THE ELECTION period has started. The Commission on Elections ordered a gun ban. The police has started setting up checkpoints.
We do have a gun control problem. Everywhere. Every now and then, some men go amok shooting to death their relatives and neighbors or taking innocents hostage. How were the shooters able to acquire their guns? Were they even licensed?
Especially in the provinces, thousands of loose firearms are in the hands of private armies, bandits and rebels.
Local elections in many hotspots tend to be bloody, deadly, and often involving unlicensed firearms. Remember the election eve ambush in Balasan, Iloilo in 2016 that killed two supporters of a mayoral candidate?
The election gun ban and checkpoints siphon away some of the loose firearms, but little is known about whether those caught ever get prosecuted and convicted.
Remember Dr. Dreyfuss Perlas of the Doctors to the Barrios program? This young Aklanon physician – the municipal health officer of Sapad, Lanao del Norte – died on March 1, 2017. He was shot dead after he had just come from a medical mission in Kapatagan, Lanao del Norte.
On the streets and in homes in Metro Manila and other densely-populated areas, we have near-daily occurrence of fatal shooting incidents involving neighbors and suspected drug dealers and runners.
Riding-in-tandem gun-toting assassins appear to be everywhere. We can cite more examples. What is clear, though, is that we lack stricter gun control laws and enforcement. Guns seem to be proliferating like shabu, accessible to anyone. What’s the government doing about this?
To say that the situation is alarming is an understatement.
