I have quite a few Tibetan friends. Whether they were in Tibet before, or later in the United States, many Tibetans talk about their Family‘s story when the Chinese Communist Party entered Tibet, and it usually starts with the same event, a full-scale gun collection.
Most Tibetans live nomadically, so weapons became a very important part of their lives, used against wild animals, as well as unsuspecting humans. in 1950, representatives of the Chinese Communist Party and the Dalai Lama signed the Seventeen Articles Agreement (i.e., the Agreement between the Central People’s Government and the Local Government of Tibet on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet), agreeing not to carry out in the Tibetan areas controlled by the Dalai Lama “reform” and retain their original system and way of Life. But the first thing the Chinese Communist army did west of the Jinsha River was to collect guns on a large scale. Tibetans in Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan provinces all rioted and fled in large numbers after their defeat. These Tibetans fleeing towards the core Tibetan areas were usually in groups, with entire tribes of thousands.
The Chinese Communist army pursued them, and a large number of Tibetans died on the road, including the old and weak, women and children. One Tibetan I knew, who was 8 years old when he fled from Qinghai, told the story of how his tribe refused to surrender their guns, resisted the exodus and was eventually exterminated. His Parents and siblings all died, and he was rescued by himself and later taken in by other Tibetans.
After 1959, the Chinese Communist Party no longer recognized the Seventeen Articles Agreement. Tibet, which was the first “one country, two systems” under the Chinese Communist Party, was fully controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. Another friend of mine came from the west bank of the Jinsha River, which was part of the former Tibetan local government, and in 1959, when the Chinese Communist Party started to ban guns in all of Tibet, his father and more than 50 people from his tribe did not compromise and took their guns to the mountains to fight against the Chinese Communist Party. A year later, the Chinese Communist Party used their families as a threat to force the group to come down from the mountains and surrender, and most of them were eventually shot.
Not only Tibet, but also other ethnic minorities, including Mongols, Kazakhs, Uyghurs, Yi, etc., were forced to surrender their extremely backward guns. As compensation, they were allowed to keep small and medium-sized knives for life in the wild.
By the last decade, knives were also seen as a great threat by the CCP. Both Xinjiang and Tibet, especially the Uighurs and Tibetans, are required to implement a real-name system when purchasing knives. In Xinjiang, even when buying kitchen knives, you have to have your ID card and a QR code engraved on the knife. What a sick system this is.
As a Han Chinese, the restrictions are even stricter. I clearly remember the big banner hanging at the train station, “Carrying knives such as daggers is punishable by two years of re-Education through labor.” Re-education through labor, a measure long practiced by the CCP as a form of illegal rule, allows the Public Security Bureau to hold people for up to two years on various charges without a court ruling.
Therefore, the CCP does not “discriminate” against any ethnic group when it comes to the control of firearms and other knives, and all people must bow down and listen without objection.
Countries that have strict controls on guns and knives and other so-called weapons are not necessarily communist countries, but communist countries do have strict controls on guns.
In the United States, the Democratic government wanted to implement strict gun control, and the result was a popular rush to buy guns.
In January and February of this year, the number of people buying guns rose dramatically. According to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), more than 7.7 million background check applications for gun purchases were accepted nationwide, up from 5.4 million in the same period the year before. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) accepted more than 7.7 million gun purchase background check applications nationwide, more than 5.4 million in the same period the year before, and more than 2.7 million in the same period a decade ago in 2011, a full 5 million more.
In January, NICS processed more than 4,317,000 background checks for gun purchases. Ten of those states had more than 100,000 of them. The highest number was in the U.S. state of Illinois, with more than 1 million.
In February, NICS processed another 3,442,000, with seven states exceeding 100,000.
In one year in 2020, NICS processed nearly 40 million background checks for gun purchases, an increase of about 40 percent compared to 2019, reaching an all-Time annual high. The U.S. Concealed Carry Association (UCCA) notes that 2020, amid the Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots and the Communist China virus (COVID-19) pandemic, has prompted a large number of Americans to purchase guns to protect themselves and the safety of their loved ones.
FBI data also shows that the slightly slowing trend of background checks for gun purchases rebounded after the U.S. election last November, with the figure approaching 4 million in December, of which California alone accounted for more than 135,000.
The Epoch Times surveyed a number of Chinese Californians, many of whom, seeing the deterioration of law and order in the last two years, and concerned about the Democratic Party’s gun ban, went on to buy guns.
One 60-year-old Mr. Xiao, who had lived in a communist country, said, “I went to buy a gun back in June last year, when I couldn’t get one, and waited for a long time before I finally got my first one. Before that, in a communist country, we didn’t have any right to freedom and freedom of speech, much less the possibility to buy a gun. If the people had guns, the government was afraid to die. Now, you see what is left of the right to freedom for Americans? If even the right to buy a gun is gone, it doesn’t seem to be much different from a communist country.”
