Sorry. I do not think the American gun owner needs to accept responsibility for any criminality abroad. This is another ploy to push against Second Ammendment freedoms.
6
This is an artifact from the botched Fast & Furious operation. Only government can lose weapons outside of the U.S.
2
A national gun registration approaches the problem of illegal gun sales that punishes the vast majority of legal gun owners, who never break the law.
In 1991, the Senate passed a death penalty law in cases where a murder was committed with an illegal gun was transported across state lines. It was based on the clear powers Congress has to regulate interstate trade, and the threat of a Federal death penalty sentence, which generally has a shorter appeal time than state death penalty sentences, would have served as an effective tool for prosecutors to root out how the illegal gun made it to the hands of the murder defendant. Democrats killed it in the House, of course.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-06-27-mn-2049-story.html
This is certainly an issue in Canada!
One more way that the United States exports violence.
4
This is a new one -- give the gun a name so that it has "human" characteristics. I laughed when I read the satirical site, Babylon Bee's headline a couple weeks ago that shouted, "Shooter Walks Free As Police Tackle, Arrest AR-15". Now I realize that the intentional absurdity of that headline was actually mirroring the absurd strategy of the anti gun lobby.
6
Jamaica's homicide rate is roughly ten times that of the United States. It's one of the highest in the planet. It is stretching things to blame Jamaica's homicide rate on imported US guns. If it weren't guns it would be machetes or hammers or burning tires. The question is why is Jamaica so much more violent than many countries, including the US?
8
Guns do not cause violence. Guns are inanimate objects. It is the evil in society that leads to violence. If guns aren't available, the evil people will use knives, clubs, acid, vehicles, or anything they can use as a weapon. I the concern is mass murder, look at how many are killed by improvised bombs world wide. We hear almost daily of bombings. Except for the Oklahoma City attack, bombings are mostly unheard of in the United States.
If gun controls worked, there would be no "gun violence" in the USA. We have well over 20,000 gun laws, but evil people don't obey laws. All gun control will do is leave law abiding people defenseless.
The United States is not responsible for violence in other countries. It is the people who cause their violence.
4
@Iowegian Your point is only a commonly given talking point for gun advocates, who go further to claim that good people, with guns, can stop the bad people with guns.
Considering your idea that the problem is really "evil people", how would you keep semi-autos out of the hands of these people?
What makes you think bombings are not a part of America's future or past? What was that bombing of the Boston Marathon then?
5
I think it is reckless to keep referring to he gun with a name-Briana. Throughout this article, you keep referring to the gun killing people. Guns don't kill people. People make a choice to use a gun to kill. They may use a knife, their personal body, a car, gasoline & a match-whatever,but you don't see people rushing to call a car the killer in a drunk driving or the gasoline a killer in a torching. Let's get to the real sue of why people are killing people with whatever their weapon of choice may be.
This is not a gun issue. This is a "criminal people" issue.
I agree that there should be background checks on those who purchase, & there should be a trail on that specific gun, but do not fault Americans for wanting & having the right to own a gun. Just like pharmaceuticals are traced, so should guns be traced from purchase to delivery & once a gun is stolen, it should be listed as stolen & put in a database.
People make choices and if they choose to buy a gun-legally or illegally- they have the opportunity to make a choice as to how they will use it. Criminals (whether competent or incompetent) are using guns the wrong way-but your average American is not.
"Briana" didn't kill all those people in Jamaica-I would imagine it wasnt one person either.
30
@MB901
That is such an old and ignorant argument. If that logic holds up then lets open the flood gates and let people buy bazookas and tanks at their local gun store.
regulating gun sales is no different than regulating the registration of a car and requiring a license to drive. Banning the manufacturing and distribution of assault weapons will have an effect on the number of deaths. Creating a process for obtaining a weapon will help. Look at all the other first world countries in the world. We are a joke and everyone is laughing at us.
41
@Richard Johnston
We have a weapons sales in our capital city of Ottawa every year -- but these are weapons used by militaries throughout the world. We are trying to close down that sale as you in the States, one of the major weapons producers in the world should be trying to do as well. Shut down your weapons manufacturers, that is the only solution. The killings in the US are scary, all because of the ease in which weapons can be procured. At the very least there should be no automatic weapons for sale. Confiscate them from the sellers and destroy them.
