiscated them from the untermensch. If you were a party member whose jackboots reliably toed the National Socialist party line, you got to keep your guns. That way, the Nazis could say that they still ran a “free” society in which citizens could arm themselves, they just ensured that the “undesirables” didn’t have weapons to cause trouble. It was all about safety, you see, ensuring that the Gestapo had a safe working environment when they showed up to send somebody’s family to Auschwitz or Dachau.
ΜΟΛΩΝΛΑΒΕ
Correction: the Australian “voluntary buyback” was neither. But I agree wholeheartedly.
Never take freedom and all that goes with it for granted.
Almost forgot: earlier this week, there was a news report that two people in the opposition side were shot and killed by les gendarmes during an anti-Maduro rally.
How shocking … NOT.
Until those who do not abide by the laws of the land decide to do so, then laws of any kind regarding guns are worthless. Laws keep the honest man inside the fence of society’s propriety and send the dishonest man to prison. Gun control is the most misused term floated by the left. Liberals love their felons and other criminals more than honest citizens. They know as well as we here that there is no way to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, gangs and their ilk. So, whenever a criminal uses a gun in a crime, the attention is turned to all guns, not just those obtained and used illegally. Not a criminal in this country would be one gun short were all legal citizens to surrender their arms. The laws they are making are futile and wrong. The laws they need are those such as, life in prison for a felon with a weapon and life in prison for use of any weapon in the commission of a crime. But I am preaching to the choir.
VERY TRUE, when was the last time anyone saw criminals lining up to turn THEIR guns in as soon as a new law was passed?
I read somewhere that the Govenment of Venezuela has now seized a GM Plant on their soil, that will do wonders for their economy like their seizure of a Kimberly Clark facility did!
Reminds me of when they seized a Shell Refinery a few years back.. the departing engineers yanked most of the control equipment and crunched the rest. They ended up seizing a toxic waste junk yard.
It wouldn’t be too hard to scorch-earth a modern assembly line. Code the robots to destroy themselves when the idiots try to start it back up?
they are also sort in the raw materials to build the cars, so there’s also that. I wouldn’t put it past them to have junked the hard drives for the computers that run the machines.
“It wouldn’t be too hard to scorch-earth a modern assembly line. Code the robots to destroy themselves when the idiots try to start it back up?”
There are at least 1001 other ways to wreck an assembly line, the Venezuelan government is so hell-bent on being stupid it’s not even funny.
Yeh, so did Obozo! that when GM became govt motors!
They did. GM promptly closed its several dealerships and says it will pursue legal means to get it back for what that is worth. Look for President Trump to make a strong statement on this as soon as the situation is understood. Maybe he will send Sean Penn and Michael Moore down to negotiate.
Remember folks….the citizens of Venezuela voted for this.
The Free Shit Army voted to have free shit…and that is exactly what they got.
“Be careful of what you wish for, you might actually get it.” – Unknown
An armed population is composed of citizens.
A disarmed population is composed of subjects.
Freedom is sometimes difficult and messy. But being a free citizen is infinitely preferable to being a serf.
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