Small arms
Rwanda is in a back-slapping mood today after it was commended by a United Nations body for its efforts in combating small arms trafficking. One Rwandan official even said: “As a country we suffered in 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi partly because of small arms and light weapons, that is why Rwanda is now at the forefront of the fight, and I hope other countries can learn from what we are doing.”
This woman must be quite young, as her memory seems to fade around 1995. The 1994 Rwandan Genocide was committed almost entirely with machetes, not firearms.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:41 am
One has to wonder how well the Hutus would had fared had the Tutsis had small arms with which to defend themselves.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:51 am
There you go again, Uncle, using facts in an argument about firearms restriction.
July 10th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Both machetes and firearms were used in the Rwandan genocide, with machetes being emphasized in the press because of the particular brutality of the method. It is important to remember that Rwandan military and paramilitary groups killed about 1/2 of the between 500,000 to 1 million people lost in the genocide (the number is widely disputed, though that sort of argument is disgusting in my opinion). While machetes were used, small arms and other mass killing tactics (immolation, live burials) were used as well. Anyhow, the discussion of how something is done is a distraction from why it was done or that it was done at all.
Tidbit: The political division between the Hutus and Tutsi was a a completely artificial one created by the Belgians during their colonial rule in order to maintain control. They speak the same language, share customs, and intermarriage was common. The only “pre-colonial” divide was one of labor with no emphasis on Hutus over Tutsis other than Tutsis more often being in leadership positions, though people in their own lifetimes would consider themselves Tutsi for a while and then Hutu later or vice-versa.
July 10th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I watched Hotel Rwanda several years ago with my soon to be bride. I don’t care how much machismo you’ve got stored up, if you can watch something like that and not wonder where the good guys put all their guns there’s something incomplete about you. She asked me toward the end of the show why I was so tensed up… THIS is the kind of story that drives RKBA activism. Pardon me while I go peruse the JPFO site for a bit.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
“small arms trafficking” might mean something totally different in Rwanda.
July 11th, 2009 at 1:42 am
Yeah, by “small arms” she meant “people with stumps where their arms used to be.”
July 12th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
It’s kinda funny when you consider the only people who were able to resist the genocide, and who ultimately brought it to an end was the Tutsi Militia that used small arms that were acquired through illicit small arms trafficking. While the UN stood by and watched as the violence escalated, and then when it got really bad, forcibly removed Europeans and other white people from the scene, they did nothing to stop it and discouraged others from trying to. Thusly, they ultimately support genocide for in all of its forms, as their actions since their founding prove beyond a shadow of a doubt. The UN is an agency that is more evil than even the Nazis or the Soviets.