A GUY'S VIEW: When the youth take up the gun
LIKE many other Barbadians, I have spoken and written many times about crime in this country, especially violent crime. While my mind was being directed elsewhere, on Friday afternoon, I heard on the radio that one of the persons charged with the school-gate murder was a juvenile. This forced me to visit the subject again.
Images and messages influence behaviour and especially impact how young people view their reality as well as how they respond to stimuli. Children having access to guns and having ice water coursing through their veins, enabling them to commit murder without fear of consequences, are not by accident. They have been shaped to live this kind of life and they are only performing as programmed.
Some Barbadians, behaving like the Republicans in the United States Senate, are quite willing to ignore the facts, quietly complain about the level of gun violence, and submit to the claims of the Government that the current state of the social environment in which Barbadians have to conduct their day-to-day living, is not of its making. This conclusion denies certain realities.
When violent crime was beginning to take on foreign features in this country, David Thompson drew attention to this troubling development and begged the country to pay attention to correcting what was emerging. He was mocked by the Barbados Labour Party’s operatives. They were assisted by actors and media personalities who poured scorn on his efforts. At that time, the chickens were free on the range. Now, they have come home to roost. The people who mocked crime and violence then are in charge now and have not a clue of how to control the Frankenstein that they have created.
It is estimated that the current Attorney General, over his terms in this role, have presided over about 90 murders. His must be the bloodiest administration in the history of Barbados. In no iteration has he been able to control violent crime in this country. What does this say about our future?
From where we are now, it is clear that there are no easy solutions to the problem of crime. There are several strands of behaviours, activities, actions and actors that collide to make the environment as difficult as it is to tackle.
Gun violence is a major problem across the Caribbean, and, for the last, at least, twenty years, the Caribbean Coalition for Development and the Reduction of Armed Violence (CDRAV), a coalition of NGOs and academics, has been working to reduce and prevent gun violence in the Caribbean. CDRAV took its campaign to bolster CARICOM’s role in the negotiations of the arms treaty to the United Nations. Unfortunately, many Caribbean governments took only a passing interest in the efforts of this NGO. Some governments paid attention, but CDRAV’s work was principally supported by external governments and the international NGO movement.
The work of CDRAV sought to enhance regional sensitisation on the issue, but, inadvertently, it exposed the reactive leadership that informs Caribbean problem solving. When the challenge of guns and violence and their potential danger to the regional development agenda were in the formative stages, the governments of the day saw any request for increased focus on the issue as an effort to assign blame to the particular administration. That is a symptom of the short-sightedness of partisan politics.
No local administration has handled this matter perfectly. There is the view that they have both been too passive at crucial times. That is open to debate. What is beyond dispute though, is the role of the BLP’s supporters in making light of this serious matter in its formative stages by making mock sport at efforts to curb it.
Modern political theorists advise their clients to lead from behind. For many politicians, decision-making is a hard science in that they want to control the variables and await numbers before deciding where to go. Well, the numbers are in. The numbers of lives lost to guns in Barbados have now reached frightening levels. It is more terrifying if you add those who were shot, but survived.
In addition, fear of leaving home and to enjoy simple pleasures like jogging and walking have become concerns for most Barbadians, but particularly for those over 60. As frightening as the deaths appear, it is the nature of the shootings and of the perpetrators that should be of greater concern.
Our young people are growing up in an environment where shooting and killing are no longer exciting events that are shown in movies. They are part of their daily experience. What are the answers: stiffer penalties? Greater gun control? More police and social workers? Addressing the drop-outs from the education system? All of the above? Many of these have been discussed, but we have either lacked the will or the know-how to execute them, so the situation grows worse.
Politicians commonly boast of achievements and use the media for their own image building. The current group has nothing to boast about, but the image building continues. However, in this process, messages are transmitted about whom and what are important models to be followed. There was a time when the peacemaker and the motivator were all hailed as nation builders. Now the loud, aggressive, bully type, brazen, indifferent, amoral, and unethical; and things slack and base have become the popular and the more desired models for our young people to copy. Bad behaviour is worshipped and modesty and peace vilified.
The images that flowed from the laughter resulting from the then popular mock of “guns and violence” will continue to be a block in any effort this administration can summon to mount a national rescue effort. It is left to a coalition of the religious and NGO movement to lead the way. HELP!