Venezuela: Socialist leader arms 400,000 supporters after disarming civilians

All too many of the other great tragedies of history—
Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust,
to name but a few—were perpetrated by armed troops
against unarmed populations. Many could well have been
avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their
intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets
apiece, as the Militia Act required here. See Kleinfeld Dissent
at 5997-99. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw
Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with
only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles
could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.

My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons
of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines
the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw
the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second
Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those
exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have
failed—where the government refuses to stand for reelection
and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the
courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees.
However improbable these contingencies may seem today,
facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make
only once.

Fortunately, the Framers were wise enough to entrench the
right of the people to keep and bear arms within our constitutional
structure. The purpose and importance of that right was
still fresh in their minds, and they spelled it out clearly so it
would not be forgotten. Despite the panel’s mighty struggle
to erase these words, they remain, and the people themselves
can read what they say plainly enough:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the
security of a free State, the right of the people to
keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The sheer ponderousness of the panel’s opinion—the mountain
of verbiage it must deploy to explain away these fourteen
short words of constitutional text—refutes its thesis far more
convincingly than anything I might say. The panel’s labored
effort to smother the Second Amendment by sheer body
weight has all the grace of a sumo wrestler trying to kill a rattlesnake
by sitting on it—and is just as likely to succeed.

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krucam said:

I like to remind folks of CA9 Judge Kozinski's prophetic words.

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ken792 said:

The Bolivarian Militia seems to have a lot of Mosins, but a guy with any gun will probably win against a guy with no gun. Pictures are not mine.

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rockstarartist said:

This is kind of funny, because between myself and friends, this is what we speculate when we are kickin' it and sipping a couple of malt beverages:

So Trump decides to take this country towards an autocratic/fascist path.
He starts by disparaging the media, weakening it as a medium that puts visibility into the checks and balances of the state.
Trump engages in further economic changes that force manufacturing, mineral excavation and processing to occur in the continental US.
Inflation starts increasing, due to goods being more expensive since they are manufactured here. The poor and lower middle-class begin to grumble.
We then get some painful terrorist attack in the US.
Trump decides to call down various acts that further invade privacy, lessen rights, increases his term limit and further consolidates his power. The GOP led congress goes along with it in the name of 'murica.
The middle and upper class get mad about loss of privacy and rights, the economy is taking a downturn due to inflation increasing faster then expected, and protests are starting to erupt more often.
Wanting to consolidate his power further, Trump uses his Family and close upper-class rich echelons to get their corporate resources to develop a machine-learning system to data mine FBI firearm background checks, pull in records from the State background checks, Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Forums/social media accounts and to cross check those with Democrat-party registered citizens.
Gun raids occur across the USA, the confiscation of firearms from Democrats, under the guise that protests may get more violent if the poor(Democrats) are left to maintain their firearms.
Right-leaning gun-owners are emboldened by this, and see nothing wrong. They now have their America back. A large swath of the population, mostly in blue states, now has no firearms.
The economy continues to struggle and soon, the poor whites in southern states start to grumble.
The Trump administration begins a massive gun-buyback program in the red states. People begin using the program to get money for food and to make ends meet.
Further economic downturn, foreign policy that begins to neuter us, and other political mistakes begin to take a toll on red states, protests being to spill into Trumps base.
Turmoil, and then perhaps another terrorist attack begins national scale 2nd amendment restrictions (amongst other amendment loss)

and bam, we got our own Venezuela situation in the good ole USA. Death by a thousand cuts, and when those cuts look like they are happening to the "other", we can sit smug in our comfy lazy-boy chair... but by the time that cut occurs on your side of the street, your blind-sided and its too late.


anyway, i like thinking about zombie apocalypse's better, the above is too depressing.

Cheers.

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Jim12 said:

FBN reported today that Maduro is now believed to have given about a million guns to his supporters, goons, and thugs. Up from 400,000. After disarming the civilians, of course.

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TLL said:

Just catching up on this thread but had to ask. Lots of Mosins but No Bayonets!?

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

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Rack&Roll said:

You see the way they dick around with the Mosins, someone could get hurt. That old hag in the picture above scares me.

Notice the ones in red who look like Disney employees seem to be getting double food rations.

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Doctor_M said:

Perhaps the first shots in the upcoming Venezuelan civil war. Police helicopter launched a gun and grenade attack on their Supreme Court building yesterday. I guess we know why all of those Mosins have come out of the closet lately. Maduro clearly sensed things coming to a head.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40426642

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Who flew the helicopter?

The police officer identified himself as Oscar Pérez in video statements posted on the social media platform Instagram.

Appearing in military fatigues and flanked by armed, masked men in uniform, he appealed to Venezuelans to oppose "tyranny".
"We are a coalition of military employees, policemen and civilians who are looking for balance and are against this criminal government," he said.

"We don't belong to any political tendency or party. We are nationalists, patriots and institutionalists."

He said the "fight" was not against the security forces but "against the impunity of this government. It is against tyranny".

It is not clear how much support, if any, the officer has.

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I predict that this will get ugly fast.

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Rack&Roll said:

Whoops, a sentence or two into your scenario President Trump runs into these guys:

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