Once again we put the cart before the horse and take short cuts to problem-solving instead of employing actual tried and proven techniques.Take the issue of the ridiculous prevalence of illegal firearms in this country.Step one should have been the stopping of the inflow of guns to our shores. This can never become a reality as long as marine craft can pull up to any beach, river or yachting establishment without so much as a permission to land or a look-over by the authorities.
This first and important step cannot be overlooked if what we want is to bring an end to gun violence in our society, because the obvious and logical first step has to be the removal of illegal guns.
A maritime marine wall has been proposed and bandied about for what seems like decades. A virtual wall of Coast Guard and police-controlled barges anchored miles offshore through which all marine craft must pass, dedicated landing points for all fishing craft, law enforcement and customs presence on all dedicated landing sites including pleasure boat facilities could bring an end to the ease with which cheap guns leave the South American mainland and end up in the hands of the criminal element.
Once properly done and our borders secured, an amnesty or gun buy-back should be offered prior to an announced zero tolerance all-out war on illegal firearms.Then we could put the hot spots under pressure, employ tactical search and seizure operations, utilise surprise and roving roadblocks, stop-and-frisk and other measures to make illegal gun possession a hazard too onerous for the lawless to contemplate.
But to move from zero to one hundred, to do nothing to stem the flow of guns into the country and then use the fact that illegal guns exist as a reason to curb civil liberties and deny basic human rights is an abdication of all the tenets of good governance and the collapse of natural justice in T&T.
That the entire Parliament voted for this demonstrates without a shadow of a doubt that the level of thinking required for real problem-solving does not exist in the Parliament.The Law Association of T&T is correct. Chipping away at the Constitution is not the solution to what ails us; proper management, problem-solving leadership is.
Phillip Edward Alexander