If you’re like most Americans, seeing comments in your newsfeed on waking up Saturday morning that the U.S. captured the dictator of Venezuela was simply not something that you expected to see.
It’s like that phrase that you hear: “I didn’t expect to see that on my bingo card this year.”
Exactly. Especially with no casualties. On either side.
Whatever your thoughts about the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and his wife, it’s pretty impressive that our military pulled it off without anyone getting killed.
Not the easiest thing to do.
Now, sure, there are plenty of people on the political left saying that the entire operation was an exercise in regime change to give the U.S. control of Venezuela’s oil, and, to be fair, it is a lot of oil. As in Venezuela has more oil than any other country in the world.
So, the U.S. getting control of 30% of that would be a massive amount of oil.
But that’s not the reason given for capturing Maduro. It actually comes down to other charges, and while I’m open to considering the validity of two of the four charges against him, two of those charges strike me as being difficult to make stick in a U.S. court.
Watch Washington Gun Law’s overview of the indictment below, and see if you can spot what I’m talking about.
Now, narco-terrorism conspiracy, I can see. Conspiracy to import cocaine, I can see because it is alleged that Maduro and company were actively targeting the U.S. population to pour their drugs into in violation of U.S. law.
Both of those charges, it can be argued. have to do with activities on U.S. soil.
The last two counts in the indictment, though, have to do with firearms violations, and unless the DOJ can prove that those firearms violations (possession of machine guns and destructive devices and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices) took place on U.S. soil, I would think that it would be a jurisdictional issue.
Those didn’t (as far as I know) happen on U.S. soil, so, U.S. firearms laws wouldn’t apply to what happened in another country.
Now, admittedly, I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t play one on TV, so, it’s possible that I may be overlooking something here.
Am I wrong? Do you think that the gun charges will stick? Let me know what you think in the comments below.