20
@Richard Johnston How are "assault weapons" different from common hunting rifles? Assault rifles are automatic weapons, but they have been banned since 1934. You are arguing to ban a gun based on how it looks. Most "assault weapons" fire .22 or .223 caliber ammo. A 30-06 hunting rifle generally doesn't look like an military weapon, but it will put much bigger holes and as many of them as a .223 "assault weapon"; but the 30-06 would not be banned under an "assault weapon" ban. Makes no sense whatsoever.
5
Before the browning, there was a knife. The mother was stabbed to death - with a knife. I want the history of the knife. How long had the uncle been in possession of the knife before the knife committed murder? Where was the knife before Uncle had it? Where was the knife purchased and for how much? The knife started the kills and that makes it the pivotal point of the story. More importantly, where is the knife now? Have its killing days ended? Is it out of commission or is the knife still on the streets ready to butcher again?
4
There is no way that I am not tired of living in a country where wannabe terrorists get to buy military or equivalent assault weapons. The Licensing and an annual renewal requirement also proof of insurance to own a gun, buy, or sell ammunition You may have a problem with guns,but 2nd amendment does not cover ammunition. Having a gun in your home is equal to not wearing a seat belt in terms of your chance of being killed.
1
@Dr John You cannot buy an automatic military weapon and the United States. They have been banned since 1934. They sell semiautomatic rifles that look like military rifles, but use the same firing mechanism and ammo as an ordinary hunting rifle. Do you really want to ban guns because they look like military weapons?
2
From the article:
"The figures are similar in Mexico, which has been lobbying the United States for more than a decade to stop the illegal guns flowing south."
Certainly this is hypocritical, for a nation has no problem shipping illegals northward. We should tell the government of Mexico to build a wall at their northern border.
2
This is problem on Toronto streets too. We have a handgun issue and all the handguns are born in the USA.
6
It's about time this was brought up.
It has been known for some time that the dangerous laxness of US gun laws is causing crime and death in neighboring countries. This is not right . Crime and death in America is America's problem and if the choice of Republicans and the other American governing party, the NRA ,is to do nothing about it, so be it. You reap what you sow.
But when US guns are damaging the social fabric of other countries, that's another matter.
5
This certainly happened in Mexico and many Central American countries. An activist once said American guns and bombs are found in terrorist hands, among drug cartels, gangsters and all kinds of criminal mafia groups around the world, including in Africa. America is exporting death and destruction. What terrible karma is the US accummulating? Time for the US to get off the global driver's seat.
2
You know that saying "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." How about "Bad people with guns kill good people"
A No Brainer: BAN ASSAULT RIFLES
3
@Peter Harvey Assault rifles are banned. All automatic weapons have been banned since 1934. You can buy a gun that looks like an AK-47, but it uses the same ammo and semiautomatic firing mechanism as an ordinary hunting rifle. Do we really want to ban guns because they look like military weapons?
1
There are two elephants in the room that need to be acknowledged with this issue: First, Jamaican government corruption affects every aspect of daily life, from the police to the press. Both major political parties are so rife with corrupt and unsavory characters that law enforcement and press reporting is bought and paid for by those who can afford it. The days of the dons are not over, they have just moved from the garrison to the government. The U.S. has spent millions of dollars on law enforcement capacity building there with little effect. Operations that could be expanded to catch the "bigger fish" are summarily ended or outed by the government to limit the liability of where it could ultimately lead.
The other issue, perhaps harder to believe and swallow by many, is that Jamaica, despite the "One Love" and "No Worries Mon" reputation, has become a hyper-violent society. (“I mean, with or without the guns, we will still fight,” said one gang leader in Kingston...). Gangs may use the guns, but the newspapers are full of accounts of stabbings, hackings, strangulations, poisonings, etc., perpetrated by family members, school kids, young, old, male and female. Village justice is meted out with machetes on goat or mango thieves. Consider that Jamaica has both the highest number of churches per square mile and the third-highest murder per capita rate in the world...
The U.S. may indeed have a gun control problem, but the issues in Jamaica run far deeper than that.
9
@Mike I think you are missing the point here. I actually lived in Jamaica and saw things progressively get worse withe the proliferation of illegal guns not withstanding the very strict gun laws. Sure many people would look to settle scores with some other implement but none even as remotely deadly as guns.
6
I am shocked, shocked to hear that our nation who spends more money on arms and weapons than the next 10 to 15 nations combined, and is the world’s leading arms exporter, could be the source of the problem!
4
Incredible article. Well researched and reminiscent of “I Gave You Power”. Very well written and informative.
