At the Hugo, Hugo Cabana
Maybe great minds think alike. What administration is supplying foreign drug cartels and gangs with guns while decrying legal gun ownership at home? Not the one you think. It’s Hugo Chavez’s.
Call it Operation Cheap and Nasty. Hugo Chavez is manufacturing of arms of foreign origin and design in Venezuela as this roundup of links and videos at Fausta’s Blog summarizes. Chavez is “bragging that [his ] gun factory’s now working at full capacity, producing a rifle named Catatumbo, and a ‘grenade, unique in the world,’ for the AK-103 automatic weapon, ‘produced with the help of the Russian government’”. There’s also stuff supplied by the Iranian government, notably an Iranian-designed surveillance drone which Chavez’s burgeoning arms industry is producing.
It’s not for use by Venezuelans to protect themselves. In fact, the BBC reports “Venezuela has brought a new gun law into effect which bans the commercial sale of firearms and ammunition. Until now, anyone with a gun permit could buy arms from a private company. Under the new law, only the army, police and certain groups like security companies will be able to buy arms from the state-owned weapons manufacturer and importer.”
So far so enlightened. The weapons will even be handed out to militias affiliated with Chavez to help them expropriate property from the one percenters of Venzuela. But there’s a dark side to it.
The Foreign Policy Research Institute thinks the weapons are also destined for drug cartels, terror groups and assorted bad guys in Latin America.
In a global triangulation that would excite any conspiracy buff, the globalization of terrorism now links Colombian FARC with Hezbollah, Iran with Russia, elected governments with violent insurgencies, uranium with AK-103s, and cocaine with oil. At the center of it all, is Latin America—especially the countries under the influence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
The most publicized (and publicly contested) connection between Hugo Chávez and the Colombian narcoterrorist organization Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was revealed after the March 2008 Colombian raid on the FARC camp in Devía, inside Ecuador, where a laptop was discovered that apparently belonged to Luis Edgar Devía Silva (aka, “Raúl Reyes”), head of FARC’s International Committee (COMINTER).
At this rate the drug cartels in Latin America will have connections not just to local politicians but to foreign powers.
Maybe Congressman Darrell Issa has got the wrong idea about Operation Fast and Furious, in which the Justice Department allegedly armed Mexican cartels. Suppose F&F wasn’t about a gun sale program gone wrong but one gone according to plan?
The authorities certainly need a new one. Decapitating cartel leadership isn’t working, and the drug war isn’t going anywhere. So perhaps the only thing left is to to take over the cartels or at least ‘engage’ with them and use them as proxy militias. The serious of the nexus between international politics and drug gangs arose in late 2011 when it was revealed that cartels were planning to attack US targets in Mexico with US supplied guns.
In October of 2008, Chicago-based drug trafficker Margarito “Twin” Flores was summoned to the Sinaloa Cartel’s mountaintop compound. The leaders of the Mexican narcotics syndicate were pissed. The brother of a top lieutenant had been arrested by the government and risked being extradited to the United States; the Sinaloans wanted to retaliate — in a massive and deadly way, and in the heart of Mexico City.
“Let it be a government building, it doesn’t matter whose. An embassy or a consulate, a media outlet or television station,” cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman said. Even the U.S. embassy might be fair game.
“Twin, you know guys [in the U.S. military] coming back from the war,” the lieutenant’s son, Jesus Vincente Zambada Niebla, told Flores. “Find somebody who can give you big powerful weapons, American shit. We don’t want Middle Eastern or Asian guns, we want big U.S. guns, or RPGs [rocket propelled grenades].”
Twin Flores was engaging in a foreign policy. What else would an attack on the US embassy with guns originating from US gun dealers have been. And what a message it would have sent. Why every newspaper in America would have been calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment. Maybe every drug gang is now looking for a patron — Russia, Iran come to mind — and there is now no option but for everyone to play in the same pool.
Belmont Commenters
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
ether we gonna have us a crises before the Election or it’s a mighty brew waiting on Mitt in his first 100 days… I still think 0bama and the Democrats are gonna pull it off! Ether a real squeaker or a comfortable percentage… 0bama gonna promises the Moon and then start making things happen via the “Executive Mandates” he was skirt’n the law with (and with no real opposition too it) not long a go…
w, please check that last sentence.
