AG paying close attention to gun violence

 

Attorney General and Minister of Home Affairs Adriel Brathwaite is not turning a blind eye to gun violence among young people in Barbados.
 
“We are looking at how do we address this issue. We are very concerned about the prevalence of fire-arms among our 18 and 19-year-olds, who see nothing wrong with shooting at unarmed citizens and unfortunately in one or two instances have led to the loss of life of those innocent individuals,” he told the House of Assembly during government’s reply to the Opposition’s tabled no-confidence motion, yesterday.
 
“Much of the challenges with our young people come from what they learnt under the Barbados Labour Party. That free for all, dancehall mentality. This “bring drinks somebody gine pay” approach… That is what the young people were taught. That pride and industry wasn’t necessary; whatever you wanted you go to your politician and they will provide it,” he stated.
 

“We have a fight in terms of how do we re-socialise many of our young people. We have a real serious fight… We have to work out how is it that we can now be developing young men in particular, who see nothing wrong with the taking of another life.”

 

The AG however made it clear that reducing the number of firearms is not the fight of the Royal Barbados Police Force alone, but must entail all the security agencies as well as society and the families.

Brathwaite also pointed out to the House that Barbados still has many good young people. 

 

“We need to big them up more,” he said.

 

“There are many positive activities by our young people, but unfortunately these stories don’t reach our newspapers very often. These stories don’t even reach Facebook very often. Whenever you look at what people post on Facebook, there are seldom good stories... If somebody gets shot down in town, that reaches Facebook. But if somebody creates a new gadget, that doesn’t reach us ... We focus too of much on the negative.” (TL)

 

Barbados Advocate

Mailing Address:
Advocate Publishers (2000) Inc
Fontabelle, St. Michael, Barbados

Phone: (246) 467-2000
Fax: (246) 434-2020 / (246) 434-1000