(Jamaica Observer) Bruce Golding- led administration is examining the feasibility of a gun amnesty as part of its drive to rid the streets of illegal weapons.
“It is something that we are examining because we will not preclude any approach that would reduce the supply of guns in the society,” Security Minister Dwight Nelson confirmed in an interview with the Sunday Observer.
The idea of a gun amnesty was revived in the wake of the late-May Tivoli Gardens incursion to flush out rampaging gunmen and apprehend accused drug lord Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, who is now in a US jail awaiting trial on drug- and gun-trafficking charges.
But Nelson, in the same breath, said that the immediate priority lies in cutting off the flow of illegal guns into the country.
“If you get 10 guns off the road and 20 guns come in, then you are two steps backward,” he said.
Nelson was responding to calls by influential clergyman Rev Al Miller and two other pastors for the measure to be implemented.
Miller’s call for a gun amnesty came during a recent sermon at his Fellowship Tabernacle church in St Andrew, during which he accused politicians of “unofficially putting guns in the hands” of supporters in bygone years.
“They must now officially take them out by allowing this amnesty and forgive their offences,” said Miller, who is now before the courts charged with harbouring a fugitive and perverting the course of justice after Coke was captured in the car he (Miller) was driving four weeks after the Tivoli operation. Miller said he was taking Coke to hand him over to American authorities at the US Embassy in Kingston.
Miller, who is temporarily off the National Transformation Programme in the Office of the Prime Minister, was subsequently joined in his call by Monsignor Michael Lewis, rector of the Stella Maris Roman Catholic Church, and Bishop Alvin Bailey of the Holiness Christian Church.
Notwithstanding Nelson’s pronouncement, a high-level security ministry insider told the Sunday Observer that there were reservations within the administration about declaring a gun amnesty for fear that it would not be a success and would attract mainly “old, rusty guns”, as was the case when former Prime Minister Michael Manley employed the measure in 1972.
Manley’s amnesty was also viewed as a failure because it attracted just 723 guns. Under an amnesty, persons who surrender their illegally possessed guns are granted immunity from possible charges.
Whether or not an amnesty is declared, history will show that Golding’s is not the only administration to be haunted by the result of Manley’s amnesty, which was the second to be declared in Jamaica.
Despite myriad calls, no administration has, since 1972, implemented the measure. Not even Manley made a repeat of the amnesty, even though Jamaica’s gun-related crime rate had spiralled further out of control when he again took office in 1989 after losing the 1980 general elections to the Edward Seaga-led Jamaica Labour Party.
Eleven years ago, KD Knight — the security minister during a period of the PJ Patterson-led People’s National Party (PNP) Government — was faced with the nagging task of silencing illegal guns. But he refused to declare an amnesty, despite calls from the then commissioner of police, Francis Forbes, who lamented the “unsatisfactory” recovery rate of illegal guns.
