WITH ANGUILLA’S FLOTILLAS, GOVERNMENT LACK OF RESOURCES, OPEN BORDERS, TOP-LEVEL SECRECIES… WHO CAN POLICE?

If you haven’t been paying attention, Anguilla has seen an unfortunate series of shootings that have ‘Paradisians’ understandably upset! The authorities are calling it a “spate” – we are saying that with such endemic, the word or term spate is an insult to the average intelligence. Colloquially: "spate mi-arse!!!" However, here on Anguilla I've noticed that despite our geography, we tend to have a strongly emotional and largely negative relationship to guns. This often means people may be unwilling to think about them outside of the context of these feelings. Many Anguillians who grew up here seem to want to live in a world where guns don’t exist. I question whether this is healthy, empowering, or constructive. 

I do not labour under the illusion like the Royal Anguilla Police Service (RAPS) Commissioner that it is possible to be in an Anguilla free of guns – or his ineptness to cease Firearm Licenses to legitimate warrantees will solve future crime. His approach is to limit the right of law-abiding citizens to obtain guns, despite evidence showing that in countries where they've really tried to make this approach work, gun crime has become worse after enacting tough restrictions on gun ownership. Prohibition on civilian gun ownership merely disarms law-abiding citizens and drive gun commerce into the same sorts of black-markets that drugs and alcohol ended up in under their respective prohibitions. And with Anguilla’s flotillas, government lack of resources, open borders, top-level secrecies… who can police? 

The War on Guns will not render a country free of guns. We need to take a similar view to guns, as the question on sex education. The debate must be to teach abstinence, with use and protection – not one and not the other, as abstinence has proven to be an illusion. We must take a realistic approach to this subject on guns, and refrain from pretending that we can wish such realities away. It may be constructive to foster and promote healthy and empowering relationships. Guns are a fact of life, and wishing otherwise seems impractical. People should have the right to be able to defend themselves, given the impossibility on how to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Guns don’t commit murders, angry people do. 

Guns on Anguilla is a genie that’s long been released – a proliferation that ‘will never’ be curtailed, more so, with an inefficient ineffective police service incapable of protecting a honest and hardworking law-abiding people. Therefore, we must humbly advise guardians, that they must teach their youth(s) how to be safe around guns, how to use them responsibly, and to a healthy and safe attitude toward firearms. We can only hope that all will collectively focus their energies toward effective responses to the problem of living in a world where people aren’t always how you’d like them to be. A Bulldog Idi Admin approach will never work: "Sometimes people mistake the way I talk for what I am thinking. I never had any formal education -- not even nursery school certificate. But, sometimes I know more than Ph.D.'s because as a military man I know how to act, I am a man of action." A bit Hubertism there... isn't it?

My advice to a ‘waste of time government’: it is incumbent upon ‘YOU’ for the health and security of your people, or you’re liken an infidel. YOU are responsible for providing ALL the necessary resources required to fulfil an effective service. You are accountable, not the British Government, nor the British Taxpayers. And to the Electorate: 'often times' Politicians are normally the most likeable electable Idiots amongst us. This is why in most successful democratic systems of government there is a nominated House of experts who scrutinises such or most idiocy from our fanfares. 

By: Realist Spikenice