[FOX] CUCUTA, Venezuela/Colombia border ‐ As Venezuela continues to crumble under the socialist dictatorship of President Nicolas Maduro, some are expressing words of warning ‐ and resentment ‐ against a six-year-old gun control bill that stripped citizens of their weapons."Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight," Javier Vanegas, 28, a Venezuelan teacher of English now exiled in Ecuador, told Fox News. "The government security forces, at the beginning of this debacle, knew they had no real opposition to their force. Once things were this bad, it was a clear declaration of war against an unarmed population."
Under the direction of then-President Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan National Assembly in 2012 enacted the "Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law," with the explicit aim to "disarm all citizens." The law took effect in 2013, with only minimal pushback from some pro-democracy opposition figures, banned the legal commercial sale of guns and munitions to all - except government entities.
Chavez initially ran a months-long amnesty program encouraging Venezuelans to trade their arms for electrical goods. That year, there were only 37 recorded voluntary gun surrenders, while the majority of seizures - more than 12,500 ‐ were by force.
In 2014, with Nicolás Maduro at the helm following Chavez’s death but carrying through his socialist "Chavista" policies, the government invested more than $47 million enforcing the gun ban ‐ which has since included grandiose displays of public weapons demolitions in the town square.
A former gun store owner inside Venezuela ‐ who told Fox News he has now been relegated to only selling fishing supplies since the ban ‐ said he can’t sell any type of weaponry - even a slingshot - and underscored that even BB ammunition and airsoft guns are only issued to police and military officers.
The punishment for illicit carrying or selling a weapon now is 20 years behind bars.