EDITORIAL - The new gun ID fallacy

Thursday's launch of the new high-security firearm's identification card seems to highlight a problem which hitherto was never recognised in any public forum. Pronouncements by the police and the national security minister suggest that the new ID cards will assist in clamping down on the trafficking of illegal firearms across the island by the underworld.

According to National Security Minister Peter Bunting, the old-style booklet was being phased out because it was vulnerable to fraud, including replacement of photographs. Are we to understand that criminals have been stealing guns, and the booklets with them, and then replacing photographs of the legal owners with their own? Or is it that illegal guns were being registered by fraudulently converting these booklets? What, we ask, is the correlation between legal gun ownership and criminal activity in Jamaica?

The new credit card-style identification includes critical information that will allow the police to verify the authenticity of a licensed firearm holder while they are on patrol. That is a good and necessary measure.

And we are a bit surprised that this capability was not within the grasp of the police, given the background checks that have to be done on applicants and the demand for proper records of gun and ammunition sales by brokers.

In further explaining the necessity for the new card, Assistant Commissioner Kevin Blake is reported to have said: "So right away it will plug that hole that is exploited as opportunities for criminals to elude the police when they are travelling with illegal weapons."

It may be tempting to use this as an argument to justify the change to a new system, but is this "hole" really a serious challenge for the security forces? And why have they been silent about it?

GUN PROBLEM

Jamaica has long had a problem with illegal guns. Tighter gun control is a hot-button topic today. There are said to be 65,000 registered guns and perhaps twice that number of illegal guns. More than 1,000 people are killed each year by gunmen who are running amok across the country, so we are in the grips of epidemic violence. However, it was never an established understanding that the guns being used by criminals to perpetrate crime had crossed ownership from legal to illegal owner.

For sure, gun ownership comes with certain responsibility. A gun owner has the responsibility to report a weapon stolen. We recall the well-publicised case of the Rev Al Miller who did not secure his firearm while picking plums and was criminally charged after the weapon was stolen from his motor vehicle. The case was unique because rarely had we seen gun owners punished when their weapons fell into the wrong hands.

And the Firearm Licensing Authority (FLA) was thrown into the spotlight a few years ago when it was discovered that it was less than thorough in its background checks of applicants, with the result that a deportee who had served time for gunrunning and drug smuggling in the United States had been issued a gun.

We suggest that the problem is not with legal gun owners who follow the prescribed procedure in acquiring their weapons and in keeping them secure. However, if there are rogue gun owners in the population, the FLA has a duty to identify them and weed them out. The process has to be transparent and thorough. If the new ID can assist in this job, this may indicate some way forward in curbing violence.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.