Gun News Daily links to an article from Arab Times reporting that Kuwait has raised the penalty for gun possession from a five year sentence to a ten year sentence. Kuwait bans all firearms possession, except that the wealthy and well-born have a very limited ability to acquire hunting guns.

Regarding gun control, the policy of the Kuwaiti royal family for Kuwait appears to the same policy that Saddam Hussein had for Kuwait, except for milder penalties. Hussein had decreed the death penalty for any Kuwaiti possessing firearms without his permission, and had ordered that all guns be surrendered to the Iraqi army.

After Americans died to put the Kuwaiti royal family back on the throne, one royal family member announced, immediately after the cease fire: "The first thing we must do is to disarm the resistance to restore order." In other words, take the guns away from the brave Kuwaitis who had been fighting for their homeland, in order to assure the continued rule of a royal family that danced away the war in Cairo nightclubs.

Once back in Kuwait, Interior Minister Hamoud Sabah decreed a 15 year prison term for citizens who fail to surrender their guns. (Since the, the penalty has apparently been reduced and then recently increased.) Since the Minister's decrees have been repeatedly ignored, the government enforced the ban with house-to-house searches.

Said one Kuwaiti resistance fighter: "We trust no one; the guns are the only protection we have from the Palestinians and the government. We earned these guns. We stayed here and fought. The government didn't." [Before 1991, Kuwait had a huge population of Palestianian guest workers, many of whom supported the Saddam invasion. Afterwards, they were expelled.]