Frightening gun problem

If there was ever any doubt about the number of  illegal firearms in this country, they would have been removed last Friday. At the funeral of a murdered Unemployment Relief Programme (URP) foreman, URP workers gave their leader a “12-gun salute.” But, by the time police officers arrived at the scene, the gunmen had already dispersed. This incident also removes any lingering doubts that criminals hold the police in utter contempt. The daylight murders outside the Port-of-Spain jail and the Brian Lara Promenade showed this clearly. And that  these persons would so boldly discharge their firearms, secure in the knowledge that the police would never reach in time to arrest them, displays a key reason why crime has gotten out of control.

Also, the fact that this “12-gun salute” happened at the funeral of a URP foreman strengthens the argument that the URP is at the centre of the gang warfare now taking lives on an almost-daily basis — though Local Government Minister Rennie Dumas may well continue to deny this link. It seems safe to say, then, that there is a thriving gun market in Trinidad and Tobago. But where do these guns come from? All of them must be brought into the country at some point. So is it that our Customs officers are so ineffectual that these shipments just pass them by? After all, cocaine cargo has been regularly detected, but there has never been one case where illegal guns have been held — and, of course, this was how the Jamaat al-Muslimeen was able to attempt their 1990 coup. But, if the Customs Officers are not just ineffectual, are they corrupt?

Perhaps. But it is more likely that the majority of illegal firearms just don’t pass through official entry points. Cocaine, unlike guns, has to be re-exported, mainly to the United States, so that most detections occur at air or sea ports. But guns have only to be brought in, because they are used internally — often, in fights over drug turf or to protect shipments of illegal drugs. This means that the authorities cannot make a dent in the gun trade unless there are effective patrols of our coastline. It also means that the gun problem cannot be solved unless the illegal drug trade is also tackled, since it is this trade (along, apparently, with URP largesse) which provides the incentive to get guns. Indeed, it would be an interesting experiment to see how shutting down the URP would affect gun crimes, but we know this is not politically realistic. Still, it may be that making the system of job allocation fair and transparent in the URP may help considerably in this regard.

Given this seemingly intractable situation, it has been suggested that law-abiding citizens should be given gun licences. However, the experience of other countries suggests that more guns only leads to more killing. Easy access to guns increases the number of domestic murders and rum shop killings — and we already have enough of those. Nor does the populist idea of a gun amnesty help — in other countries, these programmes have yielded mostly junk guns, and the number of turn-ins don’t match the number of new guns, and bandits have no reason to surrender their guns, anyway. Clearly, then, this is a problem that is not going to be easy to solve. But, unless the authorities make gun control a priority in their crime-fighting plans, all their efforts will surely be for naught.