Editorial | Jesse Norman should call out US on guns

It is not known if, or for how long, Jesse Norman, will hold on to his job as Britain’s minister of state for the Americas and Overseas Territories. Rishi Sunak, the new prime minister, has not yet got around to shaping the second tier of his government.

Mr Norman, however, may believe that his chances are better than ever to stay in government and in the post he has occupied since September, when he was brought back to the Commons front benches by Mr Sunak’s predecessor, the hapless and fleeting Liz Truss. The good news for Mr Norman is that Mr Sunak has kept his boss, and Mrs Truss’ appointee, James Cleverly, as his foreign secretary.

The point is, Mr Norman not only has the ears of the people in the highest reaches of the British government, he, up to now, has a major hand in the formulation of policy for this side of the Atlantic, especially the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Critically, too, the governors of the British territories in the Caribbean, including the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, ultimately report to Mr Norman.

AGGRESSIVE IN HELPING

Which brings us to the remarks he made in Kingston this week about the prevalence of illegal guns in Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean (none of which are manufactured in the region) and his call for a partnership, presumably between Britain and the Caribbean, to deal with the issue. This newspaper supports the sentiment. But, as we said before, if Britain is serious about elevating its participation in the fight against violent crime in the region, it has to be aggressive in helping to close off the major sources of the weapons that cause most of the mayhem: the United States.

Jamaica’s problem with criminal violence is well known. The island has approximately 1,400 murders a year. Its homicide rate is around 50 per 100,000.

Jamaica may be the extreme, but this is not solely a Jamaican crisis. Neither is it only a problem of the independent countries of the Caribbean, as the governor of the Turks and Caicos Islands, Nigel Dakin, made clear earlier this month. In a statement to the territory’s assembly, Mr Dakin lamented the presence of Jamaican gangs in the territory, which were engaged in violent turf wars with gangs of other nationalities.

Notably, up to September of this year, the Turks and Caicos Islands – including many that are uninhabited – recorded 16 murders in its 46,000 people, who occupy 366 square miles. Mr Dakin called for more intelligence sharing among Caribbean countries to counter cross-border gang activities. But a critical issue is the flow of firearms to the Caribbean, which, in Jamaica’s case, are used in nearly 80 per cent of homicides.

Mr Norman said: “It is important, I think, to focus on the reduction of flow of guns. As Prime Minister (Andrew) Holness said, Jamaica does not produce guns … . It does not have an industry of guns. But as with many other Caribbean islands, it suffers from ported guns manufactured and sold elsewhere. And as we look for solutions to the plague of violence in the region, we must work together.”

US HAS TO DO MORE

The “elsewhere” to which Mr Norman referred is primarily the United States. So the Americans have to be part of the “we” who must work together. Technology to help detect contraband, such as what Mr Norman delivered to Jamaica Customs Agency this week, will be part of the effort. But the United States has to do more to slow the outflow of small arms from its territory. It is not enough for the US government to hide behind the supposed constitutional right of Americans to own and bear arms as its tepid response to this deadly Caribbean crisis that its industries, and citizens, help to foster – and fester.

Which is where Mr Norman and Britain have a role. He identified a problem in the part of the world for which he has portfolio responsibility, including in territories to which the obligation is constitutional. Britain never tires of preening about its special relations with the United States – an unbreakable transatlantic alliance, of sorts. It is past time the UK leverages that relationship in the interest of the safety and security of a region in which it has a stake.

In that regard, Mr Norman must go beyond making circumlocutory remarks in Jamaica. He should frankly tell the Americans about their irresponsibility on the small-arms trafficking question and publicly call out Washington on the matter. He should also urge Mr Sunak and Mr Cleverly to make the gun trafficking issue a central plank of Britain’s Americas and Caribbean policy. Indeed, the Brits will not have anyone to deal with in these parts if the region’s citizens are all dead from gunshots, fired from weapons manufactured in the United States and illegally shipped to the Caribbean.