The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Just how many more predictable murders, more children killed by stray bullets and more headlines blazoned around the world about gun violence in this tourist-dependent country will it take before our leaders do the obvious thing and introduce mandatory minimum sentencing for gun possession?

It is beyond obvious that, left to themselves, our courts will continue to normalise handgun possession as they have done since Hubert Ingraham permitted them discretion in sentencing for the offence. The measly then-minimum four-year sentence has since dwindled to a norm of around one year for people caught with the instruments of deadly violence that now pervade our streets.

In the UK or Cayman, even in mitigating circumstances, illegal gun possession will land you in prison for a decade or more. In Jamaica, a mandatory 15-year minimum sentence has just been enacted. Our lawmakers have no excuse for permitting our courts to continue abetting gun-mayhem in an otherwise orderly society with their outrageously permissive sentencing.

The difficulties of addressing gang violence in The Bahamas mostly relate to weaknesses in the trial process - including the ability of criminal gangs to intimidate jurors and witnesses. For this reason, murder trials (which are also afflicted by case backlogs and obstructive defence counsel) result in too few convictions to meaningfully impact violent crime.

Gun possession, on the other hand, is generally tried by magistrate and involves witnesses only from the uniformed services, who are not vulnerable to intimidation. This (and the straightforward nature of the offence) results in speedy trials and almost universal conviction rates.

On the basis that the same people who kill people with guns also possess guns, the obvious route to countering this blight on our society is to imprison for lengthy periods those convicted of the latter offence. Yet over and over our courts fail us by permitting repeat offenders to escalate from gun possession to murder.

Additionally, the link between stiff sentencing and higher street prices for guns is well established from other jurisdictions. It does not take much thought to understand why.

It is refreshing to see that we now have a Commissioner of Police who is willing to state the obvious and call for stiffer penalties for gun possession in order to counter the outrageous levels of gun violence in our society.

The next step is for the political directorate.

ANDREW ALLEN

Nassau,

July 27, 2022.