Venezuela Bans Private Gun Ownership

June 1, 2012

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.

The ban is the latest attempt by the government to improve security and cut crime ahead of elections in October.

Venezuela saw more than 18,000 murders last year and the capital, Caracas, is thought to be one of the most dangerous cities in Latin America.

The government has been running a gun amnesty in the run-up to the introduction of the new law to try to encourage people to give up their illegal arms without fear of consequences.

One member of the public in Caracas told the BBC: "They're killing people every day. This law is important but they need to do more, they're not doing enough now."

Hugo Chavez's government says the ultimate aim is to disarm all civilians, but his opponents say the police and government may not have the capacity or the will to enforce the new law.

Criminal violence is set to be a major issue in presidential elections later in the year.

Campaign group The Venezuela Violence Observatory said last year that violence has risen steadily since Mr Chavez took office in 1999.

Several Latin American countries have murder rates far higher than the global average of 6.9 murders per 100,000 people.

According to a recent United Nations report, South America, Central America and the Caribbean have the highest rates of murder by firearms in the world.

It found that over 70% of all homicides in South America are as a results of guns - in Western Europe, the figure was closer to 25%.

Analysis

Sarah Grainger BBC News, Caracas

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Besides the health of President Chavez, security is the main concern for voters ahead of presidential elections in October.

While voters don't seem to hold Mr Chavez responsible for the insecurity, the situation has worsened throughout his 13 years in office.

The government's most recent statistics put the murder rate at around 48 per 100,000, although some non-governmental organisations estimate it's much higher - 60 per 100,000 in 2011, one of the highest rates in the world.

Critics say the new gun laws and other recently announced measures, like a victim's compensation fund, are just the latest in a long line of failed attempts to bolster security.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18288430

A Safer Society with Guns (a tale of two Colorado universities)

Mar 21, 2012 - Jeff Jacoby

THE COLORADO SUPREME COURT put some noses out of joint when it ruled unanimously this month that the University of Colorado's campus gun ban violated a 2003 state law that entitles residents with permits to carry concealed weapons.

One of those noses belonged to Abraham Nowels, a University of Colorado student who wrote to the Denver Post: "We're in the middle of midterms right now, and I can't think of anything I'd rather be focusing on than which of my fellow over-stressed, binge-drinking peers is carrying a concealed weapon into class with me." The Post agreed, pleading in an editorial for "legislators with enough gumption" to change the state's concealed-carry law and "give colleges the power they need to keep students safe."

To those with an emotional bias against guns, it goes without saying that more guns in private hands invariably mean more crime and violence. If the number of people carrying firearms on campus rises, then of course that campus is less safe: What could be more obvious?

But it isn't obvious at all.

While the University of Colorado spent much of the past decade resisting the state's concealed-carry law, Colorado State University complied with it. If the gun controllers are right, Colorado State should have seen a surge in crime, while its gun-banning sister institution should have been an Eden of security and lawfulness. That's not what happened. As Clayton E. Cramer and David Burnett write in a new monograph for the Cato Institute, "crime at the University of Colorado has risen 35 percent since 2004, while crime at Colorado State University has dropped 60 percent in the same time frame."

Something similar happened after the US Supreme Court's 2008 Heller decision striking down the longstanding gun ban in Washington, DC. The city's mayor predicted in dismay that "more handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence," yet crime in the nation's capital plunged. Murder nose-dived to its lowest rate in half a century, falling from 186 in 2008 to 144 in 2009 to 132 in 2010 to 108 in 2011 -- a far greater decline, as economist John Lott points out, than in the rest of the country, or in cities of comparable size.

To be sure, correlation doesn't prove causation. But the experience of Colorado and DC should come as no surprise. There is by now so much evidence that higher rates of gun ownership lead to lower rates of crime that it isn't hard to fathom why fewer and fewer Americans want to ban handguns.ording to Gallup, just 26 percent of the public now thinks the private possession of handguns should be illegal -- down from 60 percent half a century ago. Roughly 1 of every 4 Americans reports keeping a gun to protect themselves or their homes. Having a gun makes many people -- for good reason -- feel safer.

How often firearms are used defensively is a much-debated question in American criminology. Respected studies over the years have come up with estimates that range widely, from more than 100,000 defensive gun uses annually to as many as 2.5 million. Whatever the number is, it clearly isn't trivial. An enormous amount of death, bloodshed, and suffering is prevented in this country by ordinary citizens with firearms.

That doesn't mean terrible things can't sometimes happen when a gun is used for protection. Trayvon Martin, an Orlando teen, was shot dead last month by a Florida man who claims he was acting in self-defense. Yet the teen carried nothing more deadly than a bag of candy, and police told the gunman -- a Neighborhood Watch patrol member -- not to follow him.

Such tragic tales inevitably draw the spotlight. Far more common, but far less likely to be played up, are cases where guns are used to scare off, resist, or thwart a genuinely dangerous criminal. For their Cato paper, Cramer and Burnett assembled nearly 5,000 news stories reported by the media between 2003 and 2011. Their catalogue includes instances of armed customers preventing a store from being robbed, of victims fighting off would-be rapists, of senior citizens defending against a home invader, of attempted carjackings foiled because the driver had a gun -- even of self-defense against deadly animals.

Of course, most defensive gun uses never make the news at all. As Cramer and Burnett observe, "Man Scares Away Burglar, No Shots Fired," is not a very compelling headline.

But with or without headlines, millions of Americans grasp instinctively that guns make us safer. For when honest citizens carry weapons, criminals are less likely to attack -- and those who do are more likely to fail.