Elections in Venezuela have been...interesting.

Sure, 2020 was a bit of a trainwreck for us, but Venezuela has both sides declaring victory. It's not even one of those where there was some kind of compromise so both can legitimately feel like they won. Someone won, someone lost, and no one outside the nation seems to know just what really happened.

But as Lee Williams wrote over at The Gun Writer, there's one major difference, and that's a difference that should matter to everyone.

Venezuela should be one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It is literally floating on a sea of oil. However, decades of government corruption have forced most of the population into poverty — corruption that was enabled by disarming the people.

Everyone except our Vice President seems to recognize that Maduro cheated — by force of arms — and will now serve another six-year term, his third. There is little the Venezuelan people can do to contest Monday’s election results. They have nothing to fight back with. All of their guns were confiscated and destroyed.

Venezuela is the latest example of the need to protect and defend our Second Amendment rights. Rather than focusing solely on how they intend to disarm us, we should focus on why our politicians — including Harris — want a disarmed populace. It is certainly a question worthy of a response.

Williams notes that current dictator Nicolás Maduro banned citizens from owning firearms back in 2012. As a result, they're unable to resist the tyrannical dictatorship that has them under its boot.

Maduro realized he was going to lose and sent armed soldiers to stop the voting, then claimed he won with just enough votes, but the opposition says it garnered 70 percent of the voting. The conflict is one thing, but the truth of the matter is that it doesn't matter what the opposition says because Maduro is the one with all of the guns.

Every single time you find a tyrant, you find gun control.

Some would argue that gun control is the tool of the tyrant, and it most definitely can be, but it can also be something that enables the tyrant to rise to power in the first place. They won't try their stuff when the people can resist.

Venezuela has all the advantages a nation could hope for, and it wasn't all that long ago that they were eating zoo animals just to survive.

Now it seems that something shady has gone on during the election and literally no one is able to resist. 

Say what you want about our elections, and they're far from secure and never really have been, at least we have the means to contest the vote with our voices and, should things get ugly, with more than that.

Our right to keep and bear arms keeps a lot of things in check. Anti-gun politicians may pretend that we'd be unable to fight back against F-15s and M1A1 Abrams tanks, but they also know that they can't just assume that they're right. 

Maduro has no such fear.

That's a damn shame.