Russia suffers from gun control, but Biathlon is a different story, as the Boston Globe reported:
…biathlon in Russia is more than a sport: It evokes a multitude of cultural, social, and historical trends spanning more than a millennium. During the Soviet era,biathlon became a metaphor for expressing national values of speed, self-sufficiency, and military readiness, built on decades of rigorous inculcation by the state. In the aftermath of two recent terrorist bombings in Volgograd—formerly Stalingrad, a city equated with wartime devastation—the sport’s military overtones take on even greater significance at Sochi, located close to the home territory of regional Islamic separatists. So, while Americans are viewing biathlon as a quizzical sideshow, Russians will be watching their very national pride hang in the balance.
Although the USSR did not participate in the Olympics until after World War II, sport, and especially skiing, was part of the national defense program almost from the country’s inception in 1917. Along with the first five-year plan for industrial development in the 1930s, Joseph Stalin introduced the Ready for Labor and Defense Program, a physical fitness protocol for workers and students. Two of the mandatory disciplines, for both men and women, were cross-country skiing and rifle marksmanship. Thus, every citizen in the USSR was exposed to the fundamental principles of biathlon, decades before the sport was introduced.
Read the entire article here: http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/02/02/why-russians-love-biathlon/YoMnAtzOvC0QT8Ar69yf8J/story.html
Of course, this doesn’t Stalin was pro-gun, yes, some hunters were allowed to keep their weapons (massive gun ownership was never common in Russia), but as one anti-gunner pointed out:
Russians never had a tradition of gun ownership before or after the Bolshevik Revolution. The Czars, like most Royal rulers, never allowed the “right to bear arms” for their people, or many other rights that Americans think everyone is endowed with.
Most Russians in the early 20th century were too poor to buy a weapon. Sure people had hunting rifles, but they were mostly owned by the ruling & merchant class.
The Bolsheviks did not pass a law to confiscate guns from the ruling or bourgeoisie class when they took over. They murdered them en masse and confiscated all of their property including their guns, if they had any.
Source: http://forums.military.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/409192893/m/1940079992001
How convenient, that sort of like saying Hitler was cool about guns because he mostly confiscated them from Jews. As Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary after the Warsaw Rebellion, “This just shows what you can expect from Jews if they lay hands on weapons.”
Source: http://www.infowars.com/yes-hitler-stalin-did-take-the-guns/
The Soviet gun law passed in 1929 was aimed at the military officers and military retired (the only groups in Russia that posses guns of significant quantities,) whom Stalin planned to purge. There was no mass confiscation of guns and then the defenseless population was slaughtered. Stalin killed and imprisoned millions in the 1930s. He did not need a law gun control law to do so.
Two more facts:
Most countries who have a history of rule by royalty or dictators do not have a history of citizens owning guns (Japan, India, Germany, most countries of the world.)
No federal law has EVER been passed that allows for the confiscation of any weapon that belongs to a law abiding American citizen.
The Point – freaking out about the government taking your guns and enslaving you is just crap.
Counterpoint?
You provided your own counterpoint by pointing out what happens in countries that don’t have a history of citizens owning guns. Frankly, with Scalia admitting that someday the U.S. Government will be putting American citizens in internment camps, just like FDR did, I would rather prepare for the worst than hope for the best.
I would rather fight like they’re confiscating my guns tomorrow.