I HATE to pour cold water on footballer Dennis Lawrence’s suggestion of a gun amnesty.

I must, however, state that it simply cannot work.

Jack Warner knows this, but is running away with it to promote his own political ambitions.

Even the Commissioner of Police Trevor Paul scoffed at it.

In his own inimical style and choice of words, he said that just one gun was brought in the last time this was tried.

That was under the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) Government of 1986 to 1991.

And the reason for that amnesty, as many yet irrefutably reports have since stated, was NAR’s attempt to recover a cache of weapons it had put in the hands of an unsavoury lot, in the event election results went the other way.

As it turned out, that amnesty could not prevent the five-day idiocy of mid-1990, the surrender of which yielded more guns than the amnesty itself.

Before going any further, let me give you my own conclusion on this: Gun amnesties cannot work.

Not without a seriously punitive legal measure making the gun so hot that people feel happy for this chance to get rid of theirs.

In the Trinidad of old, yes, but not since the gun has been glorified for us via television, rap music, etc.

More than that, the gun means two things to the youth of today: (1) An easy meal ticket, and (2) a form of self-defence against their bandit kin and law enforcers, either of whom -- their paranoid little minds must prompt -- could show up on their door steps any moment now.

With that, I bet you not a single gun comes out through that so-called Soca Warriors Gun Amnesty, unless, of course, this move is so deeply political and sinister, that some guns are thrown in the mix to claim the exercise yielded result.

JACK WARNER

PM PATRICK
MANNING

CoP
TREVOR PAUL

DENNIS
LAWRENCE

However, I have a recommendation: That we get serious about human life and, secondly, that we adopt a zero-tolerance attitude towards handguns.

Before developing this I must first state that this, too, won’t work because no one can, or would dare legislate for businessmen.

Still, zero tolerance towards handguns calls for legislation against possession or use of a handgun except in the hands of law enforcers. Handguns must be outlawed for use by private security firms and private citizens.

All licenses as issued under current considerations must permit only the use of a stipulated gauge of rifles.

The “considerations”, meanwhile, must be reviewed to stiffen the requirements for gaining a permit.

Further, there must be no private importers of guns or weaponry, except the Ministry of National Security itself.

They, in turn, must be required to lease guns to licensed holders, as guns must no longer be a person or company’s property.

Legislation must be written withdrawing bail for those caught in possession of handguns and unlicensed firearms.

Penalties for mere possession must be stiffer, bordering on extreme.

Penalties for those who wound with a firearm must attract life sentences.

Penalties for those who kill with a firearm must attract capital punishment, notwithstanding other technical considerations like “crimes of passion”, “motive” and etcetera.

This is what true, zero tolerance is.

But, as I said, it will not happen here because no one has the political will to stop businessmen from making a living, even if businessmen do so by using legal import licenses to make illegal importations that cause the loss of life.

Oh, and it’s everyone’s constitutional right to own a gun to take a life to protect some material possession.

My suggestions will not work for this and many other reasons, you may see.

But a gun amnesty will not work without it.

There must be a strong incentive to encourage a youth of today to give up his bread and butter and protection.

None is stronger than aggressive law. Not even cash incentives.

That was tried in South Africa last year and yielded 17,692 guns -- 17,692 guns that would hurt no one else.

But the failure of this yield was that a high percentage of these guns were legal firearms, some of which were vintage stuff they inherited and were too eager to get rid of -- for a price.

The majority of illegal guns stayed in the system well past the three-month amnesty deadline.

After all, as was stated above, the gun is what one amnesty exercise concluded is “an economic tool of another order; it connotes power and the right to expropriate”.

By December 15, 2005, South African authorities turned 50,000 guns into a river of molten metal.

These guns were raked in by a variety of police anti-crime operations, the amnesty and/or owners.

It fell short of the 62,000 destroyed one year earlier when there was no amnesty.

But, as one member of a group targetting gun use in South Africa said, while these figures are good, “the manufacture and trade of small arms must be dealt with”.

Amnesty “success” in South Africa did not prevent local companies from selling weapons to countries with appalling human rights record and to governments involved in some of the world’s nastiest conflicts.

Canada has long prided itself as having less violence than neighbours USA and the rest of the world.

Still, it registered a record of 52 gun-related deaths last year -- double that of the previous year.

Canadian officials said the problem stemmed from United States exporting its violence.

Prime Minister Paul Martin said the weapons used for crimes in Canada were brought in illegally from the United States and that America (border hawks that they are) was not doing enough to stem the flow.

America’s response was similar to what they have been telling Jamaica, which recorded 1,600 gun-related deaths last year: That it was “too difficult and expensive to deeply monitor shipments from the US for illegal weapons”.

Jamaica looked at the question of amnesty last year and human rights lobby group Jamaicans for Justice surmised that amnesty is “worthless if police are not able to clamp down on the flow of illegal firearms into the country”.

A Jamaican MP, tabling a resolution, contended, quite rightly, that gun amnesty must be followed (I prefer accompanied) by severe penalties for gun possession.

TnT’s Prime Minister Patrick Manning has categorically stated that there would be no gun amnesty, “particularly if it involved paying money to persons to turn in their weapons”, because “the money could be used by criminals to upgrade their existing weapons”.

He is definitely in harmony with cynics who say amnesties assume there is a critical mass of persons who want to change their lives and to hand in their guns in exchange for community economic projects.

Bear in mind one studied commentator on Jamaica’s proposed gun-for-projects exchange observed, “the use of the gun may be a high-risk enterprise, but its potential rewards are high and bereft of the perceived drudgery of work”.

And there is another spin, he added: “In any event, it is highly debatable that many of the persons who fire the guns are ultimately the ones who have the power or control to give them up.”

In any event, gun amnesties require the police to turn a blind eye to those using the opportunity to ditch murder weapons.

Brazil, which has the world’s fourth-highest murder rate with 40,000 gun-related murders in 2005, forked out (US) $3.3 in a yearlong amnesty to get a targeted 80,000 guns off the streets last year.

This came with tighter rules on gun permits, a ban on the carrying of guns in public and strict penalties for owning an unregistered gun.

Aggressive punishment must, therefore, go hand-in-hand with gun amnesties (although neither has so far dented Brazil’s gun-murder record).

While it may be expedient for some to gain political mileage on the young footballers’ humble cry to bring in the illegal guns, we must be honest for once and tell it like it is.

It won’t work!

And I hope none of our players get hurt in the process.