Venezuela Bans the Commercial Sale of Firearms and Ammunition 828
Bob the Super Hamste writes "The BBC is reporting on a new law in Venezuela that effectively bans the commercial sale of firearms and ammunition to private citizens. Previously anyone with a permit could purchase a firearm from any commercial vendor but now only the police, military, and security firms will be able to purchase firearms or ammunition from only state-owned manufactures or importers. Hugo Chavez's government states that the goal is to eventually disarm the citizenry. The law, which went into effect today, was passed on February 29th, and up to this point the government has been running an amnesty program allowing citizens to turn in their illegal firearms. Since the law was first passed, 805,000 rounds of ammunition have been recovered from gun dealers. The measure is intended to curb violent crime in Venezuela, where 78% of homicides are linked to firearms."
Re:The premise seems failed. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So.... (Score:2, Interesting)
like europe and asia gun violence always goes up for 6 months and goes down to nearly zero within 3 years...
watch and learn america....
Re:The premise seems failed. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, if you make it to the hospital there's something like a 95% survival rate on gunshot wounds. They don't tend to do much internal damage if they miss the lungs and heart and even on a perforated lung you can survive quite a while. Individual stabbings tend to do more damage because a slashing motion on removal can tear up a lot of fleshy parts.
let's put the tinfoil hats down for a second (Score:5, Interesting)
"The measure is intended to curb violent crime in Venezuela, where 78% of homicides are linked to firearms."
That's what Venezuela claims. In reality, the government prefers a citizenry armed with sticks and rocks when the inevitable revolt comes to pass.
I might have a slightly different perspective (given that I come from Nicaragua, a country that used to be plagued by civil wars and tyrannical regimes.) There is a lot of truth that violent crime is up to levels never seen before in Venezuela's history (same in other countries, like Honduras and Mexico.)
Violent crimes are simply too much for the government (tyrannical or not) to handle. A general dissarmament (coupled with other social changes) can curb violent crime in poor countries with poorly developed (or unmaintained) social institutions. And by social changes I mean more pluralistic participation, increased professionalization of the police and armed forces, an opening of markets, however poor the country might be, and an atmosphere devoid of continuous civil strife.
I do not believe the Venezuelan government is simply trying to disarm the civilian population just to remain in power. I'm not a Chavez-sympathizer, au contrair, I loathe everything he stands for. However, this is just too simplistic an explanation, one well suited for playing arm-chair conspiracy theories. It also neglects to acknowledge that a substantial % of the population supports him (populism sells for the simple, destitute masses.)
They Venezuelan authorities have a substantial criminal violence problem in their hands, and this is one necessary (but not sufficient) step to curb it. It will fall short given that all the other necessary ingredients to make it work.
And that is the sad mark of incompetent regimes: to take uneducated, incomplete shortcuts to solve extremelly complex socio-economic problems.
Re:So.... (Score:2, Interesting)
mod parent up. statistics classes typically start with the idea of a random number as one of its founding precepts. wtf? That's a big philosophical pill you have to swallow to even get started. But then again, they can be pretty useful -- unless you're talking to a zealot of some kind in which case they only make the zealot angry.
Re:So.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, guns do protect you from the government as evidenced in Mexico. The gangs there have obtained outrageous and highly dangerous weapons and the government just cannot stamp them out. Afghanistan is another example. The US just cannot seem to eliminate the 'insurgents' or whatever they are being called now.
I think in the case of Venezuela that a government move to outlaw gun ownership is probably a shrewd move by the dodgy government they have -- it provides an excuse to round up would-be rebels. Chavez has cancer and in the wake of his passing there is likely to be a power struggle.
Re:huh, (Score:4, Interesting)
Not necessarily. Asymmetric warfare is never that simple. If things in the US got bad enough for a general revolt, it would be unlikely that it would set up as the police / military vs. 'the people'. It would be more of a civil war situation where people would be siding with or against the government depending on location, religion, economics and / or other criteria.
There would likely be defections from military and certainly local police. It would be gorilla style warfare rather than set piece battles. Rifles and shotguns would be very useful. F35's not so much - you don't want to flatten your own territory.
