By EARYEL BOWLEG
Tribune Staff Reporter
ebowleg@tribunemedia.net
PRIME Minister Philip “Brave” Davis said the United States of America has made headway toward decreasing the illegal trafficking of firearms to The Bahamas.
During her visit to The Bahamas last year, US Vice President Kamala Harris announced efforts to combat gun trafficking, adding that a coordinator for the Caribbean Firearms Prosecutions at the US Department of Justice will be appointed to help crack down on firearm smugglers.
Mr Davis said on Friday: “As I indicated to them, their right to bear arms does not translate to their right to trafficking in arms. I must say that they have been working to try to clog the loopholes that permits the easy trafficking of weapons.”
The murder rate is up 27 per cent compared to the same period last year, according to Police Commissioner Clayton Fernander.
Mr Davis highlighted the challenges with the US legal and political system in regards to gun trafficking.
“You have Congress and then you have executive and the whole system being federal as it is,” he said. “The challenge is to respond as quickly and as nimbly as we would expect. But the relationship has just been improved. We are cooperating, collaborating to lessen the flow of guns not just to The Bahamas but to our regions.”
Commissioner Fernander recently said courts are not imposing penalties that are stiff enough for gun offences.
“I always had a problem with the penalty,” he said. “It has to fit the crime. We know that firearm, this is what is driving a lot of the murders, the homicides and even in the armed robberies. You get found with a weapon and I’m looking at ten to 15 years.”
Comments
hrysippus 1 week, 6 days ago
While the plugging of this loophole is a small improvement the bigger reality is that the USA reportedly has 300 million firearms in the hands of private citizens, most all of these firearms are unregistered. They will continue to enter our country through our porous borders. There is no way to stop this happening. Mexico has the right idea idea perhaps; sue the gun manufacturers.
Porcupine 1 week, 6 days ago
Precisely! Very, very few foreign vessels cruising in Bahamian waters are ever searched. Even if they were, do we not remember prohibition? Despite heavy fines, what curtailed the flow of liquor? Nothing. Think of where Bay Street would be if the......... There is NO WAY to stop the flow of guns if people want them. Period. Why do we refuse to learn? Why do we embrace the silly statements by men in uniforms? Do we ask the operating room janitor why the patient got sick? No, their job is simply to clean up the mess. Just like the police force. We somehow refuse to accept that we have raised a group of young people who have no respect for anything. Not each other, not adults, not even life itself. All one has to do is to look around Nassau to see what we are creating. Guns, knives, gasoline, acid, rocks, it doesn't matter. If people want to create harm and chaos, they will do so. No thinking adults in this room, hey?
ThisIsOurs 1 week, 6 days ago
Work on the money trail. Customs, immigration, police, defence force, politicians, illegal gaming, airline workers, boat captains, Bimini
killemwitdakno 1 week, 5 days ago
They need to invent traceability and share anything relevant in real time with us like persons on parole traveling here. Make a single easy system for searching whether a US person has a warrant.
We should ban travel for anyone with a gun offense.
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