“Competing gangs are carving up the Haitian capital, kidnapping, raping, and killing at will,” the BBC reports. “They have no fear and they have no mercy,” a local man tells The Guardian.
Gangs control most of Port-au-Prince, while the UN-affiliated organization Viva Rio says that “the Haitian state has no capacity, no governance, so police and state institutions cannot enter the neighborhoods to enforce order.” Accounts of unspeakable crimes are emerging, and an editorial in The Haitian Times describes a country “on the brink of total chaos, careening as we are toward the ‘failed state’ status.”
As murderous gangs take over Haiti’s capital, the world is getting a brutal reminder of why ordinary peaceable people need access to deadly force for self-defense.
Tragically, however, Haiti has pursued restrictive gun policies and made it difficult for well-meaning people to exercise their natural self-defense rights lawfully.
President Biden presumably knows what is happening in Haiti. His administration has taken initial steps to respond, and the State Department is warning Americans against traveling there. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a voice one would expect this administration to heed, gave a dire update about the country on November 3.
But Haiti’s cautionary lesson in self-defense rights is clearly lost on President Biden.
As defenseless Haitians continued to face “kidnappings and sexual violence by gang members … being used as weapons to inflict severe pain and instill fear among the population” (in the UN High Commissioner’s words), Biden was spending Thanksgiving on the posh island of Nantucket and taking time out from his holiday to grossly insult American gun owners.
“We should have much stricter gun laws,” Biden told reporters on November 24. “The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It’s just sick. It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”
Many Haitians—facing kidnapping, gang rape, and other terrorizing threats—would probably dispute our president’s statement that semiautomatic weapons have no value or rationale for ordinary people.
When gun control ideologues like President Biden say you don’t need an AR-15 or standard capacity magazine, they display a fatal foolishness that no country can afford to indulge in. They know what is happening in places like Haiti, yet they act like it can’t happen here.
Despite these liberal delusions, a Haiti-like breakdown of order in parts of the U.S. is not hard to imagine. This is well-understood by those who follow Mexican cartel violence, our southern border crisis, or the state of certain U.S. cities—or who merely care to recall 2020. Even Biden’s beloved Nantucket has faced the presence of MS-13 gang members.
It can happen here. Arm yourself—and defend your rights—accordingly.