Now, if you are really planning on dealing with this sort of thing you should also stock up on small UAVs, timer chips, thermite, diesel fuel and fertilizer as well as practicing small squad tactics. But it's lots more fun to complain and destroy targets at the range.
Re:So.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It should be noted that when Florida passed its Shall Issue Law, allowing concealed carry to anyone who wanted to bother, the firearms crime rate went down.
Oddly, the firearms related crime rate with tourists as victims went UP. Note that a tourist, at that time, would have been the only type of person that could be guaranteed not to be carrying.
Which at least implies that the possibility that the victim might be carrying dissuaded some of the criminal community.
Re:So.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny how people cherry-pick their stats, isn't it? I live in Texas. And by the FBI stats, Texas is not even close to the most violent state in the Union. The "Peace index" is meaningless, and the other chart is raw numbers, so of course we have a higher number than less-populous areas. And the statistical abstract for the United States does break down the stats by prior years' per capita rates, and shows that there was an immediate drop in certain areas of violence when the concealed carry laws were enacted in Florida and Texas.
Full studies show a high correlation of violence related to drugs and alcohol. Prohibition isn't working and harsh consequences make the relative cost of doing violence lower than just getting caught.
I would also like to see a cross cultural study: It is amazing to me that gun violence in Canada is so much less than the USA.
The two countries with the highest non-war-related per-capita death-by-violence over the last 20 years are Brazil and Mexico, which are also two of the countries with the harshest gun laws.
In the UK, violence went up after the ban on guns and personal weapons (I have friends who had their collectible swords confiscated), but it was more people being bludgeoned and stabbed instead of shot.
Lots of factors need to be considered before a meaningful correlation can be drawn implying cause-and-effect for violence. Cherry-picking statistics are false logic.
However, for those of you who are entertained by false logic, here's something I received in my e-mail a few days ago: .0000188.
Scary Doctor Facts
This is really something to think about:
A. The number of physicians in the US is 700,000
B. Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year is 120,000
C. Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171 (US Dept of Health & Human
Services).
Then think about this:
A. The number of gun owners in the US is 80,000,000. (That's right, 80 MILLION! And statistics show that there are two guns in the USA for every man, woman and child.)
B. The number of accidental gun deaths per year (all age groups) is 1,500.
C. The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is
Statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than
gun owners.
FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR.
Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors
before this gets out of hand.
As a public health measure I have withheld the statistics on lawyers for
fear that the shock could cause people to seek medical attention.
Re:So.... (Score:5, Interesting)
That statistic is one of the most widely quoted among the RKBA crowd. And no, most gun owners that I know don't exaggerate about these sorts of statistics. This is simply because most of us don't see the point of winning an argument by lying. Now group size on the other hand. Well, I threw away the target, but...
Anyway, back to the point. The statistic is not Wayne LaPierre's nor does it belong to the NRA-ILA. It comes from a paper published in The Journal of the American Medical Association by Gary Kleck, PhD titled "What Are the Risks and Benefits of Keeping a Gun in the Home?" In it he cites a study by himself and Marc Gertz which estimated as many as 2.55 million defensive uses of firearms each year in the US. This includes situations in which merely displaying a firearm stopped the confrontation.
The paper may be obtained from the JAMA website:
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/pdfaccess.ashx?ResourceID=3329130&PDFSource=13 [jamanetwork.com]
A copy of the original study is here:
http://www.guncite.com/gcdgklec.html [guncite.com]
Incidentally, in 1994, a year after the Kleck/Gertz study The Department of Justice conducted their own survey and estimated only 1.5 million defensive uses annually.
I would also add anecdotally, a few years ago I was part of the 2.5 million (or more?) for that year, when the display of the full-size 1911 that I had holstered under my jacket that day dissuaded an urban youth from using his knife to collect my wallet. He approached. I told him to stop. He pulled his knife. I pulled back my jacket. He smilled and went the other way. I walked on.
LaPierre is deserving of criticism on occasion, but this is not one of them.