Commentary I have many Tibetan friends. Whether in Tibet in the past or later in the United States, when Tibetans tell the story of their families during the period in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) entered Tibet, many of them usually begin with the same event: the full-scale confiscation of guns. Most Tibetans live as nomads, so weapons are an important part of their lives, used against wild animals and human beings as self-defense. In 1950, the CCP and representatives of the Dalai Lama signed a 17-point agreement not to carry out “reforms” in the Dalai Lama-controlled areas of Tibet, preserving their original institutions and way of life. But on the west bank of the Jinsha River, one of the first things the communist army did was to confiscate guns on a large scale. Tibetans in Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan provinces rioted and fled in large numbers after a …