The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Like most of our problems, the answer to the reduction of violent crime in this country is maddeningly simple.

Almost all murders in The Bahamas involve illegal handguns. The availability and even the price of illegal handguns in The Bahamas directly reflects the penalty for being found with one. Criminals will even tell you that.

Yet every time we have another murder, an assortment of police and politicians bore us with monotonous rubbish about young men being able to resolve their differences – as if bad tempers, rather than robbery and criminal enterprises, were the motivating factor behind epidemic levels of violent crime.

Through it all, one thing is certain: if the penalty for having an illegal firearm were commensurate with their impact on our society, murders in the Bahamas would be drastically reduced.

In that light, it is interesting that Andrew Holness, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, is now actually calling for the death penalty for simple possession of an illegal firearm – with the only possibility of a lighter penalty being where the convicted person provides information as to where and from whom he obtained it.

While I do not personally support the death penalty, this is the right kind of thinking if Jamaica (and The Bahamas) is ever going to start addressing the impact of illegal guns.

Unfortunately, in The Bahamas, the judiciary and certain politicians have contrived to ensure the prevalence of illegal firearms will continue no matter how successfully the police make arrests, because the penalty for possession is so light and bail (even for murder) is readily available as a mechanism for revenge killings.

ANDREW ALLEN

Nassau,

November 29, 2021.