U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Ukraine MPs vote to give permission for civilians to carry firearms,” Reuters reported Wednesday. Per the authors of the law, passing it is “fully in the interests of the state and society [due] to existing threats and dangers” from Russia.
Evidently, the military and “civilian defensive forces” need bolstering.
The initial report is an oversimplification. Another Reuters report says:
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday called on all citizens who were ready to defend the country from Russian forces to come forward, saying Kyiv would issue weapons to everyone who wants them.”
We’ll get to him in a bit.
Ukraine’s 112.International reports:
“Ukraine’s parliament [is] working on weapon legalization … The Verkhovna Rada [unicameral legislature] supported the bill on the right to civilian firearms in the first reading, which is designed to start the process of legalizing weapons in Ukraine.”
With current moves by Putin’s forces, one might say this is way too little way too late, especially since Ukraine firearms laws, per Gun Policy.org, are “restrictive,” with no right to private ownership guaranteed by law and with a host of infringements U.S. “commonsense gun safety” prohibitionists demand be enacted here. Not being a “gun culture,” getting sufficient arms into public hands seems a “Hail Mary” play, and forget about training in gun handling, use, marksmanship, and coordinated battle tactics with everything that implies and requires.
Even that site’s analysis is incomplete and subject to contextual misinterpretation. The above-linked 112.International report and a corroborative article detail legislative attempts to expand “gun rights” and provide a synopsis of types of weapons ordinary Ukrainians can buy (rifles, shotguns, and carbines, but “even if the bill manages to pass all rounds of parliamentary hearings, revolvers and pistols will not be freely available”), what they need (a license), storage, and insurance requirements, and further restrictions and prohibitions.
Probably the most definitive related article filed to date was posted Wednesday by Firearms News (full disclosure: I am a regular and paid contributor there, but anyone who has kept up with my work over the years knows I have never let that stop me from publicly disagreeing and even parting ways with publishers when differences became irreconcilable). I am highlighting the article because it offers information and insights you will find nowhere else. I say right now, without reservation, go and read it if you want a better understanding of the history of the conflict, the state of Ukrainian gun ownership and civil defense preparedness, and of some common misperceptions abetted by media misunderstanding, such as:
“Where dozens of news outlets get the story wrong about Ukrainian gun ownership has to do with the word ‘hunting.’ Ukraine allows its citizens to own ‘hunting weapons’ so when news agencies covered this topic, they gave the idea that Ukrainians can only own duck hunting shotguns and deer rifles. Ukraine’s government uses the word “hunting” in the same legal way our BATFE uses the word ‘sporting.’ All MSRs are considered to be hunting firearms in Ukraine [with “no restrictions on magazine capacity”].
Those are what they’ll need.
With the president now calling on civilians to come forward, it’s instructive to note his past opposition:
“So, where is Zelenskyy on Ukrainian Gun Ownership? It is safe to say that he is [in] the same camp as anti-gun ownership democrats Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and the like. When the Ukrainian Gun Owners Association tried to open up gun ownership last year, Zelenskyy voiced his opposition stating that he did not support the petition, which gathered over 25,000 ‘signatures’ on his official website, to reduce restrictions on civilian gun ownership. His reason was that this legislation was ‘premature’ due to the socio-economics condition of Ukraine and because of the war in eastern Ukraine. Unreal. It’s almost like Zelenskyy got this talking point from some leftist anti-gun ownership group in the U.S.”
Curiously, the “usual suspects” in the U.S. are awful quiet about the move to relax restrictions. As this is being written, Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown has nothing to say on its Twitter feed. Ditto for Moms Demand Action, Giffords, and Brady. They’re still busy prattling on about “ghost guns” and “boyfriend loopholes,” and doing what they can to pass infringements with the intent of disarming the Militia, that is, their countrymen, of semi-autos they call “weapons of war,” and to make preparation and training for defense against tyranny illegal.
Speaking of that, a new article by friend and freedom colleague Dr. Miguel A. Faria, Jr. MD, about what it took for American colonists to stand up to the British army, served as inspiration for an observation that puts things in perspective:
What? Ordinary citizens are supposed to have “weapons of war” to protect against tyranny…??? Who would lie to us about that, and why?
As important as what the prohibitionists aren’t saying is what CNN, always and consistently quick to disparage U.S. “gun rights,” is saying:
“They just passed a law in which guns are allowed to be used freely in Ukraine,” Nina Kruscheva, Professor of International Affairs at The New School, New York, told CNN anchor John Berman (and as we see from above, that’s just not accurate). “If every Ukrainian takes a gun, Russians don’t have a prayer.”
JUST NOW: “The Ukrainians will fight like hell…if every Ukrainian takes a gun, Russians don’t have a prayer. I mean the military can fight, but… Ukrainians
are really ready today.”@ninakhrushcheva on the Ukrainian resolve. pic.twitter.com/LacArmwNVE— John Berman (@JohnBerman) February 23, 2022
So, they’re admitting on CNN that an armed citizenry is “necessary to the security of a free State”? And that anything that prevents that works in the favor of a nation’s enemies, that is, by any definition of the word, an act of treason?
What’s telling is the number of guns in Ukraine, or more to the point, their legal status. Again consulting GunPolicy.org, we find (from 2017) an estimated 4,396,000 “civilian” firearms, of which 3,596,000 are presumed to be “illegal.”
In other words, the hopes of those who imposed disarmament on their countrymen to save their own necks now rest on those they had until now disparaged, threatened with punishment, and demanded to render defenseless.
“Will this Russian invasion become a second Holodomor, not because of lack of food, but because of lack of civilian-owned firearms?” the Firearms News article concludes. “Let’s hope not. But if it does, Zelenskyy would be one guy to point the finger at.”
The article has been updated noting:
“Since this article was published, Russia declared war on Ukraine and attacked. According to the Daily Mail, President Zelenskyy has promised today that every citizen willing to have a gun will have one.”
In a sane world, this would forever put to rest the “gun debate,” that is, the need to constantly refute the unending stream of lies from the violence monopoly cultists. In the world we live in we see a new unrelated, ill-timed, and inane pronouncement from Everytown that “guns have no place in democracy,” disregarding that we’re not one and that they certainly have a place in a society that wishes to be and stay free.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
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