3
If regulation of guns will not help, lets deregulate cars and see what happens to car accidents and lets deregulate plane manufacturing and see how many plane deaths we get. Also we could deregulate factory safety and see how many explosions we get, or we could deregulate natural gas line safety and see if the already high explosion rate would turn into a catastrophe. Would that satisfy the regulation of guns argument? PROBABLY NOT. Because it is not about regulation, it is about money. Lots and lots of money. Carloads and planeloads of money. Trainloads of money. Contaminated money. Blind money. Insane money. Its all about money.
Congratulations, kudos, orchids&roses and MAZEL TOV to The Times for real journalism: first, examining the centuries-long violence of slavery, and second, the violence of guns.
I almost left out: BRAVO!
1
Same scenarios playing out on the streets of Toronto and other large Canadian cities, where street gangs are using guns with reckless abandon. Like a deadly blight, the insanity of guns and gun violence spreads like a cancer.
1
There is absolutely no doubt that a major component of the gun lobby is the illicit sale of guns. Licensing and registration are obvious solutions that would not "infringe the right to keep and bear arms" but would effectively stop the illicit sale of guns. Along the same lines, even the simple step of universal background checks is opposed for this reason.
2
Interesting that our President constantly belittles these countries, especially Mexico. Rampant crime and lawlessness he tells us rule these countries. He forgets to mention how guns illegally smuggled from the United States are at the center of the violence. Are these weapons protected by the second amendment? Interesting question to pose to the NRA and their lackeys in the Senate.
43
So when a gun is legally purchased but makes its way illegally into another country, who’s to blame?
If this report does not reinforce the fact that “people” kill, then nothing will ever change the mindset of politicians who advocate for stronger legislation.
Criminal elements will always obtain firearms, no matter what laws are passed to restrict sales, period.
2
@MDCooks8 Laws work when they are enforced. Guns are mostly banned in South Korea and there are almost no deaths that are due to guns.
2
I’m curious about the potential impact of a Jamaican gun buyback program. In the US gun buybacks tend to be ineffective at reducing gun violence, mainly because the guns turned in are also the least likely to be used in violent crime. But perhaps a buyback will be more effective in Jamaica, where a vast majority of the guns are illegal.
The article spoke of owners renting out hand guns like hardware tools. It would be beyond wonderful if this underground economy was priced out by a buyback.
1
I'm tired to death of firearms in the street that should be reserved only for warfare. I'm sick to death of gun homicides everywhere. Maybe the human death toll will eventually sicken enough people that the tide will turn against guns being easily available everywhere you look. On the other hand, maybe humans are simply going crazy like lemmings do when they are overpopulated, and gun killings are only one symptom of the drive to the sea, and its consequent suicide. When humans are living lives that are terribly stressed they do go crazy and they do terrible things.Which cause only more stress. Only a decent life and a relatively natural environment and reasonable genes will easily grow a normal human being. Humans are unstable creatures, made worse by a failing environment. Maybe its just our time for the tide to turn against us. Maybe its best for the planet, before we kill off most of the rest of the indigenous life as well.
7
Anybody can manufacture guns at home from parts at your local hardware store. In fact, the hardest thing to make is not the gun itself, but the magazine. A slam fire shotgun takes to pipes and a few pieces of metal. Ammo can be made at home.
It is impossible to prevent a populace from having guns as long as the knowledge of how a gun works exists. The IRA made perfectly operational SMGs based off Sten mags that they used successfully for many years.
The point is that guns are with us forever, and we need to deal with that. Banning them will definitely reduce carnage, but it will not make it disappear. The only way to truly end gun violence and even the need for guns themselves is to create a truly harmonious society. So far, no nation or tribe has succeeded in accomplishing this.
3
@Jacqueline
And yet, people don't manufacture guns at their kitchen table in other parts of the world.
4
This is nonsense. The USA has the most lax gun laws in the developed world, and the most deaths from gun violence. A harmonious society can't exist without intelligent regulation, of which the US has very little.
4
During the years of President Houphouet-boigny, the country of Cote d'Ivoire, it is rumored, helped arm rebels in Liberia or Burkina to foment unrest there. Payback came when those arms trickled in to Abidjan and were put into use by local robbers. Could it be any different in the US? The point is, guns are everywhere. No amount of regulation is going to keep them out of the hands of criminals. The world has been 'too' successful in manufacturing arms. Arms and disrespect for the law, and disrespect for one another will not stop the use of guns. Only changed hearts will bring an end to this.
