There is a new law going into effect right now that basically bans weapons in the cities of Yemen. The police have been stopping cars and doing searches and the general consensus is that they are stopping many people from carrying weapons around. It isn’t clear if it is an outright ban on guns or just banning them from being carried. It’s also not clear at this point if this was a presidential directive or something passed by parliament. I’m pretty sure that the right to own weapons is in the Yemeni constitution, but that has never stopped the president or the legislature from passing laws that they wanted to. It is fairly common for a law to be enforced even when everyone knows that it contradicts the constitution…
There are always potential problems when it comes to banning guns, especially when they were so common before. The most obvious one is that not everyone will be willing to give up their weapons. Especially here in Yemen where they have tribal significance, carrying a knife (the Jambiya) has long been a measure of your “manhood” here, guns just add to that. The other potential problem is one that we see in the US quite a bit. If everyone gives up their gun, that means that anyone that smuggles one in is free to do what they want. Washington DC is a prime example, they have had one of the worst gun caused homicide rate in the nation despite having one of the strictest gun control laws. That law has been struck down (it is pending in the US supreme court), with any luck the homicide rate will drop once that gets through the system. I don’t think that will be as much of a problem here. From what I gather, armed robbery, muggings, etc. are pretty rare here. In addition, there isn’t nearly the drug trade (and the associated violence) here that there is in the states. The main problems here are disputes (usually land and/or tribal related) that escalate into gun fights. The government is also claiming that the vast quantities of guns scares off tourists and even foreign investment. Those sound plausible enough…
I see this kind of like the Va. Tech shooting conundrum. If people were carrying guns, that nutjob wouldn’t have been able to rack up such a high body count. On the other hand, if guns were really common on campus, you could expect that the number of stupidity related gun accidents would rise. In the end, there is a relatively small chance that a lone gunman will go around shooting the place up, so it makes sense to limit guns on campus. Here, the chances of being robbed or assaulted are pretty slim, so limiting the number of guns makes some sense. It will be interesting to see if the lack of armed assaults were due to the deterrence factor of many people being armed. Will the would be robbers now feel that they have free reign? It is a common belief that most women here have a gun under their balto. My usual quip is that you need to be prepared, you never know when you’ll have to extract revenge…
One of the more interesting parts is that most bodyguards will no longer be able to carry weapons. People guarding certain government people will be allowed to carry pistols. I suppose the president can always assign some army troops with heavier arms if he feels the need to do so. I’m curious to see how this goes. Seeing a sheik with 3 or 4 Kalishnikov toting bodyguards is a pretty common sight. You can be sure that they will fight the new law tooth and nail, or at least claim that they are an exception (the typical “above the law” attitude that most sheiks seem to have.) The paper has already witnessed one sheik flaunting the rule, I want to see how the government reacts. My guess is that the government will allow certain ones, the ones the government needs favors from, to get away with it. The hell of it is that most sheiks do not need armed bodyguards, it is a status thing. They don’t feel like VIPs unless they have an armed entourage. I will be following this intently…