Handgun owners carrying daily in US doubled in 4 years; self-protection cited as main reason: study.
Twice the number of Americans were carrying handguns daily in 2019 compared to 2015, according to a new study published this month.
Around 6,000 gun owners carried handguns every day in 2019, up from 3,000 in 2015, according to a study from the American Journal of Public Health published on Nov. 16.
The number of respondents to the online survey who said they had carried a gun in the last month also nearly doubled from 9 million to 16 million in 2015.
The study focuses
solely on owners carrying a handgun on their person, not in their car.
Twice the number of Americans were carrying handguns daily in 2019 compared to 2015, according to a new study published this month.
The upward trend found in the study comes as states loosen restrictions for carrying a handgun and more gun owners cite protection as a top concern.
A U.S. Supreme Court case last June also overturned strict gun carrying laws in New York.
The authors wrote, “This ruling could further catalyze the loosening of firearm-carrying regulations in different parts of the country at a time when, as our study indicates, trends in handgun carrying already point to more US adults carrying loaded handguns in public places, including without a permit when a permit is required.”
The study authors said a June U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning restrictive gun-carrying laws in New York could “catalyze the loosening of firearm-carrying regulations in different parts of the country.”
The study’s lead authors were Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, an epidemiology professor at the University of Washington; Amy Gallagher of the University of Washington; Deborah Azrael of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center; and Matthew Miller from Northeastern University, and the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.
The authors added, “Little is known about the frequency and features of firearm carrying among adult handgun owners in the United States. In fact, over the past 30 years, only a few peer-reviewed national surveys, conducted in 1994, 1995, 1996, and 2015, have provided even the most basic information about firearm carrying frequency.”
In 1994, the percentage of gun owners who said their main reason for having a firearm was protection was 46%, by 2015 it went up to 64% and spiked to 73% by 2019. In 2021, it was 83%.
Only one state allowed permit less handgun carry in 1990 but by 2021 it had increased to 21 states, according to the study.
Did conservatives who were banned from Twitter ever burn down building or even threaten to do so? https://t.co/ciGNvLPWUQ
— John R Lott Jr. (@JohnRLottJr) November 27, 2022
Skynet smiles
Dystopia Arrives in San Francisco: Authorities Introduce Policy Granting Robots a License to Kill.
In this episode of Dystopian Moments on the Left…
While I hesitate to make comparisons to George Orwell’s dystopian account of a future totalitarian state in the classic “1984” while writing about the crazy goings on in today’s America, what term is better suited when dystopia finally arrives? That is if you consider killer robots taking out human beings in the streets.
The San Francisco Police Department has submitted a proposal to city officials, which is likely to be approved on November 29, that would give robots the license to use deadly force against suspects who threaten the lives of citizens or police officers — with military-style weapons, no less.
Look, I’m all in on the notion that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, but — and maybe it’s just me — robots armed with military-style weapons killing human beings sounds a bit creepy and, well, Orwellian. Nonetheless, as reported by Mission Local, the draft policy reads:
Robots will only be used as a deadly force option when the risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD.
San Francisco’s rules committee unanimously approved a version of the draft last week, which will face the Board of Supervisors on November 29th, where it’s likely to sail through. The Board will also be required to sign off on the purchase of any new military-style equipment, but the police will be able to replace existing equipment up to a value of $10 million without approval.
Tifanei Moyer, senior staff attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, wrote in an email, as noted by Mission Local, that the policy isn’t standard and that legal professionals and citizens should reject the idea.
We are living in a dystopian future, where we debate whether the police may use robots to execute citizens without a trial, jury, or judge. This is not normal. No legal professional or ordinary resident should carry on as if it is normal.
That’s a bit nonsensical in my book, given that an officer in the same situation, as outlined earlier, would make the same deadly force decision — or would he or she? Jennifer Tu, a fellow with the American Friends Service Committee, appears to disagree:
There is a really big difference between hurting someone right in front of you, and hurting someone via a video screen.
The SFPD has 17 robots in its arsenal, 12 of which are fully functional. According to police spokesperson Officer Robert Rueca, they have never been used to attack anyone. That appears about to change. If the policy is approved as expected, it will just be a matter of time before a robot takes out a suspect.
Hell, let’s extrapolate. How long will it be before deadly robots patrol the crime-infested streets of cities across America? If it someday happens, would that be a good thing or bad? Questions abound.