Maybe America is where the poor people from South America come and Carribean is where the rich people in North America go.
That’s Sir Allen Standford to all the rest of us peons. “A February 2009 Houston Chronicle article described Stanford as “the leading benefactor, promoter, employer and public persona” of Antigua and Barbuda. On November 1, 2006, Stanford was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II as Knight Commander of the Order of the Nation (KCN) of Antigua and Barbuda. Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, joined the then Governor-General of Antigua and Barbuda, Sir James Carlisle, to make this announcement during the Silver Jubilee Independence Day Celebration. Being knighted, Stanford used the awarded title “Sir Allen” often; he was also generally referred as such by Antiguans and internationally.”
He was so important to Antigua and Barbuda that Hugo Chavez provided emergency aid to those countries after Stanford was arrested.
To think that “Sir Allen Stanford’s” entire fortune was a scam. It was a swindle. The whole damn thing. I will remember to think on that the next time I’m at the grocery store counting out coins to see if I can make the Mars bar next to the cash register; meditate on it the next time I choose between the two or one dish lunch special at Ah Fong’s eatery in the neighborhood food court when I could be poolside somewhere in gentler climes, with a pair of Ray Ban Wayfarers and a drink with a flag in it my hand.
Can anyone tell me why we can kill Bin Laden in Pakistan but we don’t send Seal Teams into Mexico to do the same with Cartel bosses? If the ‘War on Drugs’ means anything at all, we should be. Isn’t poisoning Americans a form of chemical warfare? I would also hang smugglers on the spot and dump their bodies back over the border with “Return to Sender” stamped on their foreheads.
If these actions resulted in war I say it’s about time and the Mexican people would benefit from our taking out their trash. When we are done we can hold elections to let them decide if they want to become states, knowing the border would be closed to non-residents from that day forward. Illegal immigration problem solved.
W…
Stanford gave at the wrong office.
A&B are micro-time compared to the hustle in D.C.
I am currently reading James DeLong’s Renewing the American Republic. And he makes the point that the American War of Independence was as much about opposing corruption in the British administration (the mightiest empire in the world) as it was about freedom. Both the control of corruption and freedom depended crucially on establishing limited government.
What may have happened is that over the years, an American elite recreated the British empire domestically, and things are right back, in a manner of speaking, where they started. Perhaps Sir Stanford’s title is appropriate in a bitter and ironical sort of way. Anyway the current occupants of Washington from both parties don’t need titles from the crown, being well able all act like some kind of royalty on their own.
With the sunset of the age of piracy under sail and sugar-fueled parliamentarians hard astern, only the truly wealthy -and those who fleece them- can expect to strike it rich in the Caribbean. While I suppose financial pirates and drug-monied bureaucrats have taken their places in the histories of the Caribbean, most of the rest of us common folk are content to remain warm and well fed…If we can stay a couple strokes ahead of the frenzied sharks.
At least well-aged demon rum and imported American tobaccos are still plentiful and cheap, and that, along with the views, some trade winds, and good friends, is quite enough. But lordi I do cherish me some internet.
In any event, come what may, neither the honest enterprising man nor the staggering drunk (nor even the odd enterprising drunk) need ever freeze or starve unless they choose to fish big on the deep blue sea.
…And big fish Sir Stanford was a pretentious -if civic-minded- tw@ anyway…So sayeth the coconut telegraph.
;^)
The conspiracy theory in this one is that the House of Windsor is not nearly so powerless as the accepted perception leads us to believe. And we all work for the crown these many years later. Far fetched I know, but some guy from Mexia Texas being appointed as “Knight Commander” by Elizabeth II is more than a little conspicuous.
And we all work for the crown these many years later. Would that be the Crown Vic? Or do you mean we all work for the Clown?
How did Tony Randazzo put it?
…Or mayhaps we’ve all been press-ganged into working for an insane clown posse?
http://youtu.be/wKlpMxBX-jk
If I wasn’t using the phone to comment this would be another chance to trot out Il Magnifico from “Captain Horatio Hornblower” ranting and raving. The country is in the very best of hands.
w @ 6
Thomas B. Allen’s 2010 book “Tories” clearly establishes that, beyond the corruption of the British Empire, Loyalist leadership came almost entirely from Americans who had enjoyed past, or were seeking future, wealth through patronage of the Empire. Even many of the rank and file of Loyalist military units were motivated by the expectation that they would, upon British victory, receive land grants from estates confiscated from Rebels.
