HUMAN rights group Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ) has welcomed the decision by the Government to amend the Firearms Act of 2022 to allow for lesser sentencing guidelines for persons found in possession of imitation firearms.

However, JFJ is critical of the Administration for ignoring its recommendation not to place the possession of a fake gun in the same category of a real firearm that can discharge rounds, at the time the new law was being developed. JFJ’s Executive Director Mickel Jackson said, as a result of the Government not listening, anyone convicted of possession of a real and/or fake firearm faces the same mandatory 15-year sentence.

During last Wednesday’s post-Cabinet media briefing, Minister of National Security and Peace Dr Horace Chang said amendments to the legislation will shortly be tabled in the Parliament. He shared that the primary amendment focuses on “toy guns” and the applied penalties.

“It’s important that Parliament listens when reasonable proposals are made because several concerns were raised when this firearm amendment was being considered by Parliament,” said Jackson.

She was responding to questions last Thursday during JFJ’s annual general meeting (AGM) in New Kingston at which a new board that includes communication specialist and former journalist Damion Mitchell and former assistant commissioner at the Independent Commission of Investigations Hamish Campbell was installed.

“JFJ made a written submission at the time and by several defence attorneys, so it’s a consultative process,” reminded Jackson.

She said JFJ also welcomed the announcement by Chang that Parliament will be minded to review and make the reasonable adjustments that were recommended.

“And I think it’s important that we recognise the importance of judicial discretion to avoid the miscarriage of justice,” she stated.

Jackson shared that JFJ will be drafting an updated submission in terms of the “changes that will be required and that we’re suggesting”.

“It is important that the public understands that the Firearms Act, outside of imitation firearms having such high mandatory minimum sentence — the Act itself provides for circumstances where an individual uses the imitation weapon to threaten or to carry out an offence.

“And I think as we go through reviewing and making the adjustments, we have to perhaps go back to what the previous legislation looks like and ensuring, for example, that a producer who is doing a video, someone who may have a toy gun, is not treated as a criminal where a criminal offence is not committed.”

At the post-Cabinet briefing, Chang suggested that circumstances have changed dramatically since the new Firearms Act was enacted with a decline in murders. He said in such circumstances, “sometimes you have to go back and revise the law”.

He cited that “the primary change has to do with toy guns getting the same penalty as a real firearm even if it was not being used in the commission of a crime”.

“It’s interesting, when it was being debated in Parliament…and the murder rate was still running over 45 per 100,000, I think if we had said we should lock up a man for trying to cut a toy gun out of paper everybody would say yes. That was the reality of the day. The mood was, anything that looked like a gun must be out of the space,” Chang remarked.

The deputy prime minister admitted that it was an oversight to put toy guns in Section 5 of the law and also said there are several other things to tidy up in the legislation.

“It’s really a tidying up operation, and we will have that [the amendment Bill] in the House this quarter,” he said.

Meanwhile, JFJ director and attorney-at-law Kenyatta Powell expressed that JFJ “understands and sympathises with the hard work that the Government has to do, with crime and violence being out of control for a very long time”.

“The level that crime got to in this country was challenging to just the structure of our society, so you find that the new Firearms Act that came out of the Government in the last couple years, we understand the rationale of the Government in trying to go at it in a very serious and a very no-nonsense sort of no-quarter way,” said Powell.

“But, it is important that in a democracy you have an election every four or five years and then the Government doesn’t pay attention to what the people are saying or, in this case, to what experts, people who have experience in the field, people who are defence attorneys, who are human rights activists, who could see some of the potential problems with what the Government was trying to achieve, commendable as what they were trying to achieve was,” Powell added.

He told the AGM that, “what we hope, going forward, is that we can actually have a more collaborative relationship with those who have been elected for the good governance of Jamaica”.

The primary amendment to the Firearms Act of 2022 to be tabled soon focuses on ‘toy guns’ and the applied penalties.