Venezuela’s descent into chaos continues apace. Unfortunately, the ravages of cancer have apparently done little so far to slow down the country’s porcine president for life, Hugo Chavez. He still has plenty of appetite for expanding his government’s control over the lives of average Venezuelans. Sean Penn and Danny Glover may think he’s dreamy, but Chavez’s people are increasingly saying, meh. The latest problem: the South American paradise is currently number four on the worldwide murder hit parade with a rate of 67 per 100,000. If you’re benchmarking at home, the U.S. – we of the pervasive cowboy gun culture – comes in at 4.8 per 100K according to Wikipedia’s latest compilation. So if you’re a tinpot dictator, what to do? Simple. Disarm innocent citizens . . .
Simon Black at businessinsider.com breaks it down:
In recent remarks to the Latin American Herald Tribune, Venezuelan Interior and Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami announced that the government will begin suspending firearm importation, effective this month. Furthermore, local gunsmiths will no longer be able to market or sell firearms and ammunition.
According to El Aissami, “As of March, every last gun shop remaining in Venezuela – and there are less than 80 – should be closed. That is to say, in Venezuela, the perverse chapter of the commercialization of firearms and munitions is over.”
That ought to fix the problem. Murderous criminals obviously have no means of acquiring firearms illegally. And hapless victims clearly prefer to defend themselves with soup spoons and Tae Bo lessons.
Pretty much. But as bad as the murders are – and as predictable as gun confiscation is for any self-respecting paragon of the international left – using the murder rate as the cause for the gun grab is really just a fig leaf. Chavez isn’t long for this world. His apparatchiks know it and they appear to be clearing the decks to make it easier to handle any general unrest that could develop when the news finally comes that Pugsley’s assumed room temperature. It’s a lot easier mowing down a crowd of protestors when they’re not shooting back at you.
Needless to say, the political establishment, whether a dictator like Chavez or the ruling kleptocracy up north, doesn’t give a damn about protecting people. They care about protecting themselves, their interests, and the status quo. Curtailing gun sales in the name of ‘fighting crime’ is a means of achieving those goals.
Historically, disarmed populations seldom make too much trouble. Regardless of where you personally stand on firearms, the idea that police and government agents should be the only folks toting weapons ought to sound the alarm bells for any reasonable individual.
‘Nuff said.
His soulmate Obama is hankering to do this here.
Fortunately for Venezuela Chaves will probably be taking a dirt nap soon.
Maybe Obama,that scumbag, can smoke some more cigarettes.
i would like to know what has Obama really done to gun laws? maybe i am ignorant as to the policy’s but in my view it has never been easier to buy a gun. hell i picked up a handgun yesterday and tit took no more then 20 mins. i find that people that constantly bash Obama are blinded by hate for some reason. i am not a die hard fan of the president by any means but what people have to realize is that both parties are out to screw you. Really take a look at what both parties have done for you the little guy. Don’t blame you problems on the President because in all reality he is not running the show your local elected officials are the ones with their hands in your pocket. as far as the gun laws go please provide an example as to what the president has actually put in place to keep you from owning and buying firearms, and don’t give us a bunch of proposals we want hardcore on the book laws. until you come to terms with the fact that both parties suck you should just bash the president.
In his previous incarnation as an Illinois state and US Senator Obama expressed the desire to ban handguns completely. Disdain towards Obama is based on the recognition that the only reason he has not yet pushed this agenda is that he doesn’t have the votes. That it took you 20 minutes to buy your firearm was not Obama’s doing, nor his wish. It’s in the record. He’s a Daley/Chicago guy all the way. Lot of good that’s done Chicago.
Why do people think he has to publicly sign black and white anti gun legislation to be on the attack? The dude keeps stuff under wraps and has his little cabinet minions to run roughshod over the image of the law abiding gun owner without ever having to put pen to paper or talk about it on camera. The guy is insidious, not saying the likely repug nominee will be any better. CDC currently isn’t supposed to make antigun propaganda, O wants to let ’em have at. He wants military brass to be melted down at our expense instead of keeping ammo prices down for the civilian market. He tried to keep tons of historic weapons from coming back to their place of origin. He also wants to gut the Federal Flight Deck Officer program. Fast and Furious, anyone? Come on. All I need to hear is how he talks about gun owners to know he considers them to be a lower class of living creature, and for that he is a sick bigot.
adamt,
If you follow the Fast + Furious ATF program in any detail, it is clear that arming drug cartels by breaking US law was supposed to cause huge bloodshed and great public demand for at least a new AWB. Literally, Obama and cadre planned a Reichstag fire equivalent to excuse a crackdown and disarm citizens. The refusal to import M1 Garands from Korea was directly attributed to the “fear” that such weapons would end up in criminal hands. Like, so many gangbangers have en block clips and just need an M1 to use them with. It is clear bloodshed is fine with Obama and cadre if it results in a crisis they can exploit. Do you find that chilling? I do.