3
No amount of regulation completely stops ANYTHING, but we keep hoping and trying. Appropriate regulation can reduce a problem to a manageable level, if not an acceptable one. I remember that there was a time when the automobile companies said seatbelts would be ineffective, followed fairly shortly by a time when those same automobile companies said airbags would be ineffective.
I’m interested in hearing your recommendations for changing those hearts, though. Might give us some options to standing around, throwing our hands in the air.
1
Other countries like Canada safely regulate guns. The US is worst IN THE WORLD at regulating guns.
5
Gun manufacturers and sellers don’t have immunity outside the USA. The foreign countries should treat American gun sellers just like we treat foreign drug cartels.
Suing the international holding companies that own some of the gun manufacturers into oblivion would be a start.
4
The USA have the highest violent crime rate of all industrialized nations. 8 times more per capita than in Europe.
8 times higher incarceration rate than in Europe as well.
Proof that putting people in jail does not improve anything .
As well as the death penalty.
1
If there was ever a textbook case to be made for the premise that its not guns that kill but people that kill people it would be Jamaica and its murder rate as opposed to the US. And that is the murder rate in Jamaica is 57 per 100,000 people, as opposed to 5.30 per 100,000 in the US. This is while every sort of gun including assault rifles are available for legal retail prices in the US, while in Jamaica each gun has to be smuggled in and paid for at a steep black market rate. This is an addition to the unlimited availability of bullets and high capacity magazines in the US, while in Jamaica bullets themselves need to be smuggled in and are only available at black market rates. And yet in Jamaica where guns are much obtain and extremely more expensive than the US the murder rate is more than 10 times that of the US and one of the highest in the world. And all of that with only 200 guns a month entering the country from the US.
However when comparing the murder rate in Jamaica with countries that also have astronomical murder rates what they share in common is being of a particular geographic location, which is the Caribbean (Virgin Islands 49.26 for example), Central America (El Salvador 61.80 for example) and Venezuela (56.3), all of which are off the charts in comparison with the rest of the world.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
So clearly the legal availability of guns does not play a role in a country's murder rate.
6
@Michael Stavsen The enforcement of gun regulation does work when it is taken seriously.
Why is it that there are almost no gun deaths in South Korea when they are still technically at war with the North?
Answer: South Korea enforces their gun laws.
2
So, this is a gun problem as opposed to a cultural and perhaps economic problem? Would these people not be killing with knives if they had no guns? This article acts as if guns, specifically from the U.S., is the primary problem. It's not. It's the last problem in a long line of cultural, educational and economic problems.
2
sorry to sound callous, but I'm not ceding my constitutionally guaranteed rights because a neighbor doesn't have their social order straightened. Maybe the "warring criminals and neighborhood feuds that go back generations" should be sorted first. This article reads like a disingenuous deflection.
4
You don’t have to cede any constitutional rights, just be ok with a little transparency and accountability. Guns need to be registered and their ownership tracked (it’s what we do for cars). You have a right to bear arms and authorities a right to track where they end up, so that they don’t end up being used in Jamaican homicides.
1
The exportation of death, including and especially the CIA's overthrow of nearly seventy sovereign governments since the 50s, is not a bug of American foreign policy (including unintended effects). It is its defining feature. The United States, going back to the beginning, has killed far more people than Hitler and Stalin combined. (Double, easy.) It's an endless trail of tears. The American appetite for drugs and Reagan's takedown of Nicaragua and Honduras and El Salvador in the 80s has created a migrant caravan. Ironic, in a sad and dystopian way, that they seek refuge in the same country whose military forced them from their homelands.
2
Great story. And let's not forget that the US is the biggest exporter of military weapons around the world. Such sales, as well as the US gun manufactures, is a source of jobs and income for many Americans. Unfortunately, nobody seems to care that we supply all sorts of weapons (large and small) for all sorts of bad guys (large and small).
5
Guns are so prevalent in our society because the gun manufacturers and vendors want to make ever more blood money! They prey on the vulnerable and the paranoid elements of our society, aided and abetted by our craven politicians; and we are all, ALL of us, hostages to their venal and vicious greed.
3
Tax guns, heavily, at the time of purchase and on a yearly basis after that. It would be a good start.
3
Stop blaming crime on guns! A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.
5
Depends entirely on whose hand you are talking about. Some random gun twit? I don’t think so.
