While lawmakers are busy deliberating over proposed changes to the Firearms Act, which could see offenders convicted of illegal possession of a firearm facing a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years behind bars, the Gun Court has been busy handing down telling sentences aimed at curbing gun violence and murders.

Firearm recoveries by the St Catherine South police led to two convicted Portmore men being each hit with sentences exceeding five years in separate Gun Court cases in the past week. These have dealt what investigators from the division have described as “apt punishment”, amid public outcry in recent months about ‘light’ sentences for illegal firearms possession, especially in instances of guilty pleas.

Police statistics show the gun as the weapon of choice, up to 85 per cent, in an average 1,270 murder cases annually, figures National Security Minister Horace Chang has used to bolster his calls for amended firearm laws.

Ricardo Campbell, who changed his plea to guilty, mid-trial, on February 15, 2022, was sentenced to seven years and three months by Justice Judith Pusey. Campbell was found in possession of a Browning 9mm pistol, loaded with 13 rounds of ammunition in July 2021.

He pleaded guilty after being surprised by the arrival of prosecution witness, District Constable Jason McKay, who was previously listed as being unavailable to give evidence.

Campbell was arrested during a stop-and-search in Garveymeade, Portmore, by Constable Delano Dunn of the St Catherine South Division’s Special Operations Unit. The gun was seized during an operation conducted in response to a number of murders.

In another matter, Romain Pusey, a resident of Greater Portmore, was sentenced to six years and six months by Justice Sonia Bertram-Linton for possession of a Beretta pistol, as well as three years and two months for 16 rounds of ammunition recovered from the weapon.

Pusey was found guilty on December 17, 2021, after being charged for possession of the loaded 9mm pistol by District Constable McKay on August 2, 2021.

Pusey admitted during trial that he was searched and the gun found but claimed he did not know that the waist bag contained the pistol, which was described by McKay as “large, fully loaded and heavy”.

Evidence was given by Mckay, who serves on the St Catherine South Division’s Special Operations Unit, that during a snap operation led by Senior Superintendent Christopher Phillips in Greater Portmore, he had searched Pusey and found the gun in a Puma waist bag hanging around the defendant’s neck.