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Venezuela Bans the Commercial Sale of Firearms and Ammunition
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."
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....
Disarming the citizenry in a dictatorship is SOP. Isn't Hugo running behind on that?
The United States has more guns than people. If the guns were causing the crime, we'd live in a post-apocalypse already.
And forks make people fat.
LOL! I Lived in Venezuela for a year and I don't believe that this is to prevent street crime. When I lived there, it was dangerous to ride a nice bike in certain areas because street criminals would stab you and take your bike. They wouldn't ask, they would just take it before you had the chance to do anything. Was that common? No. But it happened. I think this has more to do with keeping Hugo in command, especially with his failing health. Most people there can't afford guns, or ammo. They have armed security guards at Wendy's. They give them a shotgun with a couple of shells, or an old beat-up revolver with just a couple of bullets. Why? Because they don't want the guards selling the guns/ammo for cash.
I was there for the infamous 11 de Abril, in 2002 when Hugo was temporarily replaced in a military coup. I don't think he has forgotten that day, and never will.
"The measure is intended to curb violent crime in Venezuela, where 78% of homicides are linked to firearms."
That's what Venezuela claims. In reality, the government prefers a citizenry armed with sticks and rocks when the inevitable revolt comes to pass.
I might have a slightly different perspective (given that I come from Nicaragua, a country that used to be plagued by civil wars and tyrannical regimes.) There is a lot of truth that violent crime is up to levels never seen before in Venezuela's history (same in other countries, like Honduras and Mexico.)
Violent crimes are simply too much for the government (tyrannical or not) to handle. A general dissarmament (coupled with other social changes) can curb violent crime in poor countries with poorly developed (or unmaintained) social institutions. And by social changes I mean more pluralistic participation, increased professionalization of the police and armed forces, an opening of markets, however poor the country might be, and an atmosphere devoid of continuous civil strife.
I do not believe the Venezuelan government is simply trying to disarm the civilian population just to remain in power. I'm not a Chavez-sympathizer, au contrair, I loathe everything he stands for. However, this is just too simplistic an explanation, one well suited for playing arm-chair conspiracy theories. It also neglects to acknowledge that a substantial % of the population supports him (populism sells for the simple, destitute masses.)
They Venezuelan authorities have a substantial criminal violence problem in their hands, and this is one necessary (but not sufficient) step to curb it. It will fall short given that all the other necessary ingredients to make it work.
And that is the sad mark of incompetent regimes: to take uneducated, incomplete shortcuts to solve extremelly complex socio-economic problems.
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.