The controversial call by Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) senator, Prudence Kidd-Deans for the arming of the society in the face of the prevailing high murder rate, has not found favour with the Jamaica Rifle Association (JRA), popularly known as the gun club.

“First of all, it’s not a right of every Jamaican to bear arms, like in the United States where their constitution states so explicitly,” said Andrew Chin, acting president of the JRA. “There must be strict conditionalities. In some cases it can put the person at more risk.”

Chin is also a member of the recently established Firearm Licensing Authority that has replaced police commanders as the persons responsible for granting gun licences.

“In certain areas, if you have a gun you become a target,” Chin cautioned. “I would like to think that you would want more people having firearm licences, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say make it easier. What you want is to level the playing field so that those who qualify can get access,” he said.

The JRA has a membership of between 800 and 1,000 persons, but estimates of licensed firearm holders in Jamaica range from 28,000 to 30,000. Figures on illegal firearm holders are, not unexpectedly, harder to come by.

Kidd-Deans set off the controversy when she argued in the Senate recently that all members of the public who qualified for firearm licences, and who wanted and could afford the weapons, should have easier access to them. She also called for the removal of bureaucratic impediments to granting gun licences.

The senator was willing to take a guess that 75 per cent of Jamaica’s legislators on both sides of the political divide were licensed firearm holders, and she noted that those who qualified were provided with security personnel, in contrast with other Jamaicans who “must abide by the rules of the state and, at the same time, tremble with fear at the possibility of the gunman’s bullet”.

“Every level of bureaucracy should be removed to facilitate the application of every decent, law-abiding Jamaican who has applied, and who fit the criteria for a firearm licence (and that such a person) be granted one unhesitatingly and expeditiously (so) that such a person can become a front-line soldier in his or her defence,” Kidd-Deans told the Senate.

She afterwards told the Sunday Observer in an interview that criminals would at least be forced to think twice before pouncing on people if they thought there was a chance that they would fire back.

Government removed responsibility for granting firearm licences from the police and put them in the hands of a civilian board, citing concerns about corrupt issuing of gun licences.

In 2004, police seized 300 firearms believed to have been issued to shady characters and investigated six former commanding officers at the height of an islandwide probe into the alleged corrupt issuing of gun licenses.

In some instances, applications for gun licences were alleged to have been approved on the very same day they were submitted to the police, leaving no time for due diligence, while in other cases the purchaser’s permits to buy the guns were approved even before the applications were granted.

Some 4,000 gun license applications were tendered last year, but only a small fraction of that amount was granted.

Supporting Kidd-Deans, former police commissioner Col Trevor MacMillan said placing more guns in the hands of responsible citizens would deter crimes.

“Think about it, haven’t you heard of cases where armed citizens have intervened to stop a robbery or save someone’s life? It can work,” said MacMillan, a former army man who now heads a private security firm.

What was required, he said, was for corruption to be removed from the process of granting firearm licences.

“They had a system, the system was adequate, they (the government) should have dealt with the corruption in the system, not change the system,” he declared.

MacMillan was against a civilian board as the best way to go about the issuing of licenses and feared that they might get bogged down in details. He questioned what objective rationale would be used to determine who got a licence.

But Chin, who has owned a firearm for some 20 years, saying he had only used it in practice, insisted that more guns might not be the solution to the country’s crime problem. Furthermore, he pointed to a lack of quantifiable evidence or data to show that owning a gun actually made one safer.

“There’s no ‘yes and no’ statistics,” he said. “We don’t know, for example, how many licensed guns have been lost, how many licensed firearms have figured in foiling robberies or other crimes, nothing tangible. We need to study it carefully.”

He said that in his experience, some individuals tended to undergo a personality change once the gun was in their hands.

“Some people get an itch to use it once they have it. They feel invincible and sometimes it makes them more confrontational because the gun is the great equaliser,” he observed.

Chin also noted the effect of having an illegal gun on groups such as inner-city youths among whom the outlook was “once I have a gun I have power of earning”.

“Guns are not the solution to Jamaica’s crime problem,” Chin said. “Better education and social programmes will have a more positive effect.”

He also noted that anyone who had a gun needed to determine whether they were prepared to use it to take a life, noting that it was an “awesome responsibility”.

Kidd-Deans for her part, conceded that only qualified persons should get gun permits, but stressed that there was a strong case to be made for broadening access, so long as the person satisfied criteria such as not having a criminal record, possessing a certificate of usage from an established firing range and was assessed to be of sound mind.

She said the Colonel John Simmonds-led board appeared to lack “a standard” and that too much appeared to be riding on the discretion of its members, including whether the person in question was at risk because of the nature of their work, such as business persons making large cash lodgments.

“I am not suggesting that possessing a licensed firearm will stop people from being attacked, but it will be an essential psychological deterrent to that possibility,” Kidd-Deans insisted.