Saturday, February 10, 2007 Carvajal: Guns don’t kill, people do By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
ONE still reads in the papers daily of somebody being killed. Earlier it was ex-governor Anotnio Leviste’s business partner. The other day in Cebu it was a young customs personality. In between were a congressman, a mayor or vice-mayor and not a few activists. In all these killings the favored weapon is a handgun of high caliber.
The killings continue despite the gun ban because it is people, not guns, who kill. I am not implying that we should liberalize gun ownership. What I am saying is that if it is people who kill then the way to stop the killings is to keep track of all known lawless elements and impose a total and year round (not just during election) gun ban on them.
The existing gun ban only prevents responsible owners of guns from carrying them. The lawless, the irresponsible, the criminally bent, carry guns with no regard whatsoever for the law.
The killings continue also because the killers often get away with murder literally. The police are either unable or unwilling to solve crimes. They seem to be able to solve crimes only when there are witnesses. So when the killer, directly or by insinuation, threatens possible witnesses with death if they squealed, then there goes a killer that the police cannot touch anymore.
Moreover, if the government is really convinced that a strictly enforced gun ban can prevent killings, then there should be no exemptions. To give exemptions is to own up to one’s incompetence in enforcing the ban. Who will the exempted protect themselves from when everybody else is presumed unarmed? Exemptions are given because the government knows that the gun ban does not prevent the lawless from carrying a gun.
Killings by lawless elements and crimes of passion will always be with us. But what drives other people who feel grossly wronged to take justice into their own hands? The answer is mistrust of the justice system, when people do not feel they can get justice from a corrupt system coupled with the knowledge that they stand a good chance of getting away with it.
To stop the killings, therefore, we’re back to the need to eradicate corruption in government in general and in our justice system in particular. Absolutely nobody should get away with murder. One unsolved murder is always an invitation to another murder.
For this what we need is political will, not investigative commissions whose recommendations are not acted on anyway for what else but…lack of political will. We are hopelessly short of this will especially during election when the common good takes the back burner to the supreme goal of winning. When will we ever have enough of it? Not any time soon, the way UNO and Unity are shuffling their slates.
