In 2012, Venezuela's dictator-for-life President Hugo Chavez had his rubber stamp legislature pass the Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law. The public generally supported it at the time. The law stripped law-abiding Venezuelans of every firearm and round of ammunition they could legally own.
As the country and its citizens have increasingly benefitted from the wonders of Bolivarian socialism, it appears that the public now regrets their support for total civilian disarmament.
"Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight," Javier Vanegas, 28, a Venezuelan teacher of English now exiled in Ecuador, told Fox News. "The government security forces, at the beginning of this debacle, knew they had no real opposition to their force. Once things were this bad, it was a clear declaration of war against an unarmed population."
If only the citizens of Venezuela had the right to keep and bear arms as a check against government tyranny.
Once again, another nation demonstrates what can and frequently does happen to a disarmed populace. The despotism pushed by the authoritarian ruling class can proceed full force, with no realistic threat of opposition from the people they subjugate.
As the corruption, theft, graft, and fleecing of the treasury and the people continues. The public now is reduced to literally picking through trash for food as millions flee the country.
As history has shown, this isn't a new story. Maria Gabriela Chavez, the dead thug's daughter, is the the richest woman in Venezuela. That didn't happen because of her hard work and investing acumen.
Also like in other despotic countries, the state is cracking down on anyone it sees as a threat. Teachers, house wives, students, business ownersit doesn't matter. Speak against the state and it will send its goons after you in the middle of the night to make you disappear.
"Venezuela shows the deadly peril when citizens are deprived of the means of resisting the depredations of a criminal government," said David Kopel, a policy analyst, and research director at the Independence Institute and adjunct professor of Advanced Constitutional Law at Denver University. "The Venezuelan rulers like their Cuban masters apparently viewed citizen possession of arms as a potential danger to a permanent communist monopoly of power."
Kopel has that right. This is exactly what my family went through in Cuba.
This is a photo of my To Mario. He fled Cuba shortly after Hugo Chavez's role model, Fidel Castro, took power in 1959. To was hired by The Company when he arrived in the US and was a member of Brigada 2506. Yeah, that company, the folks that set up the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Sadly, the invasion was a failure and Castro and his ilk are still in power, oppressing Cuba's disarmed populace, to this day.
Lucky for us, my family settled here in the US. One of the most important lessons my To ever thought me was that a free people are armed and that I am to NEVER SURRENDER MY GUNS under any circumstance. But Venezuelans sure did and now they're seeing the consequences of their actions.
"Venezuelans didn't care enough about it. The idea of having the means to protect your home was seen as only needed out in the fields. People never would have believed they needed to defend themselves against the government," Vanegas explained. "Venezuelans evolved to always hope that our government would be non-tyrannical, non-violator of human rights, and would always have a good enough control of criminality."
Let the Venezuelans and Cubans be a lesson to us here.
