Editorial | Call out US on guns

It is unlikely that the recent call by the attorneys-general of 13 US states on Congress for tougher laws to prevent the flow of illegal guns to the Caribbean will penetrate the din of the country’s presidential and congressional election campaigns.

But that does not make the appeal any less right or urgent. It is a reminder, also, of why this region has a stake in the Democrats doing their best in those elections, including winning the presidency and gaining majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate. That is the Caribbean’s best chance that the US Congress will, through legislation, insist on America meeting its international commitments to restricting the illegal flow of weapons manufactured in the country, and that the president, if it is Kamala Harris, will accept and fulfil that obligation through executive action.

Should anyone entertain any doubt that Jamaica and the wider Caribbean have a real and credible interest in this matter and, by extension, in the policy positions of the parties and candidates on gun control, this newspaper invites them to contemplate, first, last week’s development in Haiti.

Haiti has long been wracked by political instability, which has further undermined an already-weak state. Violent, criminal gangs have mushroomed to occupy the vacuum left by an impotent Haitian state.

In the past three years, more than 6,000 people have been killed in gang-related violence in the country. Tens of thousands more have been displaced. But what happened in the western Haitian town of Pont-Sondé last Thursday was a development of a different order of magnitude. Members of the Gran Grif gang slaughtered 70 people in the town, mostly with rifles. Scores of homes were burned. More than 6,000 fled the area.

ODDS HIGH

The odds are exceedingly high that the vast majority of, and most likely, all the weapons used in that massacre originated in the United States and reached Haiti illegally.

The situation is similar in Jamaica, which has the dubious distinction of being in the top-five on the league table for homicide rates of countries that are not in conflict. With over 1,300 murders annually, the murder rate is around 53 per 100,000 population.

More than seven in 10 of those murders are committed with guns. Most of those guns are trafficked to Jamaica from the United States in legitimate cargo.

Jamaican law enforcement seize hundreds of illegal guns each year, but less than half of the more than 2,000 that the authorities estimate are smuggled to the island from America annually. US law authorities also intercepted a handful of weapons. There is a significant net supply of illegal firearms.

Despite the requirement for background checks of some prospective gun purchasers and supposedly greater oversight of interstate and international sale of gun under the Safer Communities Act, America has maintained lax firearms laws because of the ostensible constitutional right of citizens to bear arms. The Republican Party had lined up firmly with the country’s gun lobby, making sensible gun-control laws difficult to achieve.

One consequence is the periodic mass shootings in US communities, including in schools. And there is the flow of guns to the Caribbean to help fuel violence and murder rate of over 30 per 100,000, making it the most homicidal region in the world.

LEGAL AND MORAL OBLIGATION

As a signatory to the United Nations treaty on trafficking in small arms, the United States has both a legal and moral obligation to do something about the mayhem-causing illegal trade in its weapons. They, especially the Democrats, do sometimes stir, as was with the Safe Communities Act, which was the most significant control legislation in 30 years. But mostly, America pays lip service to its small arms trafficking obligations.

Earlier this year, a group of senators and members of the House proposed a Caribbean Arms Trafficking Causes Harm (CATCH) Act which would cause the government to annually report on the outcomes of the Safer Communities Act, including its implementation and destinations to which guns and accessories were sent or intercepted.

But as Letitia James, the New York state attorney general, who spearheaded the letter to legislators, observed, the proposed CATCH Act does not go far enough.

Congress can do more. But so, too, can the president and his administration if they have the will.

For example, it cannot be beyond the capacity of America’s technology and ingenuity to more robustly test cargo destined for this region for illegal guns, without creating the costly delays and gridlock the US often complains will result. Perhaps the next US president will be more proactive on this front,.

Maybe this region, especially the countries of the Caribbean Community should annually produce a report on US compliance with its international obligations against small arms trafficking, as well as with standards set by the Community, similar to how the State Department reports on countries’ actions on narcotics trafficking and commitment to human rights.