It May Be Time For Mandatory Military Service And Arming The Population.…

In a recent conversation my wife and I debated whether humans are killing each other at more alarming rates today as compared to centuries ago?
Or whether information which flows ²⁴⁄₇ into our spaces creates the impression the sky is falling?
Needless to say at the end of the discussion we were no nearer an answer than when we first started the conversation.
The fact is that regardless of the truth behind this issue, what is not in question is that humans have always had a desire to kill each other.
Whether it was barbaric medieval slaughter which saw battlefields littered with the corpses of thousands of gored and impaled once breathing human beings, or the dropping of Atom bombs which obliterated entire cities vaporizing hundreds of thousands in an instant and many more as time passed, our specie has constantly sought out new ways to inflict maximum pain and death on each other.

So what is it which makes humans so cal­lous , so bru­tal, so indif­fer­ent to the life oth­er humans? I do not pre­tend to have the answer.
What I do know is that through­out his­to­ry humans have built mas­sive for­ti­fi­ca­tions to keep them­selves safe.
Despite the fact that America dropped two Atom bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sup­pos­ed­ly to end the car­nage of world-war two, it may be argued that oth­er nations arm­ing them­selves with nuclear weapons , may have some­thing to do with the fact that no oth­er coun­try has used a weapon of that mag­ni­tude since 1945.

Our innate desire to kill is cat­a­loged in the Biblical book of Genesis, Cain in a fit of jeal­ousy alleged­ly mur­dered his only broth­er Abel.
David a revered sym­bol of the Old Testament killed Goliath and count­less oth­ers. He even had his trust­ed sol­dier Uriah sent to the front of the bat­tle so he could be killed because he had impreg­nat­ed his wife.
Yet David is said to be a man of God’s own heart.
Does this means that the God of the Bible sanc­tion killings?
After all, the old tes­ta­ment is replete with sto­ries detail­ing God’s inter­ven­tion in sup­port of those in whom he found favor. He is said to have deliverd their ene­mies into their hands.
In instance after instance the ene­mies of the friends of God usu­al­ly end up on the busi­ness end of the sword.
According to the New Testament book of John chap­ter 18 – 10 ‚Simon Peter then, hav­ing a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear’ the slave’s name was Malchus. They had come to take Jesus to take him away to be crucified.
Would Peter have cut off the ear of a mighty Roman sol­dier or did Peter cut the ear from the ser­vant of the high Priest sim­ply because he could?

My point is that some­times vic­tims are vic­tims because they are seen as week , inca­pable of defend­ing them­selves. A per­son car­ry­ing a gun is like­ly to feel pow­er­ful if he is the only per­son armed with a gun.
Even the odds a bit by arm­ing all cit­i­zens with­out crim­i­nal records, and put in place seri­ous penal­ties for improp­er use of guns. That ought to reduce the sense of pow­er crim­i­nals have over the unarmed population.
There is evi­dence that in cas­es where this is done ‚gun crimes are dras­ti­cal­ly reduced.

In 1982 the Town of Kennesaw Georgia saw crime drop 89% after Legislators passed a law which man­dat­ed that all homes have at least one firearm with ammunition.
Framers of the law said though crime was not the rea­son for the law the drop in crime can­not be ignored as a byprod­uct of the law. Since then crime in Kennesaw has remained and has­n’t gone back to for­mer num­bers even though crime has spiked in neigh­bor­ing coun­ties of Decatur and others.

The nation of Switzerland has a some­what sim­i­lar his­to­ry as the United States hav­ing won its inde­pen­dence in a rev­o­lu­tion­ary war fought by an armed cit­i­zen­ry. In 1291, sev­er­al can­tons (states) began a war of nation­al lib­er­a­tion against Austria’s Hapsburg Empire.
In Switzerland almost every adult male is legal­ly required to pos­sess a gun. One of the few nations with a high­er per capi­ta rate of gun own­er­ship than the United States, Switzerland has vir­tu­al­ly no gun crime.
Additionally dur­ing World War II, Hitler want­ed the Swiss gold reserves and need­ed free com­mu­ni­ca­tions and tran­sit through Switzerland to sup­ply Axis forces in the Mediterranean. But when mil­i­tary plan­ners looked at Switzerland’s well-armed cit­i­zen­ry, moun­tain­ous ter­rain, and civ­il defense for­ti­fi­ca­tions, Switzerland lost its appeal as an inva­sion tar­get. While two World Wars raged, Switzerland enjoyed a secure peace.

Jamaica like many of the world’s oth­er nations have seen incred­i­ble amounts of it’s cit­i­zens cut down by thugs with guns while the inno­cent are forced to jump through hoops to secure a reg­is­tered firearm. The fact is that those who use guns to inflict death on oth­ers hard­ly uses reg­is­tered weapons to do so.
In the United States where School shoot­ings occur with alarm­ing fre­quen­cy the data shows they occur in areas where all guns are banned.
I am not sug­gest­ing that every per­son be allowed to car­ry a gun but it cer­tain­ly evens the odds if inno­cent law abid­ing cit­i­zens have the same rights maraud­ing crim­i­nals do.
Citizens who own firearms and are well trained in the safe and effi­cient use of them are a seri­ous deter­rent to those who would prey on the innocent.

As more and more cit­i­zens become prey to crim­i­nals it may be time that a more seri­ous pol­i­cy deci­sion be tak­en to arm the citizenry.
This can eas­i­ly be done through leg­is­la­tion which puts in place seri­ous back­ground checks. This would include psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion and manda­to­ry con­tin­u­ous train­ing while increas­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly the penal­ties for gun crimes.
This by itself is not a sil­ver bul­let which will dri­ve down crime, but it is one more thing which will seri­ous­ly pos­i­tive­ly impact this out of con­trol crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica which nei­ther the Government nor the police know how to handle.

Oh by the way From age 21 to 32, a Swiss man serves as a “front­line” troop in the Auszug, and devotes three weeks a year (in eight of the 12 years) to con­tin­ued train­ing. From age 33 to 42, he serves in the Landwehr (like America’s National Guard); every few years, he reports for two-week train­ing peri­ods. Finally, from ages 43, to 50, he serves in the Landsturm; in this peri­od, he only spends 13 days total in “home guard courses.”
Jamaica too should imple­ment a pol­i­cy of manda­to­ry mil­i­tary ser­vice which does not nec­es­sar­i­ly include weapons training.
Recruits would be trained in life’s skills which will aid their devel­op­ment after they leave the service.

Government could aid with Job place­ment and loans for them to start their own busi­ness­es after they com­plete their service.
If a high school grad­u­ate is head­ing to col­lege that indi­vid­ual should be exempt from mil­i­tary service.
In most devel­oped nations mil­i­tary ser­vice pro­vides worth­while skills , Jamaica can emu­late these ideas to it’s benefit.
Additionally the dis­ci­pline derived from mil­i­tary ser­vice is sure to have a pos­i­tive impact on the young peo­ple who ben­e­fit from it.
This ought to trans­late into more round­ed pro­duc­tive citizens.

Arming law abid­ing cit­i­zens and exer­cis­ing social con­trol of the young is prob­a­bly all a coun­try like Jamaica is left with if it is ever to con­trol the rag­ing crime monster.
The chal­lenge is how to do so over the howls of con­dem­na­tion which is sure to emanate from the legions of peo­ple who con­demn every attempt to deal effec­tive­ly with crime.