Danger persists from those fun explosions

Are we sinking because we can’t swim or because we are deliberately diving to the bottom knowingly without air? The fact is, the law has not evolved apace with the robust entertainment explosive demand. Is it sensible that any person, even a murderer, could discharge shotgun- like entertainment explosives in gangster-turf style on celebratory occasions, whether drunk, sober or in-between? Recently a grandmother lost a finger saving her grandchild when a scratch bomb was thrown into her car.

Pistols and machine-gun fire are easily camouflaged by entertainment explosives, as occurred with our nation’s first murder (conveniently forgotten) in 2016 (of a six-year-old child) in Beetham Gardens, or the innocent man who was shot in the back by a gun while onlookers thought it was entertainment explosives. Are we “conveniently forgetting” again and again?

Are people with criminal records permitted to get hunter’s licences for double-barrel shotguns? Obviously no, yet any convict can buy any amount of any kind of entertainment explosives and discharge them outside the Port-of-Spain Prison if they choose. Is this sensible? Are we sending the right message to our youth?

Should the law not require entertainment explosive licences in the same way we have shotgun licences for hunters (without police records), who have limits of where they can discharge in relation to human settlements, and of which specie they can kill?

Shouldn’t entertainment explosive detonations also have a limit as to when, how much, how long and where they can discharge their dangerous entertainment explosives?

Hunters must hunt in the forest, not in parks and neighbourhoods, so too shouldn’t entertainment explosives be zoned, not just anywhere — thrown into passing cars — by anyone, at anytime?

Is it enough for distributors to say they follow the law when they know fully well that the law is behind the pace of public demand for these dangerous entertainment explosives?

Can anyone imagine what we are doing to our dolphin, whale, fish, crustacean and micro-organism underwater when the “expert” authorities close one eye and approve marine seismic survey detonations anywhere, anytime, anyhow, and we gasp at whales, turtles and dolphins which beach regularly?

Can you imagine how marine species including lower food chain creatures function/mate/eat or spawn with the same type of entertainment explosives that occur unregulated underwater?

The question right thinking citizens must ask is whether entertainment explosives detonated at the expense of the aged, the terminally ill, or the innocent is uncivilized conduct, and what is the lesson we are teaching future generations if our Parliament legislates loosely so that this danger persists?

Must more grandmothers lose fingers, or worse, saving grandchildren before our administrators recognise their pivotal regulatory role? Our parliamentarians must do better.

Gary Aboud secretary, FFOS