Violence in society taking its toll

MEN must stop letting their egos rule! 

 

This was the telling, but truthful cry of one of the residents in Allen View after yesterday’s stabbing death. This statement gives an apt description as to what is going on in our country with so many murders.

 

One person is slighted in one way or another, whether by talk or action, and before one can blink the cycle of violence begins and continues to spin around and around, with the very real outcome of hurting innocent bystanders.

 

I for one am tired of being in the newsroom and hearing a bulletin coming in or turning on the radio or the television or being sent a WhatsApp message of yet another stabbing or shooting incident in our country. With gun crime in particular, it is absolute foolishness that various gangs would be having shoot-outs at fetes or parties, like they lived in California during the Gold Rush era, with no thought or regard for one another.

 

Just the other day I ended up in a heated debate with someone who wanted to compare Trinidad and Jamaica’s murder rate to our own because they are our regional neighbours. However, I knocked that opinion because while there are similarities due to our culture and geographical location, we are much smaller in terms of size. Furthermore, I refuse to kowtow to the opinion that because it is happening here on a smaller scale than some of the other Caribbean islands that we should shake our heads and accept it since we cannot change it. Anything could be changed as long as the correct solution is sought out and discovered.

 

Questioned as to what should be done about the matter, I expressed the belief that I did not have all the answers, but several steps must be taken to address this growing problem. First, there needs to be a gun amnesty; let us get some of these firearms off the nation’s streets. After this, perpetrators of gun violence resulting in anyone’s death should receive the fullest punishment meted out by law. This foolishness has got to stop! In addition, serious consultations and discussions have to go on with criminologists, social scientists and of course, more importantly, with persons in the community.

 

Great kudos have to be given to the men and women on the police force, many of whom are working tirelessly to put an end to such violence. However, I believe that there are several individuals in the community who know exactly where the firearms are coming from and who has them, but for various reasons refuse to speak up and say something, even though information can be given anonymously through Crime Stoppers. This attitude that ‘it is not my business’ has to change, especially since in a country as small as ours, one day it will be your business.

 

It was informative to hear that the Ministry of Social Care has a programme aimed at helping men who were perpetrators of domestic violence, to see the error of their ways and to change this detrimental attitude. A bigger programme must be placed in schools and in community centres to show our young men that violence in any form has a reverberating impact across this nation.

 

I saw a recent quote the other day that really spoke to me: ‘I wouldn’t change my children for the world, but I sure wish I could change this world for my children’. Let’s do more than wish, but take action.