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I am sensitive about seeming to exploit an ongoing foreign tragedy to score easy domestic political points, but feel the need to say this: every single Second Amendment supporter is watching #Venezuela & thinking "Yep. I give 'em up over my dead body."
Again, not trying to score a cheap point in a debate. Just saying that this is a serious political reality that everyone who cares about the gun debate and wants to push back on "insurrectionist" readings of 2A will have to contend with.
Just to add context for people who don't follow this issue, Maduro passed a civilian gun ban in 2012 & has spent a lot of money & effort since disarming civilians. thehill.com/opinion/campai…
More recently, he has been arming the pro-regime paramilitary militias that are now gunning down their fellow (unarmed) citizens: reuters.com/article/us-ven…
This is a textbook case of what 2A advocates have warned about. The script for this aspect of the Venezuelan tragedy could've been written by the NRA. elpais.com/elpais/2017/04…
Again, what is going on right now is a horror, & I'm super sensitive to the idea of exploiting it to score points. It's just that this is all over the gun blogs right now because it so precisely fits the so many the arguments made for an armed citizenry.
I have been in email contact with Venezuelans on & off for the past three years, & have tweeted about this. These scenes of political gunplay in the streets are not new. They have been on Twitter for a while now. Advanced search is not cooperating or I'd surface some, here.
The difference now is that the endgame is now playing out in front of TV crews. It's no longer just gunfights in the street uploaded onto Twitter. But Venezuela's disarmed civilians have been dying at the hands of regime-armed militias for some time, now.
I'm NOT saying Venezuela automatically & simplistically means we cannot ever do any form of gun control here. I'm not even using it to push back on any specific gun control idea. I am merely making the point that what you're watching is what we'll all be arguing over re: guns.
However it plays out in the end, this tragedy & these scenes from it will tower over the American gun debate for decades to come. Count on it. This is probably the most significant media spectacle since Newtown as far as the role of guns in American life.
It doesn't get clearer than this. "The order is to massacre the people." This is at least the second NG defector who has said this, tonight.
I mean, this is the Venezuela and guns timeline:
2012: total civilian disarmament
2017: pro-regime militias selectively armed, & scattered reports of them killing citizens
2019: "the order is to massacre the people"
2A ppl don't need to reach back to Germany anymore.
2012: total civilian disarmament
2017: pro-regime militias selectively armed, & scattered reports of them killing citizens
2019: "the order is to massacre the people"
2A ppl don't need to reach back to Germany anymore.
