Rohee berates Granger over gun licence revocation desire

Former Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee has said that President David Granger’s plan to revoke gun licences from civilians is baseless and will not address the problems of crime and violence in society.

During a news conference on Monday, Rohee contended that launching such a massive campaign based on sheer hearsay was wholly unwarranted.

“Is this the basis on which this campaign is going to be launched? Hearsay? Shouldn’t such a campaign be evidence-based rather than speculations-based?” he queried.

President Granger recently said he heard stories of private citizens renting their guns to criminals.

He also expressed his desire to have fewer firearms in the hands of private citizens and primarily in the hands of law enforcement officers.

But Rohee argued that if Government wanted to address the issue of illegal firearms in the country, it must start from 1979.

“If Government wants to address illegal firearms in Guyana, the first thing they must address is the missing 237 weapons, among them semi-automatic weapons that were issued by the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) in 1979 to the Ministry of National Mobilisation and Development,” he stated, indicating that he too “heard stories” that this practice could be thriving once again today.

Rohee also pondered whether Government, in its effort to get guns off the streets, would be amending the Firearm Act to make licensing of firearms more restricted or to bring it in line with the United Nations Resolution to regulate civilian ownership of guns.

The politician reminded that once the Government’s crime prevention strategy continued to fail, then fear would exist in the population.

In this regard, he posited that fear was the main driver of gun ownership in the nation.

On his weekly televised programme, “The Public Interest”, President Granger said that the Administration would be working towards seeing fewer guns on the streets by scaling down the number of licences issued to private individuals and revoking those already distributed.

The President indicated that that may be the reason why so many weapons were in the hands of the criminals.

Former Speaker of the National Assembly Ralph Ramkarran also lambasted the Head of State over his comments, arguing that there were no statistics or other evidence publicly available to link lawful gun ownership to the high level of gun crimes.

He posited in his weekly blog “The Conversation Tree”, “If, as the Government argues, private owners are renting their firearms to criminals, how come no one has been charged? This indicates that the evidence against private gun owners is slim or anecdotal.”