To make the contrast between Rebel and Loyalist sharper, see Breen’s “American Insurgents, American Patriots” for a documentation of the societal idealism that motivated many Rebels. The Americans who won independence were as clear-headed about human nature, and as pure themselves, as any population that ever existed. How far we have fallen.
At some point it does appear that we’re going to have to march south to fix what the spaniards f’d up back in the 16th century and seem unable to even recognize as a problem. Death to caudillos!
It’s actually the Pulitzer Prize-winning Foreign Policy Research Institute, or at least their members are anyway. Their conclusion says everything (the rest is drivel):
Is this the FPRI, or the Council on Foreign Relations? It’s all the same to an outsider like me… these are hacks who manufacture security crises and steal foreign nations to save babies or dolphins or whatever. They wear sinfully expensive outfits and pat themselves on the back at cocktail parties yearly (or more often) for having secured world peace by way of the “journalism” they practice. I’d die in a gulag, were it not for their brilliance.
Hopefully they will find SOMETHING for everyone to worry about soon. Brett, Hugo, and cannibals haven’t ruined my summer so far – and I don’t plan on letting them.
3. wretchard – I forgot about the Allen Stanford “tycoon” story… I meant to write something about him, but it’s almost easier to say everything is a scam and then pick out the occasional true story.
“Can anyone tell me why we can kill Bin Laden in Pakistan but we don’t send Seal Teams into Mexico to do the same with Cartel bosses?”
Cartel bosses are better protected. Osama was depending on stealth ( being hard to locate) for protection. Once located he didn’t have the dozens of gunmen standing watch. Cartel bosses would be ideal candidates for a drone campaign. Once we flee the ‘stan, the Paki drone campaign will wind down. I would rather they use them (drones) against the Cartels then Americans. They WILL be used. I expect the Mexican authorities to react the same as the Paki authorities. We will all learn how to say; “I’m shocked, shocked I say” in Mexican.
4. SpeakEasy: Can anyone tell me why we can kill Bin Laden in Pakistan but we don’t send Seal Teams into Mexico to do the same with Cartel bosses? If the ‘War on Drugs’ means anything at all, we should be. Isn’t poisoning Americans a form of chemical warfare?
Sure, and suicide is a form of murder. Kervorkian was an enemy of the state. Being rich is a form of theft and has led to our War on Poverty. Paying a woman for sex with no video camera in the hotel is illegal prostitution, but adding a camera to film porn is a form of protected free speech. Bloomberg has banned sodas over 16 ounces as part of our War on Obesity. The War on Drugs is like a war….on drugs. It doesn’t mean anything at all, because words no longer mean anything.
17. Teresita
4. SpeakEasy: Can anyone tell me why we can kill Bin Laden in Pakistan but we don’t send Seal Teams into Mexico to do the same with Cartel bosses? If the ‘War on Drugs’ means anything at all, we should be. Isn’t poisoning Americans a form of chemical warfare?
……………….
This is like asking why is it that we have troops all over central asia but we can’t have any troops on the border with Mexico.
Teresita,
You have a marvelous gift for satire!
As much as I like them, let’s put humor and snark aside for a moment: I think it’s high time we stopped declaring domestic ‘wars’ against ourselves and swore an oath to only fight real Wars against external forces. If foreign cartels want to stage attacks against US citizens, then, no matter the guise they adopt, we need to begin highlighting their activities to their host countries. And if those countries will not take steps to curb their activities, then we should take a page out of Bush’s WOT, and hold them responsible for their inaction.
Then, we’ll have have a template for both enforcing the War on foreign antagonists, and for highlighting those in country that are abetting the belligerents. Patriotism, and its inverse, Treason, may be old and crusty concepts to Americans, but it’s time we revived them.
Stopping the various ‘wars’ on our own citizens (which only divide the citizenry and dull its morale) and taking it instead ‘over there’ should resuscitate both.
CALVINISM IN AMERICA
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/calvinism-history/7.htm
Let it be especially remembered that the Puritans, who formed the great bulk of the settlers in New England, brought with them a Calvinistic Protestantism, that they were truly devoted to the doctrines of the great Reformers, that they had an aversion for formalism and oppression whether in the Church or in the State, and that in New England Calvinism remained the ruling theology throughout the entire Colonial period.
