Gun Control Tactics Used in Argentina

Hi Fernando,

Thought you might find this short article of interest, and if you could share any info about gun grabbing tactics you experienced while in Argentina.  Thank you for what you do.  I have your book and have read it several times over. So much so it’s falling apart. It is a reference for me.  I have read several other survival/preparedness books, but definitely find yours the most useful.  I visited your youtube channel yesterday.  I like it.

http://www.infowars.com/decorated-combat-veteran-arrested-in-new-york-charged-with-5-felonies-for-possession-of-ar-magazines/

Joe in Missouri

Thanks Joe, glad you found my book useful.

Seems there’s a double standard going on.  How come David Gregory gets away with having those same AR magazines but this guy gets arrested? I guess that if you break the law openly on national TV, then its ok as long as you have an anti-gun agenda, but if you have those exact same AR magazines while minding your own business then you get arrested.

Guns to be “destroyed” by RENAR in Argentina

The gun grabbing tactics used in Argentina are similar in many ways to those used in USA. Namely a very strong anti-gun media campaign, on all levels. In Argentina the slogan shoved down people’s throat was  “if you have a gun, you have a problem”. It was pretty effective too, catchy. My wife used to make fun of me whenever we saw it on TV, “You heard that? We have a lot of problems!” We already had mandatory gun registration (try to avoid having that in USA!) and people were harassed regarding how many guns they had and the conditions they were stored in. The anti-gun campaign was strongly supported by so called NGOs that sympathized with the government and were funded by them.

Buybacks took place on several occasions, and these presented a series of problems.

1)Completely useless guns, sometimes just broken air guns, were being “bought back”. Criminals would take advantage of this to finance a new gun!

2)Criminals caught with a firearm could say they were taking the gun to be bought back and destroyed. This loophole basically allowed people that were not registered to walk around with a gun, while lawful gun owners weren’t allowed to use that same excuse if caught carrying illegaly!

3) In many cases, guns that had been used in crimes had been turned in by the criminals themselves. They got the evidence against them destroyed and 100usd in their pocket for their effort.

4)Some of the nicer guns turned in seemed to have a peculiar condition by which they disappeared, respawning a few days later in a nearby gunstore’s shelf with a price tag attached to it.

5)A couple years after the buyback, thousands of guns that for some reason hadn’t been destroyed as they were supposed to were “lost” or “stolen”. They are just unaccounted for, in many cases ironically making their way from law abiding citizens that believed the “you have a gun, you have a problem” campaign, straight into the hands of the criminals that will use those same guns against the people that gave them up. On January 9^th, 2013, 200 of the best weapons obtained through buybacks have been misplaced from the shops in which they were supposed to be destroyed. This includes high end pistols and a few machine guns (SMGs) that have now made their way to the hands of criminals thanks to the buyback program.

http://www.saladeprensa.net/inf/desaparecieron-200-armas-del-renar-pistolas-y-ametralladoras/

Even without taking into account the “lost” guns, the buyback is mostly considered to be a failure, this report clearly shows that other than reducing the number of accidents, it helps criminals rather than stops them.

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~raphael/IGERT/Workshop/PEVAF_September_27_2010.pdf

In the last years the controls for getting a firearm license and renewing it had increased considerably. The psychological test was increasingly difficult and without an explanation a lot of people were failing it, in some cases people I knew pretty well and clearly didn’t have any condition that should stop them from owning guns.

FerFAL