My Texan friend, Bill Martin, sent me this link to a speech Fidel “Commie” Castro made on January 9, 1959, the day after his “victorious post-revolution entry into Havana, Cuba.” Although the reasons Commie lists for stealing Cubans’ guns differ from those of American politicians (instead of hiding behind “the children” a la his northern colleagues, Commie indignantly pooh-poohs the idea of defending oneself from his benevolent “revolutionary government” ), the two firmly agree that only cops and soldiers, rather than their victims, enjoy the right to be armed:
All the arms that were found by the rebel army are stored and locked in barracks, where they belong. What are these arms for? Against whom are they going to be used?
Against the revolutionary government that has the support of all the people? Do we have a dictatorship here? Are we going to take up arms against a free government that respects the rights of the people? We have a free country here. … There is no tormenting of political prisoners [well, that puts Commie’s Cuba one up on the US, doesn’t it?], no murders, no terror. When all the rights of the citizens have been restored … why do we need arms? …
We are never going to use force, because we belong to the people. Moreover, the day that the people do not want us we shall leave. {Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!] As soon as possible I will take the rifles off the streets. There are no more enemies, there is no longer anything to fight against, and if some day any foreigner or any movement comes up against the revolution, all the people will fight. The weapons belong in the barracks. No one has the right to have private armies here.
As the blogger who posted the speech points out, “Castro’s regime began collecting guns and disarming the population” mere hours after he delivered this harangue, and “within days of Castro’s promises of civility, a wave of executions was underway.”
6:54 pm on January 23, 2013
