An MSNBC segment on the citizen uprising in socialist Venezuela did more to back the Second Amendment than the National Rifle Association could have ever hoped for.
In a discussion with NBC News correspondent Kerry Sanders, anchor Andrea Mitchell spoke about how Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro is managing to hold the reins of power.
“I think it has been surprising to a lot of people in Washington, in the administration at least, that this is taking longer than they thought,” Mitchell observed. “Despite the sanctions, despite the pressure, with the help of Russia and other outside forces, Maduro is hanging on.”
Sanders’s response nailed why the Founding Fathers placed so much importance on the right to bear arms.
“Not only hanging on, but he appears to still control the military,” Sanders replied. “You have to understand, in Venezuela gun ownership is not something that’s open to everybody. So if the military have the guns, they have the power.”
“As long as Nicolás Maduro controls the military, he controls the country,” he added.
On Tuesday, Venezuela’s U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó, the president of the National Assembly, called for a military uprising, dubbed “Operación Libertad,” or operation freedom, to topple Madura’s socialist government.
The effort was called a “coup” by not only Madura, but by media outlets like CNN.
And while the streets erupted in violence, as civilians and soldiers who backed Guaidó clashed with Maduro’s security forces, only military personnel had firearms — in one especially disturbing scene in Caracas, a military vehicle drove directly into a crowd of protesters.
Venezuela's socialist government just drove an armored vehicle into a crowd of civilianspic.twitter.com/m76yRX7hSJ
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 30, 2019
Under Hugo Chavez, Venezuela banned gun ownership in 2012, under the guise of curbing high crime rates, leaving citizens in no real position to fight back or protect themselves, outside of throwing rocks and bottles.
“It was never easy to obtain a handgun permit in Venezuela but at least before 2012 it was possible,” expatriate Daniel Di Martino told The Daily Caller. “Since Venezuelans are unarmed we now depend on a military uprising for our freedom rather than a popular uprising.”
Not that Venezuelans went along willingly — more from Fox News:
Chavez initially ran a months-long amnesty program encouraging Venezuelans to trade their arms for electrical goods. That year, there were only 37 recorded voluntary gun surrenders, while the majority of seizures – more than 12,500 – were by force.
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. […]
The punishment for illicit carrying or selling a weapon now is 20 years behind bars.
As a result of the law, only the military, police forces, and some security contractors could purchase firearms from a state-owned weapons manufacturer.
As for the left-wing claim that outlawing guns reduces crime, Venezuelan Luis Farias told Fox News in December that gun violence became much worse after the gun ban was passed and that crime has only soared.
“Now the criminal mother is unleashed,” Farias said. “Trying to ban guns didn’t take guns off the streets — nobody cares about the law; the criminals don’t care about the law.”
Sound familiar?
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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