On August 20, 2002 the Venezuelan Government under Hugo Chavez enacted the Disarmament Law under the promise of reducing the crime violence gripping the nation. Six years later the results are tragically in: Caracas, the capital and most populated city in the country now boast the dishonorable distinction of being the most dangerous metropolis in the world with a murder rate of 130 per 100,000.  The citizens of Caracas are in a literal state of siege and panic. The sounds of shots are more common than the sounds of birds and that is tough when you realize that tropical Venezuela is home to 11,000 species of birds.

Venezuela’s Disarmament Law is a Gun Control advocate wet dream. First of all it dictates that gun ownership is a privilege given by the Estate and to be removed without warning or compensation. You ask “compensation”? yes because it does not matter that you spent your hard earned money, filled paperwork, got fingerprinted, went through a psychiatric consult, waited up to a year and had to carry an specific permit for each gun you may be allowed to have, you do not own the gun, it belongs to the government, you are just renting it.

The Disarmament law voided all previous gun records and gave a 90 day grace period for gun owners to re-register their weapons. After that period expired, all guns not registered became illegal and the owner a criminal facing grave penalties and/or jail time.

But that, like infomercials say, is not all. This law complements The 1928 Law of Firearms and Explosives which defined the initial restrictions of gun ownership including what weapons & calibers are you allowed to “own.” IE: the good old 9mm is not a legal caliber to use because the Military uses it. Same for the .45 and the 30.06 and anything that has ever been used by any of the branches of the Venezuelan Military as standard weapon or caliber. That pretty much leaves the user with .22, .38, and .32 ACP.  Shotguns may be OK but slugs are not allowed and rifled shotguns are a no-no.

The last ingredient in the 130 per 100,000 murder recipe is the criminalization of self defense. I am no legal expert or pretend to know about law so I will give you a sad anecdote. A Venezuelan criminal lawyer friend of mine emailed me some years back regarding a case she was defending. She wanted to consult me (like I was a Spanish speaking version of Mas Ayoob, yeah right!) about shooting techniques used in self defense and about some other self defense issues related to guns so I explained her all I could over the phone while I was preparing an email with links to several websites that might shed much better information that I could give. I asked what was the case about and she explained that her client was confronted inside of his house by an armed criminal in the wee hours of the night. The criminal was armed and so was the client who triple tapped the miscreant sending him to his well deserved oblivion. The home owner did the dutiful thing and called police who promptly arrested him and dragged his butt to jail for murder.  I was shocked and asked why was he arrested if he was in his house, attacked by an armed criminal and he only defended himself. The lawyer responded that three shots, according to Venezuelan jurisprudence was too much, in fact it was legally considered “viciousness & savagery” (Ensañamiento in Spanish) and thus murder, not self-defense. The legal standing is that one should shoot only once, asses the damage done to the opponent and then shoot if the threat to one’s life is imminent.  I asked the lawyer if that means I would have to give the Bad Guy a freebie shot before I could make sure he was gone for good and she said yes, that is the statute. She said that she could explain two shots fired as the person being nervous and pulling the trigger too fast without thinking but that the judge would not consider three shots as “nervousness.”

At the end her client ended up serving 10 years (the judge was gracious enough) for second degree murder. My only thought was that he was lucky he did not engage in a Bill Drill or he would serve thirty years in a Venezuelan prison.

Behold the criminal! Ladies and gentlemen I present you Philip Clarkson Webb, criminal extraordinaire according to UK’s Kent Police. The 78-year-old retired teacher was walking one day when he was suddenly surrounded by Kent Police who demanded that he turned in a “dangerous weapon” in his possession. Was Mr. Webb carrying an dangerous AK 47? Perhaps a dreaded Street Sweeper shotgun? A high capacity semi automatic pistol? Dirty Harry’s .44 magnum? Nope. He was carrying his walking stick, a 3 foot long piece of wood that seniors sometime use to aide themselves while waking.

According to MailOnline, there was a climate camp environmental demonstration in the area and police were vigilant of possible activist. Mr. Webb clearly looks like one (insert snicker here) so police approached him, took away his “dangerous weapon” and left him limping to his own devices. They were polite enough to give him a receipt for the cane but when Mr. Webb went to the station to return it, the walking stick was nowhere to be found thus adding insult to injury.

This is a sad comentary on UK’s Nanny State and fear of just about anything. It also tell us much about the failed results of Gun Control proponents on reducing violence through a gun-less society: a bigger restriction or downright elimintation of our rights anf freedoms. I am sure that police saw as “reasonable” relieving Mr. Webb of his “weapon” and that is why when you hear any politician claim he or she is in favor of “reasonable” gun control, you should stock up in ammo, hide your weapons and vote for the person who would unseat that clown and respect our Bill of Rights.

If what happened in Congress yesterday and the absurd speech by Nancy Pelosi blaming all republicans is any indication of what is coming, we better start stocking up. The amazing chutzpah can only be attributed to her knowledge that no real investigation will ever be made on the causes that brought down the financial markets because that would surely put the blame on the icons of the Democratic Party: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and to an extent kill the presidential hopes of Hossanna Obama. And she is resting assured that the Main Stream Media will bury the story as deep as possible even though if it means no more jobs for them.

