Motive speaks to the stimulation behind every action. This includes crime. Amidst the ever-present debate regarding shootouts between law enforcement and criminals, an often under-researched aspect of the rancour and ‘labrish’, critiques and justifications of these incidents is the ‘why’.

What is the reason that a young man would point a lethal barrelled weapon at the police and fire it with full knowledge that the police have no issues whatsoever firing one back at him. Let me walk you through the decision-making process that leads to many fools making this choice.

The men you see on social media modelling with the most modern-looking weapons on the market are often not the owners of them. Those guns are sent from overseas by criminals living primarily in the United States. They are sent to a senior person who operates the gang locally. He then issues them to his pet parasites. Those very same parasites are the ones who usually engage the police when challenged.

The international and local dons who own and distribute those weapons do not look at life through the same lens that we do. They have no issue to put that gun at the head of that gunman’s mother, babymother, or baby and blow it off if a gun that is left in their care is recovered by the police. Needless to say, they would have even less of an issue to blow off the head of the gunman himself.

Logically, one would say, “Why not make him pay for it?” You need to understand that the average guy you see with a gun owns little more than his clothes. He lives in a house that I guarantee was bought or built by his parents. I don’t want you to think that it is a nice, concrete house with three bedrooms that I am talking about. The parents’ house he lives in is a board shack. They are the most destitute bunch of criminals I have ever seen. They can’t find the money to buy ammunition that goes in that gun, much less the gun itself.

Most intra-gang conflicts start over guns. Remember the Vybz Kartel case? It was all about missing guns.

Then there are those new gun laws. I love them. I believe they are going to increase our jail population, and subsequently our prison population by about 50 per cent. It’s a one-way ticket to hell with no return in a conceivable or reasonable time.

This has had an incredible impact on the mindset of the young, inner-city Jamaican male. Many who may have got involved are avoiding becoming gang members. Some have chosen illegal immigration to the United States, rather than continuing to be a gunman in Jamaica. Those left here, who simply cannot change their chosen vocation, have decided that they will go down fighting rather than face the consequences of more than a decade in prison, or a string of dead relatives.

Their decision is logical. They get away more often than they get shot. Suppression fire works! Nothing gets me athletically diving to the ground like people firing at me. I have been told I look like a stuntman or an Olympian whenever I am trying to evade gunfire, but yet I can barely run a mile on my damaged knees.

Then there is the hell that awaits them if and when they are convicted for possession of a firearm. Let me walk you through our penal institutions. At the better, you are locked up from 4:00 pm every day until the following morning. In our worst, you get about 15 minutes out of your cell per day. It is a small, overcrowded cell, most times with no toilet so you have to work with a bucket. There are no inner bathroom doors, so you are doing your business in front of everybody and everybody is doing their business in front of you.

There is very little fresh air. It is as hot as the hinges of hell. It stinks. It is overrun with rats, cockroaches, centipedes, known to Jamaicans as as 40 legs, and invisible vermin such as lice. To be frank, I would prefer to take the chance to go down fighting than spend 15 years in one of those cells.

I don’t think most people understand how drastically different the new gun laws are from the old. You can get life imprisonment for ammunition now. Previously you would likely get a fine. I once got a man convicted for a mini-sized M16 machine gun. He had a previous conviction for a firearm. He only got eight years. Nowadays he would get 25 years for a gun like that, maybe even life, since he had a prior conviction, and had stepped up to a machine gun.

I also don’t think that society realises how this new gun Act will impact our crime in the long run. Let me give you an example. I was the investigating officer in a case where a young man, a teenager in fact, pleaded guilty of possession of a 40-calibre pistol. He had a newborn baby, was a nice kid, and seemed like he was willing to change his life. So I gave my opinion to the court and he only got one year for his crime. Well, he was one of the four who were convicted and later tried for several cases to include the now famous Vybz Kartel case.

Under this new law, my recommendation, the defence plea, the mitigating circumstances, or the will of God Himself could not have helped that accused because there is no discretion. It’s mandatory sentencing. Therefore, in this scenario, that accused would never be in a position to commit a crime as part of society or be subject to multiple trials. This is the gift of these new gun laws.

Previously, you would spend a small period of time for gun possession, and when released, kill some more, eventually get charged for murder, or get killed by rival gangsters or in a shootout with the police.

Now the criminal’s journey through the misery of society comes to a premature conclusion, and they spend their most effective years as a killer behind bars.

It’s the best legislation I have ever seen in the last 30 years. However, it is having the counter effect of more gunmen engaging the police, and conversely, more of them being killed in those shootouts. That’s the part our friends, the human rights community, won’t tell you.

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