"24 of your relatives have been arrested"; Putin; military gun-free zones

12-4-2019    "24 of your relatives have been arrested because of you.”  When a family acquaintance told me this in 2018, my mind exploded.  I couldn’t keep silent any more.  That was the tipping point of my 17 years living in America — years of constant fear and worry for the safety of my family back home in the Uighur region, a province called Xinjiang in Chinese (the word means “new frontier” or “new borderland”).
   I was born and raised in Ürümqi, the capital, and began my career as a presenter and producer for the state-controlled Xinjiang TV. In 2001, while on holiday in Austria, I listened to Radio Free Asia, a non-profit broadcaster offering the only independent Uighur-language news service outside China.  I was so impressed with their coverage that I contacted RFA and said I wanted to work for them.  Not long after, I joined the Washington DC bureau.  After my voice was heard on RFA — which the Chinese government views as a hostile foreign network because it is partly funded by the US government, my family became a target of the state.  My father, the director of the Xinjiang Museum’s archaeological research department, was forced to retire.  My cousins were demoted.  My friends and colleagues were questioned and forced to distance themselves from me and my family. All my previous work as a journalist was collected by the authorities and banned from use.  I was issued a “red notice” — which means I can never return home.  At the same time my family cannot visit me here in the US because the Chinese government denies them passports.  It’s been like that for almost two decades.

 -Gulchehra Hoja     In 2017 the situation in the Uighur region took a dramatic turn for the worse.  Since then more than a million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities have been forced into detention camps by the government as part of a massive programme to silence our culture and force assimilation.  According to camp survivors we have interviewed on RFA, people are being drugged with unknown substances that cause memory loss.  The detained can be subjected to terrible conditions, including starvation, sleep deprivation, forced sterilisation and torture.  Exposing the truth about the camps — even as the Chinese government initially denied their existence — has been the focus of our journalism at RFA for the past two years.  We have spoken to survivors, guards and officials and revealed the overflowing kindergartens and orphanages full of children whose parents have been detained.
https://www.ft.com/content/7ed40e3c-1624-11ea-9ee4-11f260415385
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-Inside Putin's Russia: Can There Be Reform without Democracy?

By Andrew Jack, pp. 58-9:  https://books.google.com/books?id=d1q1q8SL5-UC&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=%22konstantin+preobrazhensky%22&source=web&ots=6bLxSuF9Qj&sig=udrgG_2QX1aJj1L5iFNAA0gHqq8#v=onepage&q=%22konstantin%20preobrazhensky%22&f=false

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12-7-2019  Naval Air Station Pensacola firearm policy allows guns to be brought on base after obtaining approval from a commanding officer but notes that such firearms “may only be stored in the installation’s armory.”  Moreover, during transport onto the installation, all firearms are to be “unloaded and secured with a trigger lock and ammunition must be carried in the farthest most possible location away from the firearm.”

In other words men and women who have signed up for years of service to use advanced weaponry–including fully automatic weapons, guided missiles, drones with precision striking capability, and numerous other mechanisms–are forbidden from carrying a handgun on the station for self-defense.

Again we are not talking about a fully automatic M4, an MP5, or other machine gun or submachine gun.  Rather we are talking about a 9mm handgun for self-defense.  They are prohibited from carrying it even if they have a concealed carry permit on top of their military credentials.  The result is that no one can shoot back when an attacker pulls a handgun and begins shooting.

We saw the same thing at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009.  In that attack 13 innocents were killed in a firearm-based attack on a military gun-free zone.  We saw it again at Fort Hood on April 2, 2014.  In that attack three innocents were killed in a firearm-based attack on a military gun-free zone.

We saw it on September 16, 2013.  In that attack 12 innocents were killed in a firearm-based attack on D.C.’s Navy Yard.  As with the Fort Hood attacks, the horrific D.C. Navy Yard attack showed that if an attacker could succeed in sneaking his gun onto the premises, he was going to enjoy a period of time where he could shoot and no one could shoot back.  There are other examples that could be cited, but the point is sufficiently made–gun-free military bases create a problem.  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/12/07/hawkins-gun-free-military-installations-make-u-s-troops-sitting-ducks/