Guatemala Offers Bikes-For-Guns Exchange

[Mil Novecientos Once]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...04/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/guatemala_guns_for_bikes
Guatemala Offers Bikes-For-Guns Exchange

Thu Jun 3, 8:53 PM ET


GUATEMALA CITY - Give up that old pistol and Guatemala's government will give you corrugated metal sheets for roofing. Two guns will get you a new bicycle. Three gets you a sewing machine.



President Oscar Berger on Thursday announced a plan to reduce the number of guns in Guatemala by letting people trade them for valued goods.


Speaking at a party political event, Berger said he would officially announce the new program on June 9, a day dedicated to the destruction of weapons.


Interior Minister Arturo Soto told The Associated Press he would urge other Central American states to offer similar programs.


Berger did not say how much the program would cost.


Guatemala has seen years of soaring crime rates and violence, and reducing crime was a major campaign issue in last year's presidential race, which Berger, a former Guatemala City mayor, easily won.


The government says there are 236,000 legally registered weapons in Guatemala, but non-governmental groups estimate there are 1 million guns in the impoverished country of 11.3 million people

 

[Gump]

Gump gathers bikes and buys plane ticket to Guatemala

 

[Oleg Volk]

Fewer than one gun per 11 sounds like abject poverty to me. However, half of the population is under 18, so it works out to one gun per 6 adults or so. Still, that's pretty poor, unless those guns are crew-served.

 

[Sawdust]

Gump gathers bikes and buys plane ticket to Guatemala

Uh, one clean computer monitor over here, please.

Sawdust

 

[Standing Wolf]

...non-governmental groups estimate there are 1 million guns in the impoverished country of 11.3 million people...

Looks like a Taurus marketing opportunity to me.

 

[Kodiak AK]

It will never work . Ever .



There is a group of Guatemalans and El Salvadorians that work the docks up here .


They will be the first to tell you they are a proud people that understand a man with out a gun is nothing .

After all the death squads down that way , you will always have hold outs that will never stand by and live threw that again.

 

[RED-DOG 40]

And if you turn in Five guns you get a Blender and a roll of Toilet paper......

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