If past history teaches us anything is that, if Obama wins and gets to apply his social policies, we will see more misery and we will also have a rise in violent crime. Depending on how fast it happens and if Congress is still held my Democrats, rest assured we will see an onslaught of federal anti-gun measures brought to both the Senate and the House of Congress, highly touted and supported by the Media as the solution for all crime problems and will be signed by Obama with a smile. Make no mistake: THERE WILL BE NO SUNSET PROVISION IN ANY OF THESE LEGISLATIONS. We will be shafted forever with deep restrictions to our Second Amendment.

Things will be marginally better with McCain. With his history of “reaching across the aisle” I am sure he will be more than accommodating to restrict our access to guns if he needs some important piece of legislation passed in the democrat-controlled Congress. We are barely a little over a month before elections but other than vote, there is little we can do. We need to set out targets on changing Congress with the strength of a sandblaster. We need to get rid of the liberal democrats and RINOS that brought us to where we are and will have no compulsion in transforming the USA into a Third World country. Our mandate is to clean Congress in 2010 to our favor and keep it there. Time to start is now.

In the meantime, get that gun you wanted to get, better yet get two or as many as you can afford. Get ammo and lots of it. If you don’t reload, you better think about it and fast, there are plenty of resources and help in different websites and forums just in case OSHA under Obama decides that ammunition is dangerous to your health and you should have a HazMat permit to store it. Get as many spare high capacity magazines as you can since they are the first target alongside those ugly assault rifles of future bans.

Get ready, sinister times are coming.

I bumped into several news items published in Ski News related to the rising gun violence in England and I am amazed that it happens at all! From unarmed police officers being shot by armed thugs to teens brandishing AK-type weapons and scaring the hell out of motorists to individuals making weapons to sell to gangs none of these were supposed to be happening in the Old Country. The Queen’s subjects were guaranteed by their govrnment that banning weapons from civilian possesion was going to keep them safe. The promise did not hold.

One in 10 brits say that they have been affected by gun crimes. The number should be zero according to the gun control “experts” that still insist on spouting their failed theories. And as the gun laws are slowly being eliminated in the USA with a corresponding degree in the number of crimes, England’s viloent crime rate keeps rising.  Still the “experts’s” solution is to add new gun control laws and increasingly more power to the police without realizing that decreasing the number of victims by empowering them to defend themselves is the answer and not disarming civilians and thus creating a guaranteed pool of unarmed product for the criminal consumers.

But what do I know? I am a gun nut and they are Civilized… and dying.

(Originally Posted on January 10th, 2008)

I recently had coffee with a young lady of my acquaintance and she was upset. It seems that she works at a gun free zone workplace and, worried about her safety asked the Security Officer what was he supposed to do in case of a Bad Guy or Nutjob attacking the place. The answer given by the Security Officer was “I’ll call 911 and be a good witness.”

At first she thought he was joking but his face told her otherwise. He went on to explain that all he was required and ordered by the corporation to do was to call police and be a good witness. He went on to say that he was an unarmed Security Officer and that the corporation forbids associates to have any type of weapon on property and that includes Security Officers so defending oneself or anybody else against a Bad Guy is out of the question. Also, weapons are not allowed in personal vehicles so even if an associate might happen to be in the parking lot and hears the attack, he/she would be summarily fired for having a gun even if the life of the CEO was spared by his/her actions according to corporate policy.

About the only advice the Security Officer could give her was to run as far away and as fast as possible from the location or, if she could not to find a corner, bend over , put her head between her legs and….

You know the rest.

(Originally posted on January 10th, 2008)

Yes, the title is there to induce shock. If you are not aware, there is a segment of the population that is being discriminated because they chose to take responsibility for their self-defense. The people being discriminated are law abiding citizens who are vetted by State and Federal governments to carry a concealed weapon and yet, they are not allowed to access places that even felons can go into because they carry a weapon for their self-defense.

If you do not carry a concealed weapon, allow me to explain the feeling. Once we made the decision to carry, we must apply for a permit. This usually involves taking a class with a certified instructor and pass an exam, have your picture and fingerprints taken, fill paperwork and send everything to the government so they can verify you are not a Bad Guy. Once the government is satisfied and your information entered in a database, you receive a small ID card which says you are not a nutjob or a felon and can carry a concealed weapon.

Now you think your troubles are over, not so. You see, there is this erroneous conviction perpetuated by those who hate the idea of guns in the hands of civilians that we are an unsafe bunch. In their eyes we are a pack of bloodthirsty animals itching for a fight so can notch our guns with a body count. To calm their fears, politicians banned certain places from anybody who carried a concealed weapon: Schools, Bars, Restaurants, public parks, etc. and in some states, they allowed owners to ban the access to their business as we were some kind of lepers that should be kept outside so we would not infect other people. These places became known as Gun Free Zones.

The concept behind the Gun Free Zones, according to the Anti Gunners was to provide a safe haven from those NRA wackos that carry guns everywhere. They sold the idea hard and long guaranteeing that people would be safe from attacks because the law said so. Instead they created a perfect slaughterhouse for the real crazies that roam our streets and the criminals that like nothing else than a good group of unarmed victims.

So when I see a sign like the one above I am insulted. Why am I being treated like a second class citizen? I have demonstrated my desire of independence by not relying on the government for my safety. I have jumped through the legal hoops to demonstrate I am a Good Guy. I spent money on a quality weapon and gear to protect myself and my loved ones. and yet, I am treated like a pariah because some idiots fail to see the difference between reality and their own impotent fears and in the process they put innocent people at risk by allowing the true sick and the criminals a target rich environment for their misdeeds and mayhem..

Gun Free Zones are nothing more than a modern-day Jim Crow. This has to stop. Now.