With this background we shall not be surprised to find that the Presbyterians took a very prominent part in the American Revolution. Our own historian Bancroft says: “The Revolution of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian measure. It was the natural outgrowth of the principles which the Presbyterianism of the Old World planted in her sons, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, the French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the Presbyterians of Ulster.” So intense, universal, and aggressive were the Presbyterians in their zeal for liberty that the war was spoken of in England as “The Presbyterian Rebellion.” An ardent colonial supporter of King George III wrote home: “I fix all the blame for these extraordinary proceedings upon the Presbyterians. They have been the chief and principal instruments in all these flaming measures. They always do and ever will act against government from that restless and turbulent anti-monarchial spirit which has always distinguished them everywhere.”2 When the news of “these extraordinary proceedings” reached England, Prime Minister Horace Walpole said in Parliament, “Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson” (John Witherspoon, president of Princeton, signer of Declaration of Independence).
History is eloquent in declaring that American democracy was born of Christianity and that that Christianity was Calvinism. The great Revolutionary conflict which resulted in the formation of the American nation, was carried out mainly by Calvinists, many of whom had been trained in the rigidly Presbyterian College at Princeton, and this nation is their gift to all liberty loving people.
J. R. Sizoo tells us: “When Cornwallis was driven back to ultimate retreat and surrender at Yorktown, all of the colonels of the Colonial Army but one were Presbyterian elders. More than one-half of all the soldiers and officers of the American Army during the Revolution were Presbyterians.”3
The testimony of Emilio Castelar, the famous Spanish statesman, orator and scholar, is interesting and valuable. Castelar had been professor of Philosophy in the University of Madrid before he entered politics, and he was made president of the republic which was set up by the Liberals in 1873. As a Roman Catholic he hated Calvin and Calvinism. Says he: “It was necessary for the republican movement that there should come a morality more austere than Luther’s, the morality of Calvin, and a Church more democratic than the German, the Church of Geneva. The Anglo-Saxon democracy has for its lineage a book of a primitive society — the Bible. It is the product of a severe theology learned by the few Christian fugitives in the gloomy cities of Holland and Switzerland, where the morose shade of Calvin still wanders . . . And it remains serenely in its grandeur, forming the most dignified, most moral and most enlightened portion of the human race.”4
Says Motley: “In England the seeds of liberty, wrapped up in Calvinism and hoarded through many trying years, were at last destined to float over land and sea, and to bear the largest harvests of temperate freedom for great commonwealths that were still unborn.5 “The Calvinists founded the commonwealths of England, of Holland, and America.” And again, “To Calvinists more than to any other class of men, the political liberties of England, Holland and America are due.”6
The testimony of another famous historian, the Frenchman Taine, who himself held no religious faith, is worthy of consideration. Concerning the Calvinists he said: “These men are the true heroes of England. They founded England, in spite of the corruption of the Stuarts, by the exercise of duty, by the practice of justice, by obstinate toil, by vindication of right, by resistance to oppression, by the conquest of liberty, by the repression of vice. They founded Scotland; they founded the United States; at this day they are, by their descendants, founding Australia and colonizing the world.”7
Steveaz, I ‘spicion that Johnson’s hyperbole – “The War on Poverty” – was merely one pebble in the avalanche of self-aggrandizement that has diluted our language to the prattle of a kidbit in didies. At the least, it’s had the effect of making all the lower echelons of the social workers feel themselves transformed into Glorious and Heroic Warriors in the conflict.
Kinda like the delusional mindset of the so-called journalists who have come of age since the pack-of-lies film about Watergate portrayed Carlstein and Bobward as risking their actual butts in challenging the White House.
As though journalists have been murdered in ton lots by Republicans merely for doing their drab little jobs…
Ya gotta laugh.
If our military was employed to combat the drug cartels, unless it was a quick, all-out war, the military would be corrupted, just as the mexican politicians and our own politicians are corrupted. This is the primary reason not to use the military for engaging in “political” activities like the drug business, which supports vast numbers of people and politicians.
