Venezuelan Gun Control

More word has come out about the shooting of two Americans.  As I'm hearing more of the story, it is beginning to sound more like equal parts bad conduct and gun prevalence.  Very few people are to blame for being shot in the leg or the stomach, but folks in a low-crime city wouldn't think much of a 4:30am shooting outside of a gentleman's club.

That being said, gun prevalence in Caracas is frightening.  Everyone within the embassy community lives in a high-rise, because single family houses are simply too dangerous.  A person would have to pass our security guard sitting behind (hopefully bullet-proof) glass, two gates requiring two separate keys, an elevator requiring a third key and a door requiring two more keys to get into our apartment.  No one could scale the walls - and if they did, they would reach an alarm.  Americans live in cities with high crime all over the world, but high crime paired with alarmingly prevalent gun usage means that any crime can easily lead to death.  A recent Facebook posting by a friend showed security camera footage of a storefront in broad daylight.  A man entered his car.  A second man ran up to the front window and pulled a gun.  The driver shot the man.  He lay dead on the street.

I do not tell this story because I live in fear.  I do not.  We live a fairly secure life, following around our children and keeping to daylight hours.  We stay away from rough neighborhoods and we always keep the windows closed in the car.  We don't explore much, but we don't sit around bored, either.  Anything could happen at any time, but our odds are good and we can live with that.

But sometimes I fear that America is headed in this direction.  Venezuela has given very little solution to the high-crime, high-gun problems and so people create their own solutions.  People live behind bars and walls and razor-wire.  Schools have high fences and locked gates and multiple guards.

I'm not putting forth a plan - this post has already gotten more political than I'd like.  But with the recent gun violence in my own community, I can't help but think of Caracas as a cautionary tale for the U.S.