On November 29, San Francisco and its citizenry will likely take a giant step forward — or would that be backward? All the way to George Orwell’s 1984.
It’s only bizarre until you remember the Chinese media is nothing more than the propaganda organ of the Chinese commie goobermint, just like Tass and Pravda for the commie Russians.
Chinese media makes bizarre claim about guns
The Chinese media has, in recent years, opined plenty about the right to keep and bear arms.
Well, they have and they haven’t.
You see, they talk about guns and gun control, but they don’t acknowledge the right to own guns. A prime example is this editorial from China Daily.
A shooting at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, in the United States late on Tuesday left at least six people dead and some injured, three days after a shooting at a Colorado nightclub left five people dead and 25 injured. The number of mass gun killings in the US has now exceeded 600 for the third year in a row.
Gun violence was a major issue during the recent midterm elections in the US. US President Joe Biden said that gun violence must be tackled, but repeated shootings indicate that the problem is only getting worse.
It is not surprising that deaths from gun violence in the US are far higher than in any other developed country, given that with just 4.2 percent of the world’s population, the country has 46 percent of the world’s civilian guns.
Now, from this, it could appear as if this were just any other editorial from any American city. Guns are bad and shootings are happening and gun control is the only answer, blah blah blah.
But it’s how this wraps up that is telling.
The long-standing gun violence in the US is rooted in its “gun culture”, which came after the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, adopted in 1791, was judged to protect the right of citizens to own arms.
Given that the right to life is the most important human right, whether the US can effectively curb gun violence should be an important yardstick for the international community to measure its human rights.
What we’re seeing here is the communist party there using the Chinese media to try and deflect from their many human rights abuses by claiming America is a human rights abuser.
The problem is that this misrepresents a great deal.
You see, if the United States government was killing people, then maybe China would have a point–and remember, there is no independent media there. It’s all government-run–but that’s not what’s happening. These are private individuals killing private individuals. The government is no more responsible for its actions than any other nation is for the individual actions of its citizens.
The Chinese media here is trying to present our violent crime issue as if it somehow should absolve others of their government-driven abuses.
I’m sorry, but I’m not interested in being lectured by a government that has literal concentration camps that they have herded a minority population into.
Yes, individual Americans are killing other individual Americans, but the Chinese media has no place to criticize anyone when they’re the mouthpiece for a nation that believes in the forced sterilization of so-called undesirables.
Our right to keep and bear arms is a right. It’s anything but a human rights abuse.
While we all agree that something needs to be done about mass shootings, we don’t need to take China’s advice or anything said by the Chinese media. Especially since even the authoritarian controls there can’t stop violent crime.
Instead of Asking How to Stop Mass Shootings, Left Targets Social Conservatives
This week, another evil mass shooter unleashed horror at a gay club in Colorado Springs, killing five and wounding another 25. The shooter—whose name I refuse to mention in order to disincentivize future shooters, who seek notoriety—was clearly mentally ill: Just last year, he reportedly threatened his mother with a bomb, resulting in his arrest.
Yet Colorado’s red flag law, which could have deprived the shooter of legal access to weaponry, was not invoked by either police or relatives. The Colorado Springs massacre, then, is yet another example of a perpetrator with more red flags than a bullfighting convention, and no one in authority willing to take action to do anything about him.
Yet the national conversation, as it so often does, now has been directed away from the question at hand—how to prevent mass shootings—and toward broader politics. Instead of seeking methodologies that might be effective in finding and stopping deranged individuals seeking murder without curbing rights and liberties for hundreds of millions of people, our political and media leaders have decided to blame Americans who oppose same-sex marriage, drag queen story hour, and “family friendly” drag shows. Disagreement with the radical leftist social agenda amounts to incitement to violence, they argue.
Thus, NBC News senior reporter Brandy Zadrozny said, “There is a pipeline. It starts from some smaller accounts online like Libs of Tiktok, it moves to the right-wing blogosphere, and then it ends up on Tucker Carlson or ends up out of a right-wing politician’s mouth, and it is a really dangerous cycle that does have real-world consequences.”
Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times wrote that “it seems hard to separate [these murders] from a nationwide campaign of anti-LGBTQ incitement. … They’ve been screaming that drag events … are part of a monstrous plot to prey on children. They don’t get to duck responsibility if a sick man with a gun took them seriously.”