Susan, a South Canadian who just legally bought her first gun in February, said, “No one likes violence, but now it’s leftist policies that are violent against us, and we need to be able to defend ourselves. Like we buy guns legally, we buy guns that won’t hurt others, just to protect ourselves and our families. That is our constitutional right, we can choose to buy a gun legally or we can choose not to buy a gun. But the choice should be ours and must not be taken away and swayed by the left.”
She added, “I have many friends around me who never thought about buying a gun until last year’s Epidemic, and then, as the left’s policies became more and more outrageous, all protecting prisoners, people got upset and started buying guns to protect themselves.”
Last year, California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom released more than 10,000 prisoners, including felons, citing the epidemic. In addition, California has seen a spike in crime due to increasingly lax prison policies, various bills on felony leniency and cuts in police funding. In the first week of 2021 alone, 47 people were shot and killed in the city of Los Angeles.
Talking about California brings to mind the 1992 Los Angeles riots when the Korean community formed a self-defense militia and successfully fought off the rioters.
In 1992, a major riot was also triggered by the beating of black people by white police officers. This riot lasted for four days (April 29-May 2) and rocked the world through the media. A total of 53 people died during this period, and property damage was estimated at $800 million to $1 billion. There were approximately 600 arson attacks and about 10,000 arrests.
In addition to the Los Angeles Police Department, approximately 10,000 California National Guard troops and thousands of U.S. Army and Marine Corps soldiers were deployed to suppress the fires.
Korean-owned stores in particular suffered targeted destruction; approximately 2,280 stores operated by Korean owners were looted, set on fire and vandalized, resulting in financial losses of approximately $400 million.
On the afternoon of April 29, a large mob gathered several kilometers away from Los Angeles’ Koreatown, located on the west side of downtown and known as West Los Angeles. Several large Los Angeles gangs declared a truce so they could work together to sweep through Koreatown.
The rioters had grabbed a number of guns and ammunition from stores at the time and were outnumbered. On April 30, Korean residents began to organize themselves into armed defense teams.
When the mob stormed into Koreatown, they found themselves confronted by a militia that was more organized than they were. The Koreans who ran small stores and gas stations were suddenly all armed to the teeth, armed with all kinds of long guns, and relying on fortifications made of concrete piles, vehicles and furniture, stood on the rooftops and engaged the mob in an all-out war.
The entire Korean population had to serve in the military, and any more scrawny Koreans had once received four years of formal military training in Korea. They clearly had more combat experience than the mob. For while many people were buried in the streets throughout the day, only one Korean died. From then on the nickname “Koreans on the Roof” was given to them.
The Los Angeles riots are not the key to our discussion, nor is the feud between Koreans and blacks in Los Angeles the topic we want to talk about. What we are talking about is whether the people have the right to protect themselves when riots come and the government does not provide protection (whether the government has no choice or intends to do so), and if so, with what?
In the early American continent, the land was sparsely populated and the rule of law was not yet in place. Family property was threatened, it was impossible to wait a month for the police on horseback, so it was inevitable that the right to own a gun. Eventually American independence was fought by the militia. Yet the right to own guns in the U.S. Constitution is not just for these historical reasons. The founding sages of the United States, always wanted to establish a small government society, relying primarily on civilian self-government, to achieve economic success and social stability and prosperity. Thus the self-arming of the populace is the reason, and the result, of maintaining a small government in this country. How many guns does the American civilian population have? No one really knows; some surveys suggest that there are about 300 million or more civilian guns in the United States.
Guns need to be managed, but how they are managed is a big question. In modern society, guns actually help the vulnerable rather than the powerful. Imagine if the US had no civilian guns at all, any criminal could presumably break into any house at will. Especially in older neighborhoods, they can run amok because they are usually young and strong enough to sweep through an entire neighborhood with a stick, or their bare hands. But having a gun is a different story. An eighty year old grandmother can still be very deadly. Don’t criminals have to think twice when they enter a private house?
Also, even if all guns were banned, it would really only ban law-abiding citizens, and those criminals would still be able to find guns, which would only make them more rampant. The police are limited in number and it is difficult to intercept crime in its entirety, so banning people from owning guns may create a bigger security loophole.
The current gun ban by the Democratic government is, in my opinion, putting the cart before the horse. On the one hand, opening the borders opens the door, so to speak, to syndicated crime, and also reduces the investment in police, leading to an overall increase in crime; but on the other hand, it wants to ban guns completely, which is tantamount to weakening the public’s efforts to protect themselves.
I suspect that there are people who want crime in the US to skyrocket, leading to social pandemonium, and then people who want a big government can justifiably establish a super-government of universal surveillance. I hope this is just a conspiracy theory and not true. But communist regimes do this, and as someone who has lived under a communist system, I can’t help but be on high alert for this possibility.
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