Adam, ahem, you’re naive is showing. He’s been caught making off the cuff remarks to gun grabbers that he’s working on gun control efforts “under the radar,” coincidently leading to Fast and Furious being blown wide open. Please don’t make the mistake that this is a racial thing or dem/repub thing. Politicians of EVERY STRIPE deserve your suspicion. Hold fast to your freedoms, friend. Once they silence your “enemies” on the homefront, your next on the list.
By the way Adam, not to rub it in (but I will), there is a very widely available photo on the internet of BHO in an intimate moment (lipsmack!) with comrade HC. Maybe someone here could help by posting the url.
by no means was i implying that it was a racial thing, i was more leaning to the right vs left battle that has been going on since Bush 2. i just feel as though the true winners are the guns and ammo makers cashing in on the worry. i just think that the fire continues to be stoked for no reason. just because i work under the radar to get a BJ from the wife doesn’t mean that i get one. work under the radar as much as you want it still has to go to a vote at some point. what laws have been brought to a vote that limits yours and my rights to bear arms. i haven’t seen any not saying that have been following to close. i just get annoyed when people make simple blanket statements comparing our president to a dictator
That photo was an advertisement by Benetton Clothing Company. It wasn’t real. Just FYI. I agree with the rest of your statement though!
Don’t forget the appointments of anti-gun Sotomayor and Kagan to SCOTUS.
Just wait til his next term…especially if the resistance loses the House and Senate… It’ll be Germany 1933 all over again.
And another step forward to genocide in Venezuela, brought to you by Chavez.
Genocide of what group by whom?
Of anyone not voting for his re-election which is coming up…
“Genocide” implies actions directed at an ethnic group. Is there some tribe he doesn’t like?
The non-Chavez tribe.
Still not “genocide” by an accepted standards.
Not to be a smart-ass, but what is a genocide called when it is non-ethnic groups at the center of the killings?
Mass killings, political killings, mass executions, violent repression,crimes against humanity, etc.
”
gen·o·cide
[jen-uh-sahyd] Show IPA
noun
the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. ”
To be a prick but what was wrong with what we said?
POlitical? Interesting definition. I don’t think I’ve ever heard genocide used to describe a political mass killing.
http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html
No mention of political groups. If “genocide” was used to describe killing political opponents the term would be rendered meaningless.
ITT we argue about the semantics of mass murder, which is mass murder, which is mass murder.
Venezuela used to be a nice place. Now, it’s just another Latin-American sh!thole. The people of Venezuela, like the people of Mexico, deserve better. unfortunately, they got what they got.
They get what they deserve. No one can protect their interests and freedom better than they can and if they don’t stand up and fend for themselves, it’s their own fault.
+1 I agree with that. The people of Venezuela need to rise up and overthrow Chavez
They get what they deserve.,/i>
No, Skyler, they did not. If you think that a Chavez-like government of scumbags can’t happen here, then you deserve it.
Venezuelans got what they deserved, my descendants in Cuba got what they deserved and if we ever discontinue our eternal vigilance, we will soon get what we deserve, too. Skyler and Joe Zip are right, they have to be willing to fight for their liberties. Unfortunately, more and more people in the U.S. are more than happy to give them over to the government to promote “national security”.
Anthony, when did the Cuban people get what they deserve? Was it under Castro, Batista, US colonial rule, Spanish colonial rule? Under the Grau government that came to power in 1933, Cuba was independent for the first time in its history. In 1934, Batista staged a counter-coup, financed and supported by the US.
In 1944, Grau was elected to office again. His successor was deposed by Batista with the support of — guess who — the US.
So tell me when the people of Cuba got what they deserved. If you ask me, all they got was royally screwed.
Nice concise summary! The history of Cuba directly supports the Smedley Butler narrative, and provides insight into some of the chaos in Latin America, the part the USSR didn’t instigate.
Ralph, I will again say that you are a gentleman and a scholar. In more or less that order. Thanks for the historical facts. They mean more from you than they ever would from me.
Venezuela was on an upswing for decades based on oil. Before long they ended up calling oil the ‘black devil.’ From ’58 to 1980 they spent oil money on infrastructure and education, bribes and fancy golf courses. Then came the oil price crash. International oil did it’s best to buy off politicians over the decades, and for a long time it worked. 30% of Venezuelans live on $2 US per day. It is that group that enabled Chavez to take power. Now he’s got his hands on VCB gold and is expected to sell it to finance his next campaigns. With a national army of 325,000 he decided to put rifles in the hands of 600,000 more mostly-very-poor people to insure his tenure. Confiscating guns is the other side of that coin. In brief, the Venezuelan upper class kept guns from the lower class to insure its own survival. Now the same technique is being used in reverse, against them. Common stuff in the world.