2
I cannot tell you how furious and outraged I am by this article. Referring to guns as SHE and giving them FEMALE names when they are used by violent, despicable, misogynistic MEN is beyond unconscionable. This is truly sickening. And revelatory.
11
Totally agree. Referring to the gun as “she” is disgusting.
2
@Robynne Williams that's what upset you about this article?
5
A good start would be for foreign governments to forbid the import of any weapons from the US. Any people in possession of those weapons should be killed, along with all members of their families. Here in the US, governments haul killers and marauders into courts and stage a show, after which they are either released or put into prisons and later released, to continue their crime sprees. That makes no sense. Summary execution for murderers and their families would guarantee that those people would pose no future problem. HM
@Hugh Montgomery
The star firearm in this story was SMUGGLED into Jamaica. Forbidding legal imports into Jamaica is already in place.
2
Remember how American woman got 2/3 rds of states to create PROHIBITION AMENDMENT to the US Constitution? Then it was ratified. IT CAN BE DONE- amend constitution of 2nd amendment! No individual civilian allowed to have military styled weapons!
also follow DMV laws in all states- must take a written and road exam every 7 years, must have liability insurance if you harm someone with your gun and you MUST have proof of registration. And all police are allowed to ask for this proof. If you have unpaid tickets- your gun license is suspended and your gun is seized. If you are found DUI with a gun, etc...ALL USA ALLOWS THE DRIVER LAWS...very easy to add gun ownership & use. Insurance companies would surge on special interest lobbies because of big $$$. And 10,000 jobs plus to train& teach.
2
So according to this article, the runaway violence In Jamaica is the fault of US manufacturers of guns. The country’s culture of random violence has nothing to do with it.
The technology to manufacture reliable guns is widely available around the world. The only reason US guns are popular in Jamaica is because Jamaica is geographically close to the US and high quality used guns are widely available here. If the US applies restrictions on gun sales, Jamaicans will simply source guns from elsewhere. Unless the underlying culture of violence in Jamaican society is fixed, the incidence of gun-related violence will remain extremely high.
5
“The figures are similar in Mexico, which has been lobbying the United States for more than a decade to stop the illegal guns flowing south. By some estimates, more than 200,000 guns are trafficked into Mexico each year, many to feed the vast criminal networks fighting over the multibillion-dollar drug trade to the United States.”
Donald Trump is constantly complaining about Mexico’s responsibility to stem the tide of undocumented immigrants entering the United States. We seldom hear about this ‘invasion’ of death that is moving south from the US. Before asking our neighbors to remove the splinter from their eyes, we need to be addressing the beam in our own.
4
Illegal guns come into my state because of American gun laws. We have strict gun laws in Massachusetts, and most people don't want to own them, but there's way too much gun crime here anyway because it's so easy to buy a gun elsewhere and import it. I feel sorry for the people of Jamaica, and we also need to fix this at home.
7
Let's see now...states with gun control: in Germany 6+ millions were killed in the 30's and 40's; in USSR even more millions (20+) killed by Stalin and others; and in China even more millions (50+) were killed by Mao and his gang.
Our country, USA, was born of gun-violence fighting a tyrant. (Gee, if we had been more peaceful, our money, like Canada's, might have a queen of England on it.)
Kidding aside, guns are great for fighting tyranny, like even now they would have been in Kashmir. You have to trust the State if you register your guns with it. Better not to.
4
There is so much dishonesty about the 2nd amendment. The modern SCOTUS completely changed the interpretation of the 2nd amendment.
This idea that all these gun lovers own their weapons to hold the federal government in check is stunning. In order to leap to that demonstrably false conclusion one has to ignore three glaring realities. 1. Why would the founders include language about "a well regulated militia" if they just wanted to say "the right to keep and bear arms will not be infringed"? 2. Article III of the Constitution clearly and explicitly lays out the definition of "treason" as "waging war against the government of the US" which by definition would include raising arms against the government. Is treason defined and placed in the constitution just for giggles? And, 3. Police all over the country have been bringing “tyranny” to black neighborhoods for years. What do you think would happen if blacks lifted up arms against “the government”?
Too many deny that these are clear indicators that the 2nd amendment was NEVER about having citizens having the right to overthrow the federal, state or local governments. And moreover, it had more to do with militias because we didn’t have a standing army and less to do with an individual personal right to have little or no limitations on the types of guns people could own.
6
@Wordsonfire: 4. It is delusional that some people believe they would have any chance against the American military. Remember Ruby Ridge? Remember Waco?
1
@Wordsonfire
