By Andrew Clunis

We are living among some brutes in Jamaica; people who are devoid of feeling. There is no sympathy, no empathy just a cold hard desire to inflict pain and suffering on their fellow man.

The hoodlums who carried out that mass gun attack in Commodore St Catherine which left several persons dead, including a four year old child fit the description.

When such atrocities happen we often say “get the guns” and that is useful but not good enough. Guns aren’t manufactured in Jamaica and although the Jamaica Constabulary Force has performed remarkably in removing record numbers of illegal guns from our streets they just keep coming.

That is a problem that will require a big fix and will have to depend on getting more assistance from the United States where most of the guns originate. There has to be a much better effort on the export side to stop the guns leaving America in the first place so they don’t reach Haiti, which is the major transshipment point for guns coming into Jamaica.

Then there is the need for better intelligence on the ground to see who is receiving the guns and where they are stored. It is obviously a major economic activity involving hundreds of thousands of dollars and as long as it remains lucrative long will it continue.

According to Senior Superintendent of Police Patrea Rowe the drugs for guns trade is alive and kicking. 50 pounds of ganja gets you a handgun while 100 pounds gets you a rifle. Herein lies another major problem because the government has never been able to effectively dismantle the ganja trade. Some will say that the small man is being harassed out of a livelihood but we can all see the damage that ganja can do when used as currency in the drugs for guns trade.

But we have an even bigger problem still because a gun on its own does not get up a shoot people. We need to figure out what is going on in the minds of our people. How are we able to produce such villains who spare no thought for life and are willing to turn their weapons on innocent civilians?

Something is broken and in need of an urgent fix. Perhaps there needs to be high level psychological studies conducted on murderers when they are caught to understand their thought process and what turned them into stone cold killers. What is their motivation and why they disregard the deterrence that is in place.

If the murders like the one in Commodore are being fueled by gang warfare surely the police can do more to apprehend and isolate the actors because we have heard time and again figures on the number of active gangs in Jamaica. It is time to stop them before they stop us.

Better use can be made of the anti-gang legislation to lock away those who have nefarious intentions. But the burden cannot be on the police alone, citizens need to be more proactive and provide information that can lead to the disruption of these gangs.