Brian Broome wrote in The Washington Post that the shooting could not be “blamed on mental illness.” No, he stated, “It’s right-wing rhetoric that sparks these nightmares. … The bottomless list of homophobes and transphobes on the right don’t need to throw the rock and then hide their hands. Instead, they use someone else’s hands entirely.”
The Left’s attempt to lay responsibility for violence at the feet of anyone who opposes the transgressive social agenda doesn’t stop with blame—it extends to calls for full-scale censorship.
“We’re living in an environment that’s driven by two things,” averred Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. “Politicians who are using us to bolster their careers by creating division and hate, and number two is social media platforms that are monetizing hate, and especially against marginalized communities. They’re—they’re choosing profits over hate, and it’s killing, literally killing our community.”
Social media, the logic goes, ought to shut down or demonetize any video disagreeing with the GLAAD agenda.
This is cynical politics at its worst. It’s also nothing new. The Left routinely cites violent incidents as reason to crack down on free speech with which they disagree.
As the inimitably imbecilic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-Instagram, tweeted: “After Trump elevated anti-immigrant & anti-Latino rhetoric, we had the deadliest anti-Latino shooting in modern history. After anti-Asian hate w/ COVID, Atlanta. Tree of Life. Emanuel AME. Buffalo. And now after an anti-LGBT+ campaign, Colorado Springs. Connect the dots, @GOP.”
Yes, according to AOC, virtually every major mass shooting of the past seven years is the result of her political opponents—none of whom has called for violence. But in the world of the Left, disagreement is violence merely waiting to be unleashed. Which is why censorship, they believe, is the only way to achieve a more peaceful world.
BLUF
Biden may have directly named Elon Musk at that press conference, but his threat was aimed at every household in America.
Biden’s not-so-subtle lurch toward dictatorship
In the wake of the midterm elections, President Joe Biden was asked during a rare press conference, in reference to Twitter’s new owner, whether he thought Elon Musk was a threat to national security. With a pause and a smirk, the president said that topic was “ worthy of being looked at. ”
With those words, Biden made it clear that if you even seem to oppose his politics, your private life will be under the direct scrutiny of the state. Despite his constant prattle about saving our democracy, Biden seems to think he’s running an authoritarian police state.
In truth, the federal government already maintains entities that review acquisitions such as Musk’s for anything from foreign influence to anti-competitive business practices. After many months in which Musk’s negotiations to purchase Twitter happened in full public view, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last week that she sees no basis for the government to investigate that purchase.
Despite Musk’s having followed the law, Biden, on a whim, wants to change the game. Suddenly, and after years of Twitter and other social media having significant foreign investors, a normal and transparent voluntary transaction is a potential “threat to national security.”
Biden signaled his desire to strip off the veneer of the rule of law and use the power of the presidency as a dictator would—by his whim and without respect for the rules that everyone else must abide by.
The Pentagon is moving ahead with new military jetpack prototypes
The Defense Department’s chief tech visionaries are once again attempting to make the U.S. military’s dream of jetpack-equipped infantry troops a reality through a pair of fresh contracts, Task & Purpose has learned.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has selected “several” small companies to receive Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding awards “to build flight test prototypes” for the agency’s Portable Personal Air Mobility System program, a DARPA spokesman said.
Details regarding the contracts were not immediately available, but Phase II SBIR program funding “generally” consists of $750,000 for two years, according to information on the program’s website.
“DARPA is currently working with the small companies to finalize contracting details and award contracts, so at this time we can’t discuss the specifics,” the DARPA spokesman said.
DARPA officially announced in March 2021 that the agency’s small business programs office was looking for proposals “for cost of up to $225,000 for a 6-month period of performance” regarding the “feasibility” of the Portable Personal Air Mobility System that could reach ranges of “at least” 5 kilometers on the battlefield for a single operator.
“Some examples of technologies of interest include jetpacks, powered glides, powered swimsuits, and powered parafoils which could leverage emerging electric propulsion technologies, hydrogen fuel cells or conventional heavy propulsion systems,” DARPA wrote in its initial notice.
Prospective platforms “could serve a variety of military missions, enabling cost-effective mission utility and agility in areas such as personnel logistics, urban augmented combat, [combat search and rescue], Maritime interdiction and SOF Infil/Exfil,” DARPA wrote. “Systems may be air deployed to allow for Infil to hostile territory, or ground deployed to allow for greater off-road mobility without the use of existing Vertical Takeoff & Landing aircraft such as helicopters and CV-22 [Osprey tiltrotor aircraft].”
