Newly Proposed Mandatory Minimum 15-years For An Illegal Weapon Long Overdue…

Jamaica is not in the busi­ness of man­u­fac­tur­ing guns unless you think the one-pop qual­i­fies as a gun; nev­er­the­less, the coun­try is awash in guns and ammunition.
There is a whole cot­tage indus­try around gun crimes, mor­tu­ar­ies, cof­fin-mak­ing, setup-bands(sic), etc.
The gun and sta­tus cul­ture that Jamaicans so read­i­ly idol­ize cre­at­ed the need for pri­vate secu­ri­ty com­pa­nies that have become major play­ers on the Island.
Institutionalized gov­ern­men­tal dis­in­ter­est caused those with mon­ey to invest in the macabre death indus­try rather than a vio­lence-free Jamaica where all can ful­fill their full poten­tial. In oth­er words, crime will always be with us so let’s ben­e­fit from it. We should not be fooled into think­ing that there may not be a direct need for dead bod­ies to feed the grow­ing mor­tu­ary indus­try that has sprung up around the country.
The police say some of the guns are com­ing into the coun­try from Haiti in what is known as the guns for drugs trade. This pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge for the secu­ri­ty forces, the Government, the peo­ple of Jamaica. Largely so because the coun­try’s bor­ders are extreme­ly porous and dif­fi­cult to police.

A sig­nif­i­cant amount of ille­gal guns and ammu­ni­tion enter the Island through manned ports; this is inex­cus­able. The gov­ern­ment must ensure that the per­va­sive cor­rup­tion that has char­ac­ter­ized the Customs Department for years becomes a thing of the past using technology.
Jamaica has one of the world’s low­est police-cit­i­zen ratios; in 2012, there were 316 police offi­cers to every one hun­dred thou­sand Jamaicans.
Barbados, by com­par­i­son, had 489 to every hun­dred thou­sand sur­veyed a year lat­er, and Trinidad &Tobago had 482 to each hun­dred thou­sand cit­i­zens in 2012.
We may not want to admit it, but there is a direct cor­re­la­tion between one of the world’s low­est police to cit­i­zen ratios on the one hand and, on the oth­er, the world’s high­est mur­der rate per one hun­dred thou­sand cit­i­zens. Jamaica ticks the box in both scenarios.
That is not to say that if Jamaica were to hire more police offi­cers, we would have less crime in the not too dis­tant future.…..However, if we sud­den­ly had more hon­est police offi­cers to man and patrol our ports and har­bors, it is quite like­ly we would con­fis­cate more guns and ammu­ni­tion. If that strat­e­gy is built out, over time, with less access to guns and ammu­ni­tion, we would inex­orably have few­er mur­ders and oth­er vio­lent gun-relat­ed crimes.

Some of the most press­ing issues com­pound­ing the nation’s crime-fight­ing efforts are inef­fec­tive laws, an incom­pe­tent judi­cia­ry, and cor­rup­tion in pub­lic bod­ies. I com­mend the present admin­is­tra­tion and the min­is­ter of National Security for tabling leg­is­la­tion that adds seri­ous teeth to the gun laws. The present draft, if passed, would give offend­ers 15-years impris­on­ment if they are con­vict­ed on an ille­gal weapons charge.
[per­son­al­ly , I would have pre­ferred if the pro­pos­al was for 25-years and a much larg­er penal­ty if one is con­vict­ed of hav­ing an ille­gal rifle capa­ble of tak­ing mul­ti­ple lives in a sec­ond. We must break the back of this gun-lov­ing mur­der culture.
If you do not want to go to prison for a long time, do [not] pick up an ille­gal weapon. As I have said repeat­ed­ly, the fight against the young killers must be enjoined by every arm of the gov­ern­ment, instead of what cur­rent­ly exists where the courts are going in one direc­tion and the pros­e­cu­tion and police anoth­er. In addi­tion to that, oth­er arms of the Government have agen­das that do not align with the inter­est of law-abid­ing Jamaicans.
The unavoid­able truth is that the nation’s laws and courts make it easy for crim­i­nals to com­mit crimes and encour­age would-be crim­i­nals to become lawbreakers.

Currently, the aver­age Jamaican is caught up between the gang­sters who kill for fun and a sys­tem that gives gun licens­es to wealthy and influ­en­tial Jamaicans and crim­i­nals who have mon­ey to pay. The poor are left to fend for themselves.
Those of us who worked in law enforce­ment have long heard whis­pers that you have to pay to get a license to car­ry a firearm legal­ly. Let us not kid our­selves. This has been going on since the police ran the thing. To add some con­text, the FLA’s rules make it so that some police offi­cers who risk their lives for oth­ers do not qual­i­fy to get a license. How non­sen­si­cal is that?
It is as ridicu­lous as the police depart­ment say­ing, ‘we can­not allow offi­cers to keep their firearms because we do not trust them.’ But you trust them to car­ry a firearm to police the pub­lic; how come they can­not be trust­ed to keep the weapon when they go home to pro­tect them­selves and their families?
After all, why would those who have total con­trol not sell access to guns? If you need a pass­port or birth cer­tifi­cate, you have to pay; the same is true for a dri­ver’s license. How could we expect cor­rupt offi­cials not to cap­i­tal­ize on this goldmine?

The new leg­is­la­tion by Minister Chang is long over­due; it will begin to set the stage that final­ly, the gov­ern­ment is get­ting seri­ous about the blood­shed in our coun­try. The Government also float­ed a gun amnesty amid over­whelm­ing firearm-relat­ed crimes in the coun­try. “This amnesty would allow per­sons who have ille­gal firearms to sur­ren­der firearms and ammu­ni­tion with­out pros­e­cu­tion,” [Chang said]. I am opposed to a gun amnesty, as stat­ed in the arti­cle linked on the subject.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​g​o​v​e​r​n​m​e​n​t​-​s​h​o​u​l​d​-​n​o​t​-​b​e​-​c​o​n​s​i​d​e​r​i​n​g​-​g​u​n​-​a​m​n​e​s​t​y​-​h​e​r​e​s​-​w​hy/

It will not be a panacea or a sil­ver bul­let, ‘if passed,’ but it will at least remove from the judge’s hands the abil­i­ty to turn mur­der­ous gun-tot­ing killers back onto the streets as soon as the police arrest them.
If there are peo­ple on the judi­cia­ry receiv­ing mon­ey to let gang­sters walk or if there are any judges with oth­er rea­sons for want­i­ng those crim­i­nals on the streets, this leg­is­la­tion would go a long way in end­ing that corruption.
Sure, more gang­sters will spring up and pick up guns; that’s okay, put them away for long stretch­es until they get the message.
I will be watch­ing the debate on this bill very close­ly to see which mem­bers of the People’s National Party will be oppos­ing this legislation.
We will do our best to ensure that they wear the brand crim­i­nal sup­port­er very well.
The oppo­si­tion PNP has pledged its full sup­port for the bill through its leader Mark Golding; how­ev­er, one oppo­si­tion MP and a tri­al lawyer Peter Champagnie already rebutted the idea of strong sen­tences, insist­ing that fin­ger­print DNA must be tied to the con­vic­tion of offenders.
In oth­er words, if there is no fin­ger­print, no con­vic­tion. I’ll tell this clown what will hap­pen in light of his stu­pid argu­ments; gang­sters will wear gloves. The insin­u­a­tion that the word of the police is no good for recov­ered firearms is as ludi­crous as the motive of Champagnie is questionable. 

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, a free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.