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DO NOT MAKE ELIGIBLE APPLICANTS THE SCAPEGOATS FOR TUESDAY LAST
How does one make sense of what happened this past Tuesday in Georgetown where a businessman is said to have gone on a shooting rage, and in the process killed four persons including two policemen who had gone to the scene to investigate a report?
This may have been a first for many years for Guyana, but in recent times such terrifying ordeals have been experienced in other countries, including in the United States, where an ex-marine went on a shooting spree, killing persons, including law enforcement officers.
These terrifying incidents involving the use of personal weapons will, as they have done in the United States, raise questions about gun control. But is the issue really one about guns being in the wrong persons’ hands? How were the authorities to know that someone they had legitimately granted a gun licence to would have gone on such a blitz?
Many years ago, a fairly respectable citizen who was ailing, decided that he did not want to live any more. The pain that he was experiencing was too much for him. On a New Year’s Eve he went in front of a funeral parlour, took out his licenced firearm and ended his life. How were the authorities to predict that this would happen?
You simply cannot predict everything or try to control every situation. There are some things that you simply cannot control, and in life you have to try to do the best with the things that you can control and hope for the best in respect to that which you cannot control.
You cannot do anything about the weather. But you can buy an umbrella – one that is strong and sturdy. You do the best with what you have control over and hope for the best with what you cannot control.
What happened to those four innocent persons was very sad. It is a terrible thing, one that breaks your heart. But to try to say that the authorities were wrong in granting this man a firearm licence is asking the authorities to be in control of things which they have no control.
There should be proper screening of all applicants for firearm licences. But to suggest that the authorities should have demanded a mental health certificate is really to ask them to do too much. From all accounts, the now dead miner who killed the four persons this week did not previously display any symptoms of depression. Therefore, how is any doctor to know that this man had or would have developed a mental condition?
The system cannot be changed every time there is an incident. Gun crimes have become a major problem, but the problem is more one of illegal weapons than it is about those who are in possession of legal weapons. How are legitimate businessmen to protect themselves if there is a rolling back of gun licences?
What needs to be examined is not whether this man who killed four persons this past Tuesday should have been ever issued a firearm licence. What needs to be determined is how come he was allowed to maintain his licence when he was known to have shot himself a few years back.
The police are known to seize your firearm after the slightest incident. And there has to be an investigation before a decision is taken to return it to you.
The question therefore that needs to be asked is how was this individual who shot himself able to have his firearm returned, if indeed they were ever seized following the incident where he shot himself.
Four persons are dead and the public is looking for a scapegoat. That scapegoat must not be persons who are waiting for their firearm applications to be processed. These persons must not become the scapegoats for what happened, because what happened was from all accounts unpredictable.
But the fact that someone who had an incident involving the use of a firearm could have continued to be granted permission for the lawful use of a firearm, raises a number of questions. It is for the police to answer these questions and answer them truthfully.
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