An in depth and surprisingly ‘even handed’ look at the new Oregon gun control law.
Can the lawsuit trying to block Oregon’s new gun laws actually succeed?
PORTLAND, Ore. (KGW) — While votes were still being counted after Election Day this month — and well beyond — the fact that gun control initiative Measure 114 was projected to narrowly pass proved enough for some of Oregon’s arcane administrative mechanics to begin churning.
According to the Secretary of State’s office, laws passed via initiative petition like this one go into effect precisely one month after the election: midnight on Thursday, Dec. 8. Even the authors of Measure 114 said that they thought it would become effective a month after the vote was certified.
When and if Measure 114 becomes law in its current form, it would require a permit in order to buy a gun. Buyers would have to get a permit that’s expected to cost around $65 and complete an approved firearms safety course, which would also likely come at a cost. The permits also require submission of a photo ID, fingerprinting and a criminal background check.
Permit applications would be handled by the local police department or county sheriff’s office, and Oregon State Police would handle background checks — which they already do for firearms purchases. All of that information would then go into a database.
Measure 114 also bans the sale of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.
Immediately after the measure passed, a few Oregon sheriffs released statements about their feelings on the matter. Most were critical of the measure, but a few took that a step further and said that they refused to enforce certain aspects of it — also expressing hopes that a lawsuit would block the law before it could go into effect.
The short timeline between Election Day and the Dec. 8 effective date meant that an inevitable legal challenge to Measure 114 would need to coalesce quickly. And it did, less than two weeks after the election.
On Friday, a Marion County gun store owner, the Sherman County Sheriff and a group called the Oregon Firearms Federation filed a lawsuit. It argues that the new law violates the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, taking special aim at the magazine capacity portion of the law.
He used that ‘no redeeming social value‘ line because he believes it has some magical power over the courts. Where his senile brain got it was when SCOTUS in Memoirs v. Massachusetts required that to prove obscenity it must be affirmatively established that the material is “utterly without redeeming social value”
Biden Protected by Very Guns He Says Have ‘No Redeeming Value’
President Joe Biden is protected by semiautomatic firearms yet told reporters Thanksgiving morning that he cannot understand how sales of semiautomatic guns continue, as they have “no social redeeming value.”
Biden said, “The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It has no social redeeming value.”
Ironically, Biden is protected by semiautomatic handguns. The U.S Secret Service transitioned from Glock handguns to Sig Sauer pistols recently, and both Glock and Sig are semiautomatic pistols.
(Can you even imagine a world in which Secret Service agents are standing around with six-shot revolvers in their holsters?)
After criticizing semiautomatics, Biden pledged anew on Thanksgiving to ban “assault weapons.”
Ironically, again, Biden is protected by “assault weapons.”
Breitbart News reported that Biden was given a Secret Service detail during the 2020 presidential campaign and from that time till now, agents are around him 24/7 to keep him safe.
A source told Breitbart News such a detail meant Biden would be protected with semiautomatic pistols and rifles — perhaps ARs and/or Sig Sauer MCX platform firearms. There was also the strong possibility of fully automatic firearms being part of the equation. The latter category of firearms consists of submachine guns, such as the H&K MP5. (An MP5 is a true “assault weapon.”)
Biden’s agents rely on semiautomatic platform firearms to protect him from bad guys, yet Biden criticizes such guns being for sale for average citizens who need to protect their own lives everyday. The key phrase: “No social redeeming value.”
Walmart murderer's "manifesto." I am unsure that I would call this a “manifesto,” more like a suicide note. pic.twitter.com/mmdhQHJJlj
— John R Lott Jr. (@JohnRLottJr) November 25, 2022
‘Roadmap’ Latest ‘Commonsense’ Ploy to Advance Citizen Disarmament
U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- The 97percent “gun safety” organization purports to have a plan to reduce “gun violence” that can bring people on both sides of the issue together. In Part One, AmmoLand looked at a so-called “Policy Roadmap” put out by the group and examined its three “core principles.” In Part Two we examined the four policies we’re told promise to dramatically reduce gun-related homicides and suicides.
Of course, it will do none of that, but instead is just a “new” tactic to recycle to make old citizen disarmament ideas palatable to a critical mass of low-information Americans amenable to being manipulated by well-funded “gun safety” snake oil salesmen.
