While covering Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s efforts to hold power, MSNBC reporter Kerry Sanders noted Maduro has the advantage of guns against an unarmed populace.

The MSBNC segment, published by The Washington Free Beacon, begins with anchor Andrea Mitchell expressing surprise that Maduro is still holding on.

Sanders responds, “Not only hanging on, but he appears to still control the military. You have to understand in Venezuela, gun ownership is not something that is open to everybody. So if the military have the guns, they have the power.”

Sanders adds, “So as long as Nicolás Maduro controls the military, he controls the country.”

U.S. Founding Father James Madison noted that one of America’s strengths was the fact that the people at large were armed. He used The Federalist No. 46 to describe “the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.”

He went on to explain that the people could band together to check a government that had exceeded its powers and become tyrannical. The people would do this by coming together in “militias,” with officers being “appointed” by local, “subordinate governments” to which the people were attached. Their banding together would be meaningful because the people were armed.

Without guns, the people could still band together, but their options would be limited to throwing stones, sticks, soda bottles, or whatever else they could get their hands around. In the meantime, the soldiers of the tyranny would have guns with which to overpower them, as seen in Venezuela.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.