Venezuelans Now Regret Letting the Government Confiscate Their Guns
People of Venezuela left defenseless against socialist dictator Maduro's regime
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In 2012, Venezuela introduced a ban on privately-owned guns, stripping citizens of their rights to bear arms.
Under the direction of then-President Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan National Assembly enacted the “Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law,” with the explicit aim to “disarm all citizens.”
The law took effect in 2013, with only minimal pushback from some pro-democracy opposition figures, banning the legal commercial sale of guns and munitions to all - except government entities.
Citizens were asked to surrender their weapons, and those who refused had them confiscated by force.
Since then, Venezuela has descended into a socialist nightmare where the people are literally starving to death while their leaders live a lavish lifestyle.
Venezuelans are now regretting their votes to surrender their right to self-defense.
It is an object lesson for the folks here in the U.S. who want to travel down the same path as Venezuela; gun-free, socialism and all.
Venezuela implemented its gun ban seven years ago before their world took its last steps into the living hell it has become.
Now they have no defense against the junta and the socialist criminals controlling their nation.
Hollywood’s favorite strongman banned arms for citizens. It has not ended well for those starving to death under a socialist dictatorship... #DemocratsAreDangerous https://t.co/3wCBTWC3NL
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) December 14, 2018
“Hollywood’s favorite strongman banned arms for citizens. It has not ended well for those starving to death under a socialist dictatorship,” actor James Woods noted on Twitter.
And boy is he right.
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“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.”
Naturally, Chavez sponsored a “gun buy-back” program before implementing his confiscation.
Few Venezuelans were much interested in the government’s cash.
So, by the end of the year, Chavez forcefully seized 12,500 guns. But that was just the start.
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According to News Thud, when Chavez mercifully died, the country’s next president, Maduro, continued the confiscation policies…
In 2014, with Nicolás Maduro at the helm following Chavez’s death but carrying through his socialist “Chavista” policies, the government invested more than $47 million enforcing the gun ban – which has since included grandiose displays of public weapons demolitions in the town square.
And since then? Well, the government has become despotic and has run roughshod over the Venezuelan people, jailing and shooting them at will.
And the people now have no defense to stop Maduro from subjugating them.
“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.”
According to Omar Adolfo Zares Sanchez, 48, a lawyer, politician, and former mayor of Campo Elías municipality in the Venezuelan state of Mérida, it is now all but too late to make guns legally accessible to the average person.
“Without a doubt, if there had been a balance of armed defense we could have stood up and stopped the oppression at the beginning,” he contended.
“But there is too much anarchy on the streets now. Making guns easier for anybody to buy now would start a civil war.”
Other Venezuelans argue that while violence has indeed rapidly increased in the years since the gun ban, it might have been that much worse as the economy collapsed, and the country deteriorated.
“The problem from the beginning and still now is that there are too many people in Venezuela who are lawless. Crime is a way of living,” said Emberly Quiroz, 25, mother of three.
“Access to weapons won’t solve the problem.”
