Why the Second Amendment is life-or-death important.

Maduro is enjoying a NYC vacation, Venezuelans abroad are celebrating (yours included) but you do not see the same celebrations in Venezuela (Only briefly the first day) and the reason is not 100% the government forces (Military and LEO) and probably not even 20%. The reason people in Venezuela and specifically in Caracas are muted is because of the Colectivos.

Who are the Colectivos? If you check the assorted internet “experts”, you get an almost unanimous definition that they are para-military groups supporting the Socialist regimes and that is wrong. Yes, they were supported Chavez who was the one bringing them to life and then they remained doing their jobs supporting Maduro, but they are not para-military because that would indicate some sort or structured and semi-rigid organization with a somewhat defined organigram.

The best way to define Colectivos is the final form of Antifa: A disparate bunch of people, highly oriented to Socialism, mostly by convenience and no military training required. They do have some basic weapons training, but nothing that would be considered professional or even competitive. A good amount of them belong to criminal organizations or have a history of violent crime, so Colectivos and Trenes (like the ganag Tren De Aragua) intermix in its membership. They are highly mobile in their low powered motorcycles and they attack in armed swarms against any groups or entities that defy the status quo or dare to raise a word of disagreement against the Socialist government. And as you suspect, even though they are not official part of the government, they are given free reign by authorities to do what they want and Law Enforcement will look the other way and only intervene when the victims of the Colectivos stand up to them and promptly get arrested for their efforts. Does it sound like Seattle and Portland in that aspect? You tell me.

And where do they get guns in a country that has gun control laws that would make Moms Demand and Brady have incontrollable orgasms? From the Government, of course. Why? Because the population is NOT armed and they can be easily bullied by the Colectivos with the not-so-tacit blessings of the powers that be.

How many Colectivo members are out there? No idea. I believe nobody knows for sure, but enough to keep tens of thousands of unarmed Venezuelans in fear. How do they make a living? I am guessing a few in the leadership get a stipend from the regime, but a lot will simply prey on the population through violent crime because they are criminal themselves. Other may have jobs with private companies that simply pay them because they cannot be legally fired and some may even have a small business visited by fellow Colectivos and local that fear be in the wrong side of their graces.

Their armament is mostly sidearms even though several thousand rifles and shotguns were officially issued by Maduro, but it is hard to drive a motorcycle and operate a long gun at the same time. Pistols, mostly Glocks and some with the giggle switch and extended mag are the preferred pistol to carry in chest pouches. If you see them sporting Browning Hi Power pistols, those are the indicators the government are directly providing them with guns as they were official sidearm of the Military pre-Chavez. But basically any pistol available and in 9mm will be gladly used against the population.

How to get rid of them? Down there? I have no idea unless a lot of things change beginning with allowing Venezuelans to have some sort of Second Amendment laws added to their constitution and immediate availability of weapons. The Colectivos, at the end of the day are just well armed and politically protected bullies. They are not used to nor react bravely when the threat of deadly force is applied against them. About 15 years ago, a Caracas radio station was know to be against the policies of Chavez and was highly critical of the regime. About a couple dozen Colectivos suddenly showed up at the station one day to break in and intimidate the personnel, but two security guards armed with just double barrel shotguns stood their ground and leveled their weapons to the invaders from a fortified sentry box. The Colectivos paraded around with their motorcycles, revving them up and fainted trying to get in a couple of times, but eventually left possibly because they were allergic to “tres en boca” (Three in mouth AKA buckshot.) A couple of months later, the radio station’s transmission permits were pulled by the government and the owners were forced to “sell” to a pro-Chavez crony, but that is a story for another day.

Caracas is located in a very narrow valley which means it is a vertical city. A lot of the population live in apartment buildings, five or more stories high. The Colectivos may roam the streets as much as they want, but if they lived in a country where any law-abiding citizen can own a rifle and make their displeasure against violent political bullies known at 3,000 feet per second, the bullies would soon disappear and with that any power they could give to the government. As I stated before, these are not trained individual, they do not have gun craft nor are used to be defied; a few somewhat trained civilians with rifles from an elevated position like the balconies and windows of their apartments would create a carpet of Colectivo bodies on the street below. A couple incidents like that and the appeal of being a Colectivo member suddenly does not taste as good and probably the membership would suffer a sudden decline in numbers.

But alas, being unarmed, the only thing they get to use is the smartphones to record the Colectivos doing their deeds.

We have pre-Colectivos in some areas of our country. And the only way we have to make sure they don’t go from Antifoid to full blown Colectivo is to make sure we have the vaccinations and delivery systems to keeping them behaving nicely.

We prepare accordingly.