As starving Venezuelans rush the Colombian border for food, hunt in the streets for cats and dogs, and break into zoos to kill horses for meat, the government continues its crackdown on dissent as socialism in the country fails. Not surprisingly, tyrannical President Nicolas Maduro has been blocking humanitarian aid from coming into the country for months and has been blaming his country's problems on the United States.
Now, police are crushing firearms in the name of crime reduction while also planning to set up an ammunition registry. From Reuters (bolding is mine):
Venezuelan police crushed and chopped up nearly 2,000 shotguns and pistols in a Caracas city square on Wednesday, as the new interior minister relaunched a long-stalled gun control campaign in one of the world's most crime-ridden countries.
Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said the event marked the renewal of efforts to disarm Venezuelans, through a combination of seizures and a voluntary program to swap guns for electrical goods.
Venezuela has the world's second highest murder rate and the street gangs that plague its poor neighborhoods have become increasingly heavily armed in recent years, at a time when a deep recession has reduced resources available to police.
President Nicolas Maduro promoted Reverol this month, days after the United States accused the former anti-drugs tsar of taking bribes from cocaine traffickers.
"We are going to bring disarmament and peace," Reverol told reporters, while police officers drilled and sawed at rusty shotguns, home made pistols and some newer weapons.
While the Venezuelan government and liberal western media will frame this move as an effort to reduce crime, it's about keeping the citizenry defenseless against the government in a time of complete societal breakdown.
The government has come for guns belonging to Venezuelans before in the name of "safety," coupled with promises of lower crime. Both lies. Over to you, Gabby Franco:
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