Burundi’s President Tells His Citizens to Give Up Their Guns – Or Else.
Kayla Ruble reports: After weeks of assassinations, murders, and clashes with police in Burundi, President Pierre Nkurunziza has issued an ultimatum to the country’s citizens: Give up your guns by Saturday, or else you will “be dealt with as enemies of the nation.”
“This call could be a recipe for disaster. The concern is that he’s going to use this call to try and disarm the opposition to maintain the monopoly of use of force in the country.”
Nkurunziza made the announcement in a national speech on Monday, the same day that authorities said police killed eight people during a shootout with an alleged group of criminals near the capital Bujumbura. People who turn over their weapons by the November 7 deadline will also be “trained on patriotic education.”
“Those who will not do so… will be taken as criminals and be prosecuted according to the anti-terrorism law and be dealt with as enemies of the nation. This is the last call we make.”
— President Pierre Nkurunziza
At the same time, the leader ordered Burundi’s police force to restore security in the country by December. “You are allowed to use all the necessary means and authorized rules and regulations in security matters,” he told the country’s cops.
“The successful re-election campaign sparked clashes in the streets of Bujumbura between Nkurunziza’s opponents and supporters, with violent crackdowns against demonstrators carried out by a police force that was largely loyal to the president.”
Assassins have targeted supporters of Burundi’s government, military officials, journalists, opposition members, and human rights workers since Nkurunziza won a controversial third term in office in July. Reports of dead bodies in the streets of the capital have regularly surfaced on social media, and security raids on alleged rebel groups have also occurred.
According to the United Nations, more than 200 Burundians have been killed in unrest since Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader, announced in April that he would seek a third term in office.
Critics argued the move was illegal due to the two-term limit outlined in the country’s constitution, which was established in 2005 after a decade-long civil war. The nation’s high court ultimately cleared Nkruniziza to run again, determining that it was legal because he had been appointed to his first term rather than democratically elected. Read the rest of this entry »
Greg Sargent reports: Speaking at a rally in Iowa, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recalled speaking with parents of victims of gun violence and condemned opposition to gun control laws. (Reuters)
But the Obama administration has already taken a long, internal look at the same executive-action proposal Clinton has promised to undertake, and has doubts over whether it can be made to work in practical terms, according to current and former senior administration officials.
The administration is still looking at this idea, in the wake of Obama’s announcement after the Oregon shooting that he has directed officials to “scrub” current laws for further actions the executive branch can take against gun violence, those officials say.
But the administration studied the same proposal in 2013 after the Newtown shooting, in the run-up to its release of a number of other executive actions on guns, and decided against including this particular idea out of concerns about its workability, the officials confirm.
The Clinton campaign has pointed to her vow to use executive action to begin closing the long-discussed private seller loophole — which allows for sales conducted by private sellers to proceed without a background check — as proof of her commitment to acting on gun violence. As a Clinton spokesperson put it: “Her willingness to pursue reforms by executive action if necessary is proof of how urgent a priority this is to her.”
But it turns out that this proposal may be harder to actually implement than it might seem. Read the rest of this entry »
Yes, He Will Fail. Again. As America Distrusts Government More Than At Any Time In Its History
Ben Shapiro writes: President Obama was having a bad political day on Thursday. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin had humiliated him in Syria, Israeli prime ministerBenjamin Netanyahu had excoriated his Iran deal before the United Nations, and his Secret Service had been caught leaking information about a Republican congressperson.
Then the clouds parted for the deeply cynical president — the same president who routinely ignores shootings in inner cities across the country, or attributes them to generalized American racism. News broke of a mass shooting at a community college in Oregon. And before waiting to find out all the facts, he leapt directly into political controversy, redirecting the national conversation once again toward useless gun control measures.
Here is, so far, what we know.
The community college campus was a gun free zone – so “gun free” that waterguns were banned on campus.
The only security guard on campus was unarmed.
Oregon has universal background checks, and strengthened its gun laws just months ago.
Most interestingly, The New York Daily News quoted an eyewitness thusly:
The shooter was lining people up and asking if they were christian. If they said yes, then they were shot in the head. If they said no, or didn’t answer, they were shot in the legs.
It has now been several hours since the gunman was killed. We still don’t know his name. That’s a far cry from mass shootings in the past.
Nonetheless, Obama focused his ire on Republicans – of course, because law-abiding Republicans who wish to protect law-abiding gunowners are the big problem, given that the gunman apparently met zero of those descriptors. “There’s been another mass shooting in America,” Obama said with dramatic flourish. “Our thoughts and prayers are not enough. It’s not enough.”
Obama and the left want your guns. That’s all. End of story.
What would be enough? Obama explained eagerly:
We’re not the only country on Earth that has people with mental illnesses or want to do harm to other people. We are the only advanced country on earth that sees these mass shootings every few months…This is a political choice that we make to allow this to happen every few months in America. We collectively are answerable to those families, who lose their loved ones, because of our inaction.
No, in fact, we are not. The gunman is responsible for his actions. The only politicians responsible for the gunman’s success are those who refuse to allow law-abiding citizens to protect themselves. But Obama couldn’t stop his scorn for gun-owners from seeping forth. Saying that people would undoubtedly accuse him of politicizing the shooting, Obama stated, “this is something we should politicize.” He tacitly attacked the National Rifle Association, asking gunowners if the NRA truly spoke for them. “How can you, with a straight face, argue that more guns will make us safer?” Obama whined.
They do, in the right hands. Data show that more guns held by law-abiding citizens decrease crime. If Obama believes differently, he can surrender his Secret Service protection at any time. Read the rest of this entry »
Couple of decades ago, Australia had a mass shooting, similar to Columbine or Newtown. And Australia just said, well, that’s it, we’re not doing, we’re not seeing that again, and basically imposed very severe, tough gun laws, and they haven’t had a mass shooting since.
Our levels of gun violence are off the charts. There’s no advanced, developed country that would put up with this.
In other words, the president of the United States just praised a government for forcefully removing all semi-automatic firearms (i.e. a remarkable number of the guns in America and the majority of those sold today) from its citizenry.
Let me be clear, as Obama likes to say: You simply cannot praise Australia’s gun-laws without praising the country’s mass confiscation program. That is Australia’s law. Read the rest of this entry »
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