What makes 97percent’s “roadmap” all the more insidious is that the organization is (at times) successfully employing a “divide and conquer” strategy by claiming to represent both “responsible” gun owners (as if opponents are irresponsible) as well as “bipartisan” (that is, RINO) interests. We’re essentially talking Fudds and Democrat gun owners, who place faith in centralized government disarmament diktats and hostility to “deplorables” above uninfringed freedom for their countrymen. Out of such, we get groups like Giffords’ calculatedly-named Gun Owners for Safety, and “Republicans” like Joe Walsh, who capitalized on his supposed “pro-gun” bona fides to advance his political career and then “proved” them by “commending” David Hogg and endorsing Joe Biden.
Will Support for Gun Control Continue to Sink as Gun Ownership Increases?
The latest polling shows a drop in support for stricter gun laws coinciding with a jump in gun ownership. But how strongly are those trends connected, and will they continue in the same direction?
Gallup released a poll on Monday that shows a nine-point decline in support for “more strict” gun laws. It also found 46 percent of Americans now report having a gun in their home or on their property, a decade-high.
Both of these outcomes are in line with expectations.
With two years of record gun sales and dealer surveys that indicate many of those sales were to first-time buyers, you’d expect a noticeable increase in the number of people telling pollsters they have a gun in their homes. The Associated Press first identified an increase to 46 percent of adults, or about 118 million Americans, earlier this year. And now Gallup is seeing the exact same thing.
With six months passing since the horrific killing spree at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and a subsequent surge in support for new gun restrictions, you’d expect to see that support begin to wane. Past high-profile mass shootings have led to a cycle that starts with a sharp increase in gun-control support followed by a steep, but not complete, decline. And Gallup found that was the case this time as well.
A myriad of past polling has shown gun owners are significantly more opposed to tightening gun restrictions than non-gun owners. So, even though Gallup doesn’t break out the differences between the two groups in this poll, there is reason to believe some of the decrease in gun-control support is due to more gun owners. That’s especially true given the rise of new owners from demographics that have traditionally been more supportive of gun-control policies, including many women and minorities.
But there are also good reasons to believe the downturn in enthusiasm for stricter gun laws may not last long. For one, gun sales have slowed significantly since 2020. They remain higher than in the pre-pandemic era, but we’re no longer seeing millions of new gun owners minted each year. So, the effect on the country’s overall attitude toward guns will be more limited until sales jump again.
Additionally, Gallup’s poll was conducted in October. That’s before the recent spat of high-profile killings at the University of Virginia, Colorado Springs, and a Virginia Walmart. Those could cause a similar spike in support for new restrictions as Uvalde did, especially given how they happened in quick succession.
Beyond those two factors, the long history of Gallup’s polling on these questions provides insight into how connected they’ve traditionally been. And there hasn’t been a strong correlation there. In the early 1990s, when gun ownership hovered between 47 and 51 percent, support for stricter gun laws hovered between 67 and 78 percent. As gun ownership rates fell into the high thirties and low forties during the early 2000s, support for more gun restrictions didn’t increase. In fact, it decreased to between 50 and 60 percent.
By the 2010s, the two measures became fairly disconnected. As the number of Americans reporting a gun in their home stayed relatively stable, the number supporting stricter gun laws cratered. By 2011, only 43 percent wanted more restrictions, and more said they felt gun laws should be kept as they are. By the decade’s end, though, gun control grew more popular, peaking at 67 percent in 2018.
Perhaps things will be different this time. Maybe other polls will show a closer correlation between gun ownership and gun-control support. But Gallup is one of the only pollsters with results reaching back decades. And their results indicate the connection between gun ownership and gun politics isn’t as straightforward as it may seem.
China 🇨🇳
🟢 QR code = you are allowed participate in society.
🟡 QR code = you are not allowed to participate in society.What a horribly authoritarian and dystopian way to live.pic.twitter.com/BdUuM4uUa9
— James Melville (@JamesMelville) November 22, 2022
How Gun Control Creeps In
Olympian Gabby Franco reflects on Venezuela’s downfall and the need to protect American freedom.
Venezuela is surrounded by paradisiacal turquoise waters in the north and an enigmatic rainforest in the south. There are no seasonal natural disasters—no hurricanes, tornados, blizzards or wildfires—such as there are in various areas of the United States. But an idea that the government should be given so much power that it could take away every right of the individual citizen—even their right to self-defense—did lead to the country’s ruination.
