For more than two months in Colombia, civil unrest has spilled over into riots and vandalism, and clashes between demonstrators and the police have erupted in violence. Scenes of citizens taking up arms are opening old wounds in a country that had appeared to be moving towards peace after decades of civil war.
But even before the protests, [María Fernanda] Cabal, a 57-year-old conservative senator from the city of Cali, proposed rolling back Colombia’s restrictive gun laws. The move would let buyers cut through the byzantine bureaucracy that stops most civilians from owning weapons and allow them to transport guns in their cars.
In a country riddled with organized crime and scarred by a history of kidnappings targeted at the wealthy, Cabal argues that citizens need greater freedom to carry their guns.
“The life of a citizen should not be worth less than the life of a criminal,” said Cabal in an interview with VICE World News.
— Wes Michael Tomaselli in Colombian, Trump-Loving Senator Has American Solution for Gun Violence: More Guns
