This one should be obvious to anyone paying attention, but somehow it never gets said plainly enough, so let me be plain.
Every authoritarian government in modern history disarmed its civilian population before it consolidated power. Every single one. This is not a right-wing talking point. It is a pattern so consistent that a high school student doing a history project would spot it by lunchtime — assuming the teacher had not been told to skip that part of the lesson.
After 1979, Iran moved quickly. Deliberately. Systematically. Civilian firearm ownership was restricted, then effectively eliminated for ordinary citizens outside of regime-approved contexts. Today Iran has roughly 7 firearms per 100 civilians. The government does not view an unarmed population as a safety measure. They view it as a PREREQUISITE for everything else on this list. Because it is.
Venezuela. Hugo Chavez passed Venezuela’s gun ban in 2012. Disarmament was framed as a public safety measure, because it is always framed as a public safety measure. In the years that followed, Venezuela’s homicide rate did not drop — it climbed to among the highest on earth. The guns did not disappear. They just moved from law-abiding citizens to regime loyalists and criminal networks the regime found useful. The people who could have resisted were left with nothing.
Cuba, 1959. One of Castro’s first acts. Confiscation. Registration. Then confiscation of the registered ones. Same script, different decade.
China. The Soviet Union. North Korea. Every regime that dismantled what their predecessors built did the same thing first, and they all used the same language to do it — safety, common sense, nobody needs a weapon of war.
Thank you so much Moose. You bring the receipts on all of that. I love it. I posted that on X. I don't have a large following there, because I am not a paid X person, but people need to know from history.
Those who do not know history will tend to repeat it. It's true.
From the article: TAKE THE GUNS FIRST
This one should be obvious to anyone paying attention, but somehow it never gets said plainly enough, so let me be plain.
Every authoritarian government in modern history disarmed its civilian population before it consolidated power. Every single one. This is not a right-wing talking point. It is a pattern so consistent that a high school student doing a history project would spot it by lunchtime — assuming the teacher had not been told to skip that part of the lesson.
After 1979, Iran moved quickly. Deliberately. Systematically. Civilian firearm ownership was restricted, then effectively eliminated for ordinary citizens outside of regime-approved contexts. Today Iran has roughly 7 firearms per 100 civilians. The government does not view an unarmed population as a safety measure. They view it as a PREREQUISITE for everything else on this list. Because it is.
Venezuela. Hugo Chavez passed Venezuela’s gun ban in 2012. Disarmament was framed as a public safety measure, because it is always framed as a public safety measure. In the years that followed, Venezuela’s homicide rate did not drop — it climbed to among the highest on earth. The guns did not disappear. They just moved from law-abiding citizens to regime loyalists and criminal networks the regime found useful. The people who could have resisted were left with nothing. Cuba, 1959. One of Castro’s first acts. Confiscation. Registration. Then confiscation of the registered ones. Same script, different decade.
China. The Soviet Union. North Korea. Every regime that dismantled what their predecessors built did the same thing first, and they all used the same language to do it — safety, common sense, nobody needs a weapon of war.
https://joehoft.com/analysis-reason-democrats-only-democrats-side-iran/
Thank you so much Moose. You bring the receipts on all of that. I love it. I posted that on X. I don't have a large following there, because I am not a paid X person, but people need to know from history.
Those who do not know history will tend to repeat it. It's true.