MSNBC Reporter Admits What Conservatives Have Said About Guns Is Completely True
You’ve probably heard the sentiment a thousand times before:
The one thing — in fact, almost always one of the first things — all dictators do is take away the right of the people to have guns to defend themselves, either against criminals or (especially) tyrants.
It’s an argument so old I scarcely even need to adumbrate it.
However, on MSNBC, that line of thinking is a profoundly new phenomenon. Alas, the specter of violence in Venezuela has forced a reporter for one of the official networks of #TheResistance to admit, if unwittingly, that conservatives have been right about that one little fact.
As you probably know, the situation in Venezuela has reached new levels of awfulness over the past few days, with opposition leader Juan Guaidó making a push to unseat the surprisingly resilient socialist president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.
In a segment on MSNBC on Tuesday, anchor Andrea Mitchell expressed wonderment to reporter Kerry Sanders that Maduro was still in power.
“It has been surprising to a lot of people in Washington and the administration, at least — this is taking longer than they thought, despite the sanctions, despite the pressure,” Mitchell said, noting that Maduro “is hanging on” with the help of their allies.
“Not only hanging on, but he appears to still control the military,” Sanders said.
“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 and as long as Nicolás Maduro controls the military, he controls the country.”
Guaidó, who declared himself interim president in January after claims the socialist government stole last year’s election, has tried to get the military to turn with his latest call to take to the streets.
However, as Sanders pointed out, few have heeded the call. And why should they? The people who want to depose the government don’t have firearms, whereas those who are in power do.
According to The Daily Caller, a 2012 gun ban made it almost impossible for citizens to own firearms.
“Under the June 2012 law, only the military, police forces, and some security contractors could purchase firearms from a state-owned weapons manufacturer,” The Daily Caller reported Tuesday. “Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan leader at the time, claimed the law would curb the country’s high rate of violent crime and said the ultimate goal was to disarm all private citizens.
“In 2013, just 37 weapons were handed over voluntarily. More than 12,500 were confiscated by force.”
The article quoted from an exiled Venezuelan’s interview in December.
“Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight,” Javier Vanegas, a Venezuelan living in Ecuador, told Fox News then.
“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.”
It’s a no-win situation.
The penalty for disobeying the ban is 20 years in prison.
The penalty for a populace being unarmed in the face of tyranny looks something like this:
Venezuela: military running over civilians on the street now. https://t.co/uNztgMPpFm
— Seán O’Shea (@ConsumerSOS) April 30, 2019
This is what conservatives have said about the right to bear arms all along, be it in Venezuela or here in the United States.
Home-invading criminals and tyrants alike respect little except force, force best delivered (whether you like it or not) from the muzzle of a gun.
The right has long since understood that those with arms will always victimize those without arms, particularly in the context of a failed state like Venezuela
Now, even MSNBC’s reporters also understand this salient fact — even if it might be in the limited context of Venezuela.
Perhaps that object lesson could open their eyes to a wider principle at play here.
But I wouldn’t hold my breath.
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