Shortly after their sudden takeover of Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul, the Taliban has begun implementing a strict gun-control policy.
According to Reuters, the insurgent group that once sheltered and fomented terrorists, like al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, is going door to door and collecting guns from civilians.
“We understand people kept weapons for personal safety,” one Taliban official told Reuters. “They can now feel safe. We are not here to harm innocent civilians.”
Feeling safe is familiar rhetoric for totalitarian governments, with a similar argument often coming from the mouths of big-city gun-control advocates. Our leaders who promote disarming law-abiding citizens generally refuse to acknowledge that disarming a population is the first step taken by dictators to controlling it. The second step taken by foreign despots is usually violent crackdowns on helpless citizens, which according some reports, is already well underway in Afghanistan. (The U.S. embassy reports the Taliban is already executing surrendering Afghan troops, and women who last month were staging armed protests to defy the Taliban are now being brutally kidnapped, raped, and forced into slavery.)
The move isn’t unexpected; last month, the Taliban paraded a seizure of guns, armored vehicles, and a “treasure trove” of ammunition in containers stamped “Property of USA Government” after the military evacuated area bases.
Now, the same commander-in-chief that wants to take guns and ammunition away from everyday Americans has left an “enormous” and expensive array of advanced weaponry—grenades, mortars, drones, Humvees, ammunition, and combat aircraft—for the Taliban. (Reports estimate the U.S. spent $83 billion to equip and train Afghanistan’s army—nearly double the annual budget for the U.S. Marine Corps.)
When asked whether there was a plan to keep guns out of the hands of the Taliban, a top Pentagon official couldn’t say.
You don’t have to be an expert in foreign policy to realize three things. First, President Joe Biden’s (D) assessment of what it takes to defeat a government military is shockingly disingenuous. Last month, while pushing more gun control, he mocked the idea that armed citizens could effectively resist governments, saying you’d need “F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.” The Taliban clearly does not agree with Biden.
Second, the same president who said no one needs an AR-15 and who wants to lock you up if you put a brace or foregrip on your AR pistol, has just armed viciously anti-American enemy combatants with lavish amounts of weapons and ammunition. And while you pay inflated rates for scarce boxes of 9 mm, people chanting death to America have crates brimming with U.S.-supplied ammunition.
Third, the Taliban is only the latest in a long line of despotic governments throughout history to support gun control, illustrating once again that those advocating to disarm civilians are literally unwitting allies in the agendas of tyrants.
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