Giving those people firearms really is not a responsible action. Do I believe that most people should be allowed to be armed? Yes. However, I would not give legal access to firearms to the people I have just described. Therefore, we would need to implement a sensible licensing system as a temporary measure until these issues are resolved. If we are going to allow responsible citizens to be armed, we should also introduce severe penalties (such as the death penalty) on those who commit murder or other violent crimes, with or without firearms.
This will create two deterrents to criminals and violent gang members - the possibility of being killed by an armed victim, and severe punishment if they succeed in committing the crime but subsequently are arrested and convicted of the death penalty offence. It is not difficult to stop guns getting into the hands of criminals; it is impossible. This is something that people in St. Maarten should really start accepting as fact so that we can start to deal with the problem. Unfortunately, many people in this country are still desperately clinging on to the idea that if we make gun laws strict enough then criminals will eventually start obeying them. In an ideal world, this is what I would like to see, but the truth is it is never going to happen.
No matter how hard we try, we will never have a society where criminals do not have ready access to firearms. When weapons cannot be purchased legally, the bad guys arrange to have them smuggled into the country and then buy them illegally. They'll get them any way they can, so why not give the victims a chance as well? We've tried a total ban as a means of reducing armed crime, but that failed massively. Then we tried the approach of minimum sentences, which has proven to be equally ineffective. The biggest problem is that most of the people that support gun control seem blind to the fact that the laws they protect and the new laws they pass are always ignored by criminals. Tightening gun laws further will not solve the problem, as criminals really don't care if the government says they can't do something.
For this reason, we now need to try a different approach to this problem. One thing that firearms do effectively is to equalize those who are unequal. Take an elderly person, a pregnant mother or someone weak or disabled because of serious health problems. People made vulnerable by situations outside of their control are always victimized by cowardly rapists, burglars and street criminals due to the massive power advantage that the fit and able-bodied criminal has over his victim. Firearms remove this massive advantage and create a "level playing field". The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
Peter Gunn
