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Venezuela Bans the Commercial Sale of Firearms and Ammunition

Posted by Soulskill on from the guns-don't-kill-people,-except-when-they-do dept.

Bob the Super Hamste writes "The BBC is reporting on a new law in Venezuela that effectively bans the commercial sale of firearms and ammunition to private citizens. Previously anyone with a permit could purchase a firearm from any commercial vendor but now only the police, military, and security firms will be able to purchase firearms or ammunition from only state-owned manufactures or importers. Hugo Chavez's government states that the goal is to eventually disarm the citizenry. The law, which went into effect today, was passed on February 29th, and up to this point the government has been running an amnesty program allowing citizens to turn in their illegal firearms. Since the law was first passed, 805,000 rounds of ammunition have been recovered from gun dealers. The measure is intended to curb violent crime in Venezuela, where 78% of homicides are linked to firearms."

11 of 828 comments (clear)

  1. So.... by Red+Storm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who will they blame when gun violence goes up?

    --
    ---- Fight to protect your right to keep and arm bears! ummmm... ya I think that's right....
    1. Re:So.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Statistics show that if the victim has a firearm, there's a greater chance of either he/she or the people near the victim being wounded.

      Prove it. Cite a relevant study.
      Don't make baseless claims about statistics if you don't have hard evidence.
      One could make the claim that you don't need a gun to commit a violent crime or a homicide. A knife or a big piece of wood/metal or even just fists is more than sufficient.

    2. Re:So.... by sribe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Statistics show that if the victim has a firearm, there's a greater chance of either he/she or the people near the victim being wounded.

      Actually, no they do not show any such thing. Just try to find a citation.

      Heck, I even know the underlying statistic, where it came from, and how it has been misrepresented by gun-control advocates. But it would be more educational for you to try to find a citation for the urban legend you're trying to help spread than for me to spell it out for you. So go ahead, try to find a citation or any actual numbers anywhere to back up your claim ;-)

      Unless of course "people near the victim" includes the attacker ;-)

    3. Re:So.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Two Predictions:
      1) As the parent stated, gun violence will go up. Bad guys love unarmed targets.
      2) Government violence against citizens will go up.
      Yes, I know this is like predicting the sun will come up tomorrow. Just call me Captain Obvious.

      I haven't look at your profile, but this is the sort of mentality I see in the US. Guns kill people no matter how you look at it, and less guns will only lead to less deaths.

      If you genuinely think that a gun protects you from the goverment you're deluding yourself.

    4. Re:So.... by rezalas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually when you go to rob someone taking a gun (since they can't legally own one) is the best move to both passify the home owner and / or murder them if needed. In these instances there won't be anyone to see you do it. The only person who did see you is now dead on the floor (or people if you murder a whole family). Criminals don't think "what is the minimal amount of defense I can take into this robbery", no they think "What can I do to make sure I get away without being caught". A gun pretty much ensures that when you tell the home owner to bury his face in the pillow while you tie him up, he does it.

      This is why Americans don't want to give up weapons. We know the "kind criminal" is a myth, and we don't intend to be a victim while we hope that someone shows up to save us.

    5. Re:So.... by Yosho-sama · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Travyon Martin was 16. You can't get a concealed carry permit at 16.

      I'm guessing you're glossing over the fact that people with vigilante tendencies, low IQs or mental problems should not be allowed to carry a gun, but do because guns are too easy to get. But hey tell that to the Pastor's daughter in Florida who was shot in the head through a wall when a security guard at the church was playing with his gun. You're absolutely right, her having a gun would have made her immune to bullets.

      http://www.theblaze.com/stories/pastors-daughter-accidentally-shot-in-the-head-in-church-dies/

      I don't think guns should be banned, I think they should be controlled and only licensed to people with extensive training or military experience. You know, like Switzerland where everyone is armed because everyone is in the military.

      --
      My kingdom for a donkey!
    6. Re:So.... by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Irrelevant to this discussion.

      This is about dictatorships outlawing guns to make it harder for people to shuck off their oppressors, which is exactly why it was enshrined in the US constitution.

      It's not about home safety or hunting rights, or the statistical vagaries thereto.

      Mr. Dictator no want lose cush job.

      And, by the way, loss of a nation's freedom exceeds all prosaic gun violence over the decades as a major disaster by light years.

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      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    7. Re:So.... by Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, we can look south. Mexico has very strong gun control laws. An American tourist who gets caught by police there with a round of ammunition accidentally dropped on the floor of his vehicle can expect to stay in jail for 5 years there. How are those gun control laws working out for them? Every time I turn on the news, there's a story about dozens of people being decapitated and hung from bridges there.

      The reason European countries don't have huge violent crime problems is because of culture, not gun control laws.

  2. Sure.... by Kid+Zero · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Disarming the citizenry in a dictatorship is SOP. Isn't Hugo running behind on that?

  3. The premise seems failed. by talldean · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The United States has more guns than people. If the guns were causing the crime, we'd live in a post-apocalypse already.

  4. Re:Hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm not the GP to whom you addressed the question, but it's one that interests me. I'm an American citizen. I own a gun safe, which contains a collection of rifles, shotguns, and pistols. But I don't consider myself a gun nut. I don't shoot very often. I've only ever done target shooting for sport. I've never hunted. In short, the 2nd Amendment has some effect on my life, but I don't put food on my table using firearms.

    The right of the citizens of the USA to bear arms has been codified in the Constitution of the United States, which means that the US Supreme Court has the authority to uphold or strike down laws that interact with it. I would not suggest repealing the 2nd Amendment. I don't believe that it is a good use of our legislative time or money to try to craft laws that try to find sneaky ways around constitutional requirements. For example, the California 'assault weapons' ban is, in my opinion, a pointless and reactionary law that depends upon hysteria and ignorance in the people who support it. I happen to own an SKS rifle that would, I believe, be illegal there. But it's no more or less deadly than any other gun that I own. Apparently, they have banned this gun because it 'looks scary'.

    At the same time, I find it preposterous when people suggest that if everyone just walked around with a gun strapped to their belt all the time, that this would somehow reduce gun violence. It would be laughable, if it weren't so ominously crazy. People suggest that, say, at Virignia Tech, if all of the students had been armed, then the whole thing wouldn't have been so bloody. But what happens when everyone has a gun, nobody knows who the bad guy is, and some kind of mass gunfight erupts in the middle of campus? It's a battlefield situation where none of the players have learned any battlefield discipline. Or, this: right now, it's illegal in my state to bring a gun into a bar. What would happen to bar fights if everyone was armed? Drunken bros would be shooting people right and left. For me, the bottom line here is that people (and especially younger people) are demonstrably bad at considering the consequences of their actions before they act. In such a situation, it seems ludicrous to arm them all with deadly weapons.

    So my stance is that it's a complicated issue, and that I don't believe it's responsible to have a yes or no answer to whether I support the right to bear arms. In general, I do. But I think there are exceptions that are appropriate. Last year, a crazy man who lived in my town shot his ex-girlfriend to death. Now, if he hadn't had a gun, maybe he would have done it some other way. But I don't see why we should arm people who are mentally unstable and violent. If he'd only had a knife, he'd have needed to get a lot closer to stab her with it, and she might have had time to react. I don't want to play a long game of 'what if' about it. I'm just saying that while the right to bear arms is important, I believe it also should be moderated.