Guns are back in the news again, this time as a topic on the agenda of the Canada-Caricom summit ten days ago. The substance of what was said there about illegal firearms was not markedly different from what had been discussed at a Caricom Heads symposium on crime and violence held in April this year. While in Canada, Prime Minister Keith Rowley spoke from a wealth of experience in relation to confronting crime in Trinidad, and made reference to an explosion of illegal arms and ammunition in the Commonwealth Caribbean in recent times, which had also seen a proliferation of assault weapons. “We are losing,” he said, “about 15 people a day in the Caricom region, nearly all of it from the use of firearms.”
Trinidad has a particular problem in terms of drug and human trafficking gangs, and while Guyana has not reached anything like that stage, it is clear nevertheless that gangs have made their appearance at some level here over the last twenty years. Whatever the case, what can be said without fear of contradiction is that this country is awash with guns. The Guyana Police Force can preach all it may about the statistics indicating a decline in the number of serious crimes, but the public knows better. They know that robberies in particular, are invariably committed by men with firearms, and that more often than not someone is shot in the process. Even relatively minor disputes are sometimes ‘settled’ with a gunshot.
Citizens open their papers every morning, or check social media, only to find themselves assailed by reports of crimes involving firearms. This month alone at a Chinese restaurant in Success a contractor was attacked by three suspects, one of whom had a gun. It may be that his licensed 9 mm pistol was the primary objective of their assault, because they seized it before running off. Then there was the motorcyclist who was shot dead at the Ogle traffic lights after a night of bar-hopping, or the man who fired shots at three others, injuring one of them.
There are any number of cases to choose from covering the rest of the year, such as the man gunned down in West Ruimveldt after returning from a dance, or the labourer and his girlfriend who were shot and injured outside a night club in Bartica. There was too the shocking case of Olato Sam, who was drinking with his friends in Plaisance, and was not the target of the bullet which killed him. In another ugly crime three masked men with firearms and a cutlass entered a house in Wismar with intent to rob it, and then killed a woman’s husband along with her father.
There was even the case of a police sergeant being shot in the head, and another involving the robbing and murder of a GDF Lieutenant. Not even members of the security forces it seems, are immune from being shot by bandits. The older generation of Guyanese must ponder whether this is really the same Guyana they once knew. While since the 1960s this country has been no stranger to crime, it did not involve firearms as is the case nowadays, where every petty criminal with a revolver in his hand becomes a potential murderer. In the old days petty criminals committed petty crimes.
While the Canada-Caricom summit was focused on illegal firearms, Guyana has a particular problem of its own with legal firearms. An inordinate number of licences for these has been given out, and for many years there have been allegations about corruption in relation to their issuance, both of the pecuniary and the political kind. The 2012 announcement of the establishment of a Firearm Licence Approval Board by then Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee did nothing to introduce objectivity and order into the system, let alone reduce the number of licences issued.
About a year ago Minister Robeson Benn was reported as saying that the government was planning to reform the process for the issuing of gun licences. “We are going to be changing the laws, changing the requirements, insisting on training because many people still when they get a gun think it’s something to show off with …” he was quoted as saying. He subsequently went on to say that following a review, some people could lose their licences. This all sounded very promising, except that nothing more has been heard of it since.
In the meantime there is still the matter of illegal guns to contend with which has proved a challenge, not just for the GPF, but for other regional police forces as well. At the symposium earlier this year the Caricom Heads declared a ‘War on Guns’ in order to “combat the illegal trade which provides the weapons that contribute significantly to crime and violence in our Region …” They called on the US to join the Caribbean in this war, and take action to stop the illegal export of firearms and ammunition into the region, the consequences of which were accounting for a “disproportionate share of national budgets”. Governments, they said, had as a result to allocate resources to deal with crime, violence, national security and health-related challenges.
Some Caricom states, namely Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, The Bahamas, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago had joined an amicus curiae brief in Mexico’s appeal in a civil lawsuit against US gun manufacturers. Mexico City seeks to hold US gun makers responsible for facilitating the trafficking of firearms across the border. This case aside the problem with the United States is that its own gun laws are so lax, that it would probably be difficult to get it to invest in the resources necessary to prevent the export of firearms legally obtained within its jurisdiction.
Where Guyana is concerned, the problem goes well beyond interdicting imports of illegal guns and ammunition from the US. That nation may be the primary source of firearms for the islands and Belize, but it is only one of the sources for this country, which has borders that leak like a colander. There are some weapons arriving from the States, as the find of an M4 rifle and a Tech 9 pistol with an ammunition magazine destined for Guyana indicates. They were seized at Miami Airport some three years ago, and they may have been discovered because they were packed alongside six pounds of marijuana, which is probably what initially attracted officials’ attention. More recently, a few days ago eight 9 mm pistols and 11.2 pounds of cannabis were found in a barrel posted to this country during a routine customs search of Laparkan’s Timehri bond.
But Guyana also has lengthy borders with Brazil and Venezuela to contend with, and it has long been known that many Taurus pistols emanate from the former nation; our neighbour has a Taurus factory, and under previous president, Bolsonaro, gun control was lax. Every now and then arms seizures by the police in Lethem are reported on, but one suspects that these are the tip of the iceberg. Less is known about Venezuela, although a little over a week ago the police at Arakaka, North West District, arrested three Venezuelans who were found with three unlicensed firearms and ammunition. They were also in possession of cocaine and marijuana. Given the substantial rise in the number of those entering this country from Venezuela, one imagines that the possibilities for black-marketers and others of a criminal bent to bring in weapons have increased dramatically.
Quoting the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, Reuters reported that the high rates of gun violence in the Caribbean were being fuelled by small-scale trafficking, largely from the United States. One researcher told the agency that shipments often consisted of up to a couple of dozen guns hidden among food or clothing, and that logistical issues prevented the screening of every shipping container and package. More than half the 29 trafficking networks the Small Arms Survey studied through court reports, used shipping containers, mostly located in Florida, while one in five used commercial airlines.
The fact that the trafficking is mostly small scale undoubtedly applies to Guyana too, although in our case as already indicated, the US is not the only source involved. Given the problem of our borders and human resource limitations, it is reasonable to suppose that the Police Force here does not have any comprehensive strategies for addressing the importation of illegal weapons. Certainly when finds are reported in some location, rightly or wrongly the impression is derived that these are serendipitous, such as when last week a man dropped a bag containing a gun and five rounds of ammunition after seeing a patrol van near the Caricom Secretariat.
Do the police know, for example, whether there are any networks bringing some of these guns in, as opposed to individual criminals seeking a weapon or weapons for themselves, or to hire out to robbers? Could the Commissioner of Police not give the public some profile of who the gun-runners are both in terms of our borders and the US, and what plans they have to deal with the situation? And who actually does the hiring out of guns? Does the Commissioner know anything about that? The Budget had allocated $58.6 billion towards public safety and security for 2023. So every citizen, not to mention anyone who keeps a cake-shop or a store and is at special risk, will want to know what, precisely, this money is being spent on. Because it does not appear it is on interdicting the inflow of guns.