As a former citizen of Venezuela who became a U.S. citizen, I am now hearing many of the same things I heard in Venezuela from certain anti-Second Amendment politicians. I was an Olympic shooting competitor representing Venezuela and am now a lawful gun owner here in America. I don’t want to see this right being threatened again.
It has been eye-opening to visit and meet people from all walks of life throughout the U.S. While many Americans constantly fight to preserve our freedoms, it is alarming how many take those freedoms for granted. That is why I always share my experiences in Venezuela before and after socialist Hugo Chávez took power. My dreams as a young woman, Olympic athlete and college student ended because of the socialist ideas that hypnotized not only the poor but also the educated and powerful. To revive my dreams, I had to leave my country.
Venezuela was once a place where people could find jobs, prosper, dream about their future and, with hard work, succeed, despite social and political issues. My parents were born in a rural town where there were not even flushing toilets until the late 1950s. My mom became a high-school teacher, and my dad was a machinist who dreamed of owning a machine shop. They married in the late 1970s and lived on my mom’s salary for several years as my dad built his business. They showed my siblings and me that dreams are possible with hard work and dedication.
During that time, law-abiding Venezuelans could own firearms and apply for a concealed-carry license. My father was an avid hunter who filled up the freezer with venison, duck, rabbit and any other animals he deemed tasty. Children could go to the gun range with their parents to practice the shooting sports. I was 10 years old the first time my dad took my two sisters and me to the gun range. I needed my dad’s help to load the old Feinwerkbau M65 air pistol we used. But that day changed my life, and I have loved the sport since.
Gabby Franco is shown here shooting in a 2-gun competition at Shadow Hawk Defense in Hedgesville, W.Va., in 2021.
The shooting sports drastically changed my perspective. At first, it seemed like it might be easy to hit the one-centimeter bullseye at 10 meters. My mind constantly raced, however, and I realized my mindset was the most-significant asset I had to learn to control. Maintaining a steady mind was as important as keeping a steady aim. Part of that mental training was understanding that dedication, sacrifices and rewards were part of my athletic life. I trained approximately four to five hours a day, six days a week, for about seven years until I retired in 2002. I missed school parties, school trips and even my graduation ceremony; however, I finally became a member of the Venezuelan National team, and, at 16 years old, I won my first international medal at the 1997 Bolivarian Games in Peru.
Everything seemed to go in a great direction until I learned that elections have serious consequences. I became aware of how avaricious leaders and elites can pulverize the dreams of hard-working citizens.
Hugo Chávez took power in 1999 and ruled the country via executive orders from the beginning. The terrible implications of his actions were palpable, as he aimed to take farmland away from its owners. Chávez did not waste time in pushing his socialist agenda, influenced by Fidel Castro, seeding hatred and envy amongst Venezuelans. I remember one time a person on a motorcycle stopped next to my dad’s SUV and spat on it. It was a symbolic gesture showing his hatred toward us for having a good vehicle. What this man did not know is that my parents were born poor but rose through their will and dedication.
Hugo Chávez’s actions did not go by unnoticed. A Cuban friend, whom I’ll call Jose, warned many of us at the gun range about Venezuela’s future under Hugo Chávez. These warnings were, as Gabriel Garciá Márquez wrote, a “chronicle of a death foretold.” It was indeed a hard pill to swallow for many, who often replied with something like: “That would never happen here. Venezuela is the richest country in the region. Venezuela is not an island like Cuba.”
Crime is uncontrollable, making Venezuela one of the most-dangerous countries in the world—in part because of its strict gun control … .
However, I listened to my Cuban friend and relied on lessons I learned in the shooting sports to make my decision. You see, shooters learn to control negative thoughts, fears and disappointments during setbacks in competitions. Such a constant exposure made me understand that moving forward amid doubts is possible. I learned that sacrifices and fear of the unknown are part of my journey toward success, even if that means leaving everything behind. I was on the peak of my shooting career. I had participated at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. I was a gold medalist at the subsequent Bolivarian and South American Games, and I was an Olympic hopeful for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens; however, there was no future in the “new socialist Venezuela,” and fear of the unknown would not stop me from seeking a better way of life.
Nonetheless, leaving Venezuela was a difficult decision. My parents and I argued and cried, and I became distant as they failed to change my mind. It was as if they thought Chávez was a temporary nightmare in Venezuela’s history and could not see the real threat. Breaking their hearts was never my intention, but my decision to move to the United States was made. Staying in a socialist state was against my beliefs.