I know a man who opened a jewelry store some years ago. One essential purchase was a safe – one specially designed to hold jewelry. Jewelry safes are rated in minutes: 20 minutes, 40 minutes, etc.. The rating refers to the time required for a safecracker to break into the safe. The somber assumption behind that system is the idea that you can’t stop a thief; you can only slow him down.
Maybe we should rate constitutions: 50 years, 100 years, 200 years. The U.S. constitution was designed to prevent any one man or group of men from acquiring dictatorial powers. Power-hungry men have been chafing under its restrictions and searching for ways to overthrow them ever since.
Sooner or later, the thieves will break through and steal, whether they are after diamonds or political power. I hope Americans as a people are still up to stopping them.
SpeakEasy (4),
Before we do that, shouldn’t we at least ring down the curtain on our own contribution to these follies?
War is a very slippery concept. No two wars are ever the same, yet they all have something in common. In politics war generally means an extraordinary amount of effort with an unusual level of violence. There are no formal metrics for ‘extraordinary’ or ‘unusual’. That means one person’s guess is as good as another.
I don’t consider drones to be war. More like assassination or terrorism.
As a nation gets older, richer, more civilized, it’s threshold of what is war and what isn’t gets higher.
‘Peanut’ Carter didn’t think the seizure of the US Embassy was worth declaring war over. Any POTUS before him would have. Has to be the biggest foreign policy mistake in American history.
While military solutions don’t apply to all problems, They are the best solution for problems of despotism. Turn the despot into ground meat and splintered bone and he’s not a problem any more.
8. Gaffe Prices
The conspiracy theory in this one is that the House of Windsor is not nearly so powerless as the accepted perception leads us to believe. And we all work for the crown these many years later. Far fetched I know, but some guy from Mexia Texas being appointed as “Knight Commander” by Elizabeth II is more than a little conspicuous.
Tiny little Mexia, Texas seems to be punching above its weight with regard to producing conspicuously spectacular but dubious public figures. It’s also the home town of the late Anna Nichole Smith.
The House of Windsor may have money but the Queen and her family are powerless. They are merely a tourist attraction. Elizabeth is a fluke. A Windsor with a brain.
The remarkable theme here is that the two great evils of concern, the tyranny of pharmaceutical oppression and the creeping cancer of progressive or liberal addiction, find it useful to arm other sources of human destruction to further their purposes.
They are not content to deceive it pursuit of their goals. That deception corrupts the volition of mankind, whether it is the act of voting or expression of religious faith.
Case in point, the recent poll indicating the long lasting effectiveness of the public lie campaign that bombarded the public for 3 years, it’s all Bush’s fault.
Wow, he must have superhuman capabilities. What dangerous actions did he wrought on the anvil of governance that punctured the entire ecomony?
Specifically what law did he (opposed to the legislature) initiate that cause the economic calamity. We must necessarily have repealed that law. Well, which one did the current administration repeal, while holding majorities in both houses of congress?
The answer, remarkably, is that we have repealed none. No action Bush took has been reversed, not even the prescription drug benefit.
So Bush did all of this, without creating one law that required annulment. Powerful indeed was that man.
27. tdiinva The House of Windsor may have money but the Queen and her family are powerless. They are merely a tourist attraction. Elizabeth is a fluke. A Windsor with a brain.
Anglicans, Charles is going to be head of your church? Really?
–
The IRS consumed $881 million just to implement changes from ObamaCare.
54% of bachelor’s degree-holders under 25 jobless or underemployed, highest share in decades.
Newlywed Marine becomes 2000th American to die in Afghanistan. RIP Taylor J. Baune
“Executive Mandates” List is starting to come out! Amnesty for illegal’s, catch and release of illegal’s… 0bama just now starting to show how he will win his way to term 2. (will it stop there or will our first Black Prez be are next 3rd termer…?)
tdiinva @ 27 – Where do you come from? Maybe you remember grandparents, or possibly, even earlier progenitors.
The royals are much more than a tourist attraction. We know this because even the locals attend (regardez). The are the living testament of how the ‘english’ came to be the people they are now.
I hope that my time was not wasted doing genealogical research for the benefit of my young daughter. I hope that it will give her a sense of the long line of descension that has resulted in her presence. No, there is scant connection to royalty. Perhaps a third son or daughter here and there, wanting of title and fortune.