They do realize how heavily armed that country is already, right? And the borders aren’t exactly air tight either. The only surprise in this is that they waited this long to make an attempt at gun grabbing.
I don’t buy Citgo gas, haven’t for years. When Uncle Hugo is worm food and they come to their senses down there I might reconsider. The Iranians have a lot invested in Old Red Shirt, look for them to stick their nose in Venezuelan affairs.
That will be fun, watching a bunch of muslims trying to direct policy to a load of catholics.Good luck with that idea,lol.
“the South American paradise is currently number four on the worldwide murder hit parade with a rate of 67 per 100,000” “So if you’re a tinpot dictator, what to do? Simple. Disarm innocent citizens . . .”
Well I’ll be damned. Chavez reads TTAG! When you’re aiming to be #1 in the world there is only one proven way to get there.
Had Chavez not nationalized oil, would anyone care?
Does anyone care now? Oh sure, people care, but they don’t “care” care. Any more than they care about Syria or any of the other places people are oppressed, abused, murdered or outright massacred by their government.
Yes, the crap he has been doing has been going on for a long time. Op party folk live in Canada from down there. Why? Because driving to work one day listening to the radio names were given out and a call to shoot them on site or detain them for a reward was issued. Canada stepped in at the embassy and moved them out overnight. Why the death warrants? Because they ( Op speakers) don’t lick Chavez’s ass.
Thanks for the info, Buuurr.
none of us lost any money on it . this is a gun rights blog, not the daily kos. dictators eventaly nationalize everything.
I only care in the sense that I hate to see people suffer unnecessarily. Other than that, I have a lot of my own freedoms to care about.
+1
There was someone who did this back in the 1930s…what was his name again?
Unfortunately, in Costa Rica they are trying to follow the same path as Venezuela.
It’s like looking into the future, seeing what one leftist dictator does and knowing that our own leftist dictator will follow suit.
I grew up in Venezuela from 1968 – 1979. We had a fairly large American expatriate community there, mostly U.S. Steel and Reynolds Aluminum. It was a very nice place back then. Venezuela should be the most prosperous country in all of Latin America. For a small country, it has every natural resource one could want: Oil, iron ore, bauxite (aluminum ore), diamonds, gold, rich soil for agriculture, a beautiful coastline for tourism, cheap hydroelectric power, and more. And, it’s all been squandered by the communists. It’s really a shame. It was a wonderful and adventurous childhood.
It is always squandered by communists, because communists are not about “the people” – it is about power.
It isn’t a mystery why Chavez came to power. Yes, US companies played a very large role in Venezuela. They and their local patrons made a very large mistake in failing to invest a bit more in the education and economy of poor Venezuelans. Living up on the cooler high ground, it didn’t seem necessary. That was a mistake equal to the prolongation of Czarist power in Russia. Extremes don’t work. We think we’re benign, but if you look at Argentina’s history early in the 20th century, you’ll see we, and Britain, just loved to play hardball, the national game. We should play it more carefully, I think. For all the talk about “anti-communism,” we’ve handed the world to Communist China. So much for the rhetoric of the oligarchs. Screw Latin America then hand the world to the Chinese. Think about it.
Regardless of where you personally stand on firearms, the idea that police and government agents should be the only folks toting weapons ought to sound the alarm bells for any reasonable individual.
Not enough reasonable individuals. Too many people will sell their birth right of freedom for a bowl of Fascist Security soup.
Chavez is a big disappointment to many of us on the left – he’s strayed from his Bolivarian populist roots and is now yet another megalomaniac. That said, the right wing in S.A. has been mighty ugly, always with U.S. backing. Capitalism does not equal freedom. I think if it’s a question of oppression and brutality, U.S. backed rightist governments don’t look so good. Pinochet? Samosa? Lotta death and mayhem. Please read “War is Racket,” Smedley Butler. One of our most decorated Marines.
Capitalism does not equal freedom.
Yes, it does. State capitalism, or fascism as it’s sometimes known, is anti-freedom.
Absolutely. Jim Grant was asked in a recent interview what the US should try next to help the economy. His answer: “Capitalism.” The real thing, not the crony thing.
Let me know if you see this pure capitalism in the wild. I think what we have is a lot more like fascism. I’m all for free enterprise. Good luck with that, our country is more unfriendly to small businesses than all the northern European “socialist” democracies.
NCG – if you stack up the bodies of Marxist-inspired regimes, the “right wing” anti-communist governments of the past, the U.S. backed governments look like angels.
Committed leftists never think their people’s-champion-of-the-week will not turn out like Stalin, Mao, Pol-Pot, Chavez and Castro, but they always do. As bad as US-Backed bastards are, the Anti-Capitalist bastards are always apocalyptic.
When will we learn?
“Chavez is a big disappointment to many of us on the left – he’s strayed from his Bolivarian populist roots and is now yet another megalomaniac.”
Were you surprised?
Exactly what I was thinking — what would you expect from a Castro-inspired regime?
Smedley Butler was a local guy who graduated from a prep school 1 mile down the road from my house. It’s main athletic field is named after him. It took him a long time to figure out that the companies and businessmen he was ‘saving’ with muscle didn’t have any particular loyalty to the US. They did, though, spend a lot on campaigns and occasionally contemplate trying a coup in the US. And the left? Even worse. He was hired to be our (Philadelphia’s) police chief for two years during Prohibition. It went well enough until he busted the boozers at the Union League club…basically the guys who hired him. That was that. Butler wasn’t very good at seeing shades of gray. Still, his book is worth a read.
“War Is A Racket” is one of my favorite pamphlets. Opposition to corporate power should never be exclusive to what calls itself “the Left” today. It’s how they frame us out of discourse and weaponize their narrative.
Being a former Marine myself, all Smedley Butler accomplished with his fevered screed was remind everyone again why active duty military officers should stay out of politics.
I agree with the comment about active duty officers, but not about the implication that Butler’s writing and speaking later had no significant effect: He was a major influence on more than a few influential Quakers in the Philadelphia area, including those who built some well-known large companies, including The Budd Company. Butler was, it seems to me, an extreme man in both the phases of his life.
Hear Hear! Semper Fi
It’s always rich hearing the “right wing violence” canard from the Left, who are responsible for more murder and starvation than all other ideologies in human history combined. When you try the “but they did…” dodge, be sure that you’re talking about a group who did MORE of something than yours did.
Gas down there is 12 cents a gallon but you can’t find enough food in the stores. The poor are kept poor by the system which hands them everything they need so they don’t have to work, a good thing considering few jobs exist. It’s all paid for by selling oil at 100 a barrel and whatever else they can strip out of the land.
Venezuelan crude oil is loaded with sulfur and best used as fuel. Replacing this oil should be a priority for the new administration in January since the current leader admires this guy and would give him a kiss on his bald head.
Back to guns, people down there are really armed to the teeth with military grade stuff. Generalissimo Chavez has his supporters but also his enemies. Look for a different opinion on him to emerge soon.
How lomg till the ATF starts shipping guns in?
What? You mean the guns we shipped there in the ’50’s-70’s have been used up? Chavez must go, but the next time the educated folks take power, they should think a bit more of their country and a bit less about golf.
I believe it was Chavez who imported hundreds of thousands of AK-47’s and similar weapons from Russia in order to arm his militias. Soulds like he’s trying to take guns out of the hands of the opposition.
Oh Mr. Zimmerman! And all this time you where writing about a South American Dictator of a banana republic.
Well maybe Eric Holder and the ATF can fast and furiously walk guns down to Venezuela to help those under the boot of tyranny. Oh wait! Am I ever confused again. Gosh darn, there I go again. My bad. Chavez don’t need the propaganda value of an illegal treasonous act of mass murder via gunwalking for the sake of creating an entirely false meme through an in the bag media, that law abiding citizens of their country have to be disarmed to protect them from the tyranny of their own corrupt government working outside the rule of law.
Darn I must be dreaming. Now that could never happen in the good ole USofA!
Sheesh. When I saw the headline, I thought you were referring to President Present.
“Tyranny and usurpation are not a result of arming the citizens, but of leading a government weakly, and that while a state is well led, it has nothing to fear from its subjects’ arms.”
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01386/obama-chavez_1386798c.jpg
As Chavez goes, so goes Obama. If re-elected he will go all out to have gun registration which will lead to gun confiscation. Only Warriors are committed not to let that happen. Unfortunately there aren’t enough Patriots that will take the Pledge to defend the 2A at all cost. I think the saying goes, “better to live on your knees like a coward than to die defending your country and rights.”
http://www.secondamendmentwarrior.com
Democrats’ favorite sexual fantasy.
They only take our guns if we let them.so what will they say when they are told no?you can’t have them! The 2nd Amendment only goes away if we let it. The gorverment does not have that control, we do. they are not our rulers as they think they are.
Molon labe!
Have you joined my Warrior ranks yet?
http://www.secondamendmentwarrior.com
Si vis pacem, para bellum! (If you seek peace, prepare for war!) “Those that make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.” —JFK
“…Pugsley’s assumed room temperature…..”
Man, I was LOLOLOL on that one. I kept imagining that ugly kid on the “Addams Family”, as I read the article – Chavez does resemble Pugsley.
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