‘Disastrous’
Three social scientists have weighed in on the gun debate, arguing that allowing Jamaicans to arm themselves could open the way to more murders and mayhem.
According to Sociologist Clement Branch, who heads the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica is “close to having a culture of violence and more guns, more opportunities to arm oneself is likely to reinforce that culture of violence rather than take it in the other direction”.
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“Most of the violence in Jamaica is inter-community and inter-gang violence and these people are really well armed so that the availability of more guns will simply escalate that situation,” he told the Observer.
He said interpersonal violence could also worsen.
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“There is a fair amount of interpersonal violence and more than that, there is a substantial amount of interpersonal conflict and what this proposal will do in the short run, I think, is increase the deadly consequences of interpersonal conflict and violence,” Branch said. “So that before this proposal can become effective, I think that the police and the judicial system would be undermined by the share volume of incidents and cases dealing with interpersonal and personal violence.”
Anthropologist Dr Herbert Gayle agreed.
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“We don’t have a culture of violence yet. A lot of us still rely on the rule of law and so forth, but if we get to the point where everybody gets a gun – with our attitude and our romanticism of violence – it is not going to be successful,” he told the Observer. “Look at how we treat the term ‘man a bad man’, just for fun. And think of how much violence is a part of our masculine identity.”
The increased violence, he argued, would result in increased cost to the state.
“We are spending three billion dollars at the primary hospitals – which accounts for 12 per cent of the budget of the Ministry of Health – on just injuries alone. That does not include health centres or type-two hospitals. Now imagine if everybody have gun,” he said.
Psychologist Dr Pearnel Bell also shared the view that easier access to gun permits would do more harm than good, given the psychological risks.
“I am just imagining that father who accidentally killed his daughter. Psychologically, there are concrete problems for a family in that way,” said Bell, in reference to the case of teenager Pia Phillips who was accidentally shot and killed by her father last year while attempting to rescue her and other family members from gunmen who held them up at their gate.
She said there is also a risk to the society at large.
“The risk becomes greater if everybody is going to be armed,” she told the Observer.
“And we have a country of people, they are going to end up in a state of paranoia, looking for danger everywhere. All sorts of anxiety disorders and things could (erupt) out in the country,” she said, adding that even when armed, many people are indecisive at that moment of flight or fright.
Research has shown that the presence of guns in the home increases the risk of homicides.
“Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance,” said Arthur L Kellerman and Frederick P Rivara et al in their study “Gun Ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home”, which was published in the October 1993 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.
The study – which looked at homicides occurring in the homes of victims in three metropolitan counties in the US – cautioned that: “The use of illicit drugs and a history of physical fights in the home are important risk factors for homicide in the home.”
The Bloombeg School of Public Health’s Centre for Gun Policy and Research notes that while some argue that guns are necessary and effective method of self-protection, the US Bureau of Justice is estimating that there are on average “about 108,000 defensive uses of guns each year compared to about 1.3 million crimes committed with guns”.
