Cuba is a totalitarian nightmare nation. It’s a shame, too, because it’s got a lot going for it. After all, it’s a Caribbean island. In a perfect world, it would be loaded with American tourists sunning on the beaches and sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them.

But it’s not a perfect world. Cuba is a communist country and there’s a trade embargo against them.

Yet there’s hope. People are protesting for change in the country. While the Biden administration tries to say this is about COVID vaccines, the truth is that they want freedom. They want it badly.

The problem is they’ll probably have to shoot their way out of communism, yet the gun laws there make that unlikely.

As thousands of Cubans protest against the island’s communist regime, stringent gun control laws from Havana negatively impact their efforts.

Whereas in the United States, it is common parlance to say the gun rights enumerated in the Second Amendment protect the all the other rights outlined in the Bill of Rights, in Cuba the people are not allowed any claim to a natural right to keep and bear arms. This creates a disadvantage as Cubans fight for freedom.

The University of Syndey’s GunPolicy.org highlights the “restrictive” gun control measures in Cuba. Those controls include a ban on large swathes of firearms and require those who want to own legal guns the regime recognizes as legal to first acquire a license. The process for getting a license includes “[establishing] a genuine reason to possess a firearm.” Cubans who are able to get a license “must re-apply and re-qualify for their firearm license every ten years.”

The would-be firearm owner also has to go through a background check “which considers criminal, mental health, health, and addiction records.” The overall process for purchasing a gun is not set in stone, as GunPolicy.org notes. “The minimum wait for a lawful firearm purchase to be completed is undetermined.”

All purchased firearms must be registered, all private sales are prohibited by law, and “the right to private gun ownership is not guaranteed by law.”

Carrying a firearm openly in public is illegal and carrying a concealed firearm in public is prohibited by law as well.

That’s bad. I mean, it makes New Jersey look downright permissive by comparison.

Not by much, mind you, but still…

If someone wants to know why I refuse to give up my guns because of violent crime, the answer is two-fold. First, I don’t believe gun control stops violent crime. It never has and it never will. Second, because a totalitarian state requires a disarmed population.

Cuba has practically no private gun ownership to speak of, and those that do have guns are generally friendly with the regime in charge. There’s absolutely no way the citizens of that country can rise up and overthrow their oppressors without them. This would, of course, be why they’re not allowed to own guns.

Over the last few years, we’ve been bombarded with people badmouthing America, treating every past sin as if it were the totality of American history, yet we also see places like Cuba and Hong Kong waving the American flag as they stand up against actual, legitimate oppression. We’re still the beacon of freedom that others turn to.

So long as we still have guns, we’ll remain that beacon, too.