That doesn’t matter. Only that she is descended from people who contended, fought, and strived to survive, to provide their progeny with the blessings of liberty and labor.
Can anyone tell me why we can kill Bin Laden in Pakistan but we don’t send Seal Teams into Mexico to do the same with Cartel bosses?
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because something like a million America citizens live there in retirement? So far they’ve been off-limits to cartel violence by tacit agreement among those groups.
6. Wretchard.
Thank you for that illuminating comment. The American War of Independence (to distinguish it from the dreary pattern that “revolutions” took after that event), was the rebellion of a disciplined, prosperous people. They were not desperate sans-cullottes envious of the wealth of their “betters,” but a people who wanted to preserve and protect what they had wrought on the new continent. The “progressive” narrative of American history is offended by the attitudes and assumptions of the founders, and prefers the European model of struggle. Many of us Americans who “get” the original intent are made to feel like strangers in our own land.
“I choose between the two or one dish lunch special at Ah Fong’s eatery in the neighborhood food court”
You are fortunate Mr. Fernandez. We used to have such a place a block from where I work, where you payed the counter person 6 dollars, said “white rice” or “fried rice” and you pointed to select two kinds of dishes to fill a clamshell box, which you picked up upon leaving the business.
The University of Wisconsin tore the place down for its “Discovery Center.” When the aging woman who ran that Asian food place notified patrons of her eviction from the building about to be knocked down, she kept a brave face but it seemed she was choking back tears . . .
Well I guess I have my answer if the comments here are indicative of America at large.
Excuses. Excuses. Excuses.
So the poisoning of America and dilution of lawfulness will continue unabated.
Got it.
e @ 28: So Bush did all of this, without creating one law that required annulment. Powerful indeed was that man.
Obviously he was misunderestimated.
But remember, he had Cheney, too, and Cheney had a shotgun.
144 more days. I think. I had to take off my shoes to count them up and you know how us southern boys get when the shoes come off. That is why we try to avoid counting.
Josh, the joke among the Secret Service close escort squad ( the guys that ride ON the limo and run alongside) was to call “Shotgun” and have one of the others say; “No, Cheney rides there”. I heard a story that Cheney got 3 shotguns that following Christmas. One of them had been put in a pipe bender and the barrel was a gentle curve to about 40 degrees.
I find locker room humor among the high and mighty reassuring. It’s the ones like the Obumbler that take themselves seriously that put the skeer in me.
Say, I have an idea. How about if Americans stop using drugs? Then the cartels wouldn’t have about 9 billion dollars in profit a year. Or maybe stop selling marijuana through “medical” marijuana stores. Or just legalize it, and let Americans be more stoned than they are already.
And how do all those drugs get across the border anyway? American customs enforcement would never be involved in that either by intent or incompetence, would they?
The cartels exist because Americans can’t get enough of their product. The gun smuggling exists because the Mexican government tries to stop them, and the result is “war”. Once the stuff gets across the border, what does the USA do except inhale?
“Venezuela has brought a new gun law into effect which bans the commercial sale of firearms and ammunition. Until now, anyone with a gun permit could buy arms from a private company. Under the new law, only the army, police and certain groups like security companies will be able to buy arms from the state-owned weapons manufacturer and importer.”
During a visit to Caracas, Venezuela in 1999, a colleague took me to a local nightclub. Just inside the front door, where most similar US establishments would locate a coat check/closet, was a gun check. Hanging on the wall were literally dozens of handguns, each with an attached nametag! Between the “coat/gun check” area and the bar area was your standard metal detector gate, through which every entrant to the bar had to walk. My local colleague, a member via marriage of the very wealthy (and powerful) Cisneros family, informed me that this was standard fare for nightclubs in Caracas. I assume he was being truthful, as I did not have the opportunity to visit any other/similar establishments during that visit.
This was a few months prior to Chavez’s ascension to office. Does anyone think the number of weapons in the “checkin” areas has increased or decreased subsequently? Does anyone think the locals will disarm voluntarily? Does anyone think that “news” of Chavez’s gun law was for consumption by anyone other than the fools at the BBC, NY Times, and other progressive propaganda outlets and their consumers?
Good insight, Wretchard. I have never convinced that F&F was about discrediting the 2nd amendment.
Do the Cartels purchase the teleprompter or vice-versa? Which has more free cash?