Pay attention. Venezuela is just a few steps ahead of us...Get Ready

From: Steven Kaplan Date: 8/19/2016 6:44:36 PM To: Gun Club dw.gun.club@gmail.com Subject: Fwd: Fw: Pay attention. Venezuela is just a few steps ahead of us...Get Ready   Venezuela crushes 2,000 guns in public, plans registry of bullets   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. Gangs often get weapons from the police, either by stealing them or buying them from corrupt officers, experts say. With inflation of 185 percent in 2015 and a currency collapse, police salaries have fallen far behind rising prices creating more incentives for corruption. 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. Other guns were crushed in truck-mounted presses. Some members of the public watched, although more danced to a nearby sound system playing salsa music. Venezuela has also bought laser technology to mark ammunition, Reverol said, in an attempt to keep a registry of the bullets given out to the South American nation's many state and municipal police forces. Experts say that much of the ammunition used in crimes in Venezuela is made at the country's government munitions factory and sold on by corrupt police. ============================================== Mexico has "restrictive" gun control — including comprehensive background checks — and a homicide rate over five times higher than the rate in the U.S. According to the University of Sydney's Gun Policy center, Mexico has "restrictive" gun controls. And while there is "a right to private gun ownership" in Mexico, it rests on a "conditional guarantee" that can be "limited by statute law." Such law means Mexican citizens are limited to owning rifles of .30 caliber and smaller, revolvers of .38 caliber and smaller, and semiautomatics of 9mm and smaller. There are also all-out bans on entire categories of firearms. Gun Policy reports: Civilians are not allowed to possess weapons of war, including automatic firearms, sub-machine guns, machine guns, .357 Magnum revolvers and those greater than .38 calibre, handguns greater than 9mm, rifles and carbines of .223, 7mm, 7.62 and .30 calibres, or shotguns with barrels shorter than 635mm or greater than 12 gauge. Moreover, CBS News reports that the background check process for guns that are legal in Mexico includes a requirement for six pieces of documentation: A birth certificate A letter confirming employment Proof of a clean criminal record from the attorney general's office in the applicant's home state A utility bill with current address A copy of a government-issued ID and A federal social security number. On top of this, Mexican citizens are limited to "one handgun for home protection, while members of hunting or shooting clubs can acquire up to nine rifles of no more than .30 caliber and shotguns up to 12 gauge." Much like the gun control experiment in Chicago has proven, the gun control schema in Mexico is correlating with rampant violent crime rather than a reduction in such crime. Forrest "Stupid is as Stupid does" Gump