The most horrific singular event in human history was the detonation of the first atom bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

Never before and never again have so many died in a single detonation of a bomb.

The casualties numbered between 70,000 and 126,000 civilians, and over 20,000 soldiers.

It didn’t take many years for the rest of the world to catch up and what was feared was multiple and larger events than what was demonstrated over Hiroshima.

However, because of the devastation that the world had viewed, there was a stalemate of sorts, maybe better expressed as a Mexican stand-off.

No one wanted the devastation that they had seen directed against Japan directed against them.

As the world’s arsenal grew, so did the frank reality that even with the best of defence systems one was going to get through and destroy a sizeable slice of your country.

So nobody has actually pushed the envelope.

What is also a fact is that these bombs significantly increased the possibility of killing leaders of countries.

This was new. It was one thing when old men are sending young men to die. However, it’s a totally different thing when the leaders can be targeted as simply being in a city and killed, because of the magnitude of the effect of nuclear weapons used against that city.

We have had no world wars since then and small regimes that have much smaller armies and nuclear arsenals have survived because of the fear of just what one missile with a nuclear warhead making its way over a city and detonating can do.

This peace, relatively speaking, was achieved not through diplomacy, not because the world became better, but because of ‘fear’.

This is the most misunderstood tool in the world.

I started travelling in the 1980s, in the era of the informal commercial importer, otherwise called the higgler.

This group of entrepreneurs would travel to Miami and buy goods. I admired their tenacity, but the conduct of many was reprehensible.

You would be asked to check on a bag for them and if you denied their request, you would feel the full length of their tongue.

Their behaviour would remain consistent until they found themselves in front of a US immigration officer and the former wolf would become a lamb. This transformation was both sudden and temporary.

After the short, meek interview, they would immediately become as abusive as they had to, actually not as they chose to.

Why was such daunting respect shown to the US immigration officer? Because of fear.

This is a transferable technique, it just differs in levels of consequence.

Fear as a control mechanism is the only solution to maintaining peace in high crime zones.

Anything else is just a tool to temper it, but will never control it.

In a utopia we would hope that criminals with guns would not kill each other and the rest of us because they fear being put before the court and prosecuted to the full extent of the law, whilst enjoying the right to be on bail.

We don’t live in fantasy land.

Killers, especially ours, will only not kill when they fear combat or remand.

Social intervention, tactical retreating and peace initiatives don’t work in this environment. Fear works.

They need to know that once held, they are not coming out. They need to know that once sentenced, their youth is going to be spent in a cage. They need to know that when they fire at the police that the police will respond with appropriate force.

The most misunderstood relationship in Jamaica is that between special squads and gangs.

The public has been brainwashed to believe that the gangs fear special squads because of extra-judicial killing and that this is the tool that the special squads use to control crime.

This is a misnomer, a fallacy or fable fabricated by activists in search of donations from foreign donors.

The court system is bursting at the seams with cases where special squads have charged criminals for gun possession.

The killer fears the special squads because he knows when he engages them in combat he is engaging a trained, equipped, brave and motivated team who are not backing up.

Now, this differs in a decision to engage a regular team in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) who will be less in numbers, less equipped in weaponry and trained differently.

Also, and most importantly, is likely a specialist in another area other than combat.

The JCF members perform many functions, ranging from traffic management to investigation. Not all are specialists in urban combat.

The killers know and understand the difference and therefore fear the repercussions of engaging the special squads or being pursued by them.

The special squads are the group most targeted by Indecom and the human rights community.

They are denied promotions, because in somebody’s warped logic, they are empowered to prevent an officer from getting promotion.

Can you imagine that? An organisation that receives funding from international unnamed sources, who has foreign top management who no one can say who pays him, who are governed by an ‘Act’ that makes them both activist and investigator, can determine whether the men and women who put their lives on the line to prevent the rape and murder of your family has an active say in which officer gets promoted.

It has to be the most demotivating era in Jamaica’s law enforcement history and fitting for a ‘Believe It Or Not’ episode.

We as a country have to embrace the fact that only fear will contain these killers. Then we have to decide what we are comfortable with — the killers fearing both as a people and as a member of the international community.

Singapore and China are two of the most successful economies in the world and they maintain control by fear.

They don’t have a high rate of fatal shootings.

They use remand, effective policing and long sentences.

The United States uses long sentences.

Cuba uses both remand and really long sentences.

Even Britain, yes Britain! Look on their sentence range for possession of a firearm.

Then look on what a guilty plea would have got you in Jamaica under the guaranteed discount system, until recently.

I have always considered myself a pragmatist. I wish my country was different.

I wish that young men would not trivialise the right to live.

I also wish that rainwater was beer. But it’s not.

We have to accept that the blunders in attributing our logic and values to killers and rapists was senseless and the result of following the agenda of others who had their own motives has led to point where the only solution is an environment where they fear us as much as you fear them.

Feedback: drjasonamckay@gmail.com