President David Granger recently announced that his administration will be taking steps to reduce the amount of firearms and other weapons that are issued to private citizens by the State.
He reasoned that such a step is necessary, given the growing concern over the rising levels of crime and criminality in our society and his Government’s recent ‘discovery’ that some licenced firearm holders were “renting” their weapons to criminals to commit crimes.
President Granger said that the firearm holders were engaging their unscrupulous acts in order to earn part of the “booty” that is oftentimes taken from citizens by criminals after the robberies and crimes.
He went further to express concern too that an increasing number of illegal weapons and small arms were finding their way into the hands of private citizens and criminals as a result of the illicit trade occurring across the country’s border with Brazil.
It is clear therefore he believes that the reduction of the issuance of firearms to private citizens is an integral part of the crime fighting plan being devised by his Government.
Since making the statement, the President and his Government have again faced a slew of criticisms from both ordinary and key stakeholders in the fight against crime. While some were bold enough to express their concerns about the statement on social media and in various parts of the mass media, others chose to express their worry about the move in private.
The truth is, the President’s statement on the subject of the issuance of gun licences was not well thought out. It sent the wrong message to private citizens who are already being forced to pursue vigilante justice and other forms of self-protection against criminals who appear to roam this country with an emboldened posture and political immunity in some cases.
By further attempting to disarm law abiding private citizens, the Government is playing right into the hands of criminals. Surely, President Granger must know that public confidence in the country’s law enforcement agencies is very low. He must know that Guyana would plunge into chaos if citizens were just to sit in their homes and depend on the Police Force to protect them without investing millions in private security gadgets and alarms.
If citizens are no longer able to fully protect themselves against those who come not only in the middle of the night to steal and destroy but now in the bright daylight, then the President might as well declare a State of Emergency.
One would have hoped that the President would have been a tad wiser and announce a plan aimed at further investigating the high-powered weapons and AK47 riffles that went missing from the army many years ago and ended up in the hands of the criminals who wreaked havoc in this country. He could have even asked for an audit of the weapons stock of the Police Force and the amount of firearm licences issued to private citizens, businesses and other agencies with a view to understanding the entire picture.
Maybe it would have been wise for President Granger to share the statistics which he has either from the Public Security Ministry, the Police Force or some survey that led him to the conclusion that guns in the hands of private citizens were partially responsible for the crime wave. It would have been even wiser for the President to announce new measures, apart from the wardens he spoke of, to tackle the illicit inflow and trade of weapons between Brazil and Guyana.
He could have even chosen to announce parts of a robust plan to fight the criminal elements wreaking havoc on private citizens and sucking the blood out of innocent families as of late.
President Granger and his heavily protected ministerial pool can never understand the pain, anguish and emotional trauma faced by ordinary and sometimes very hard working Guyanese families when they become victims of robberies, murders, break and enter as well as larceny and other forms of gun-related crimes.
Unless he gets on the ground and does more than public courtesy calls, he is not helping the situation. After all he is the brain child of one of the most ineffective and dangers policies that sees convicted criminals being released from jail almost regularly now under the guise of giving first-time offenders a second chance.
Until the public knows who they are and what crimes they committed, no one will feel safe. That aside, President Granger refuses to fire one of the most ineffective, arrogant and boastful Public Security Ministers this country has ever seen since the early 2000’s.
The public must demand better from this Government that is saddled with ex-police and military officers at every tier. It is time for Granger to leave the army headquarters where he keeps his cabinet meetings in secrecy and State House. Maybe a walk along some area of the country without security will prove interesting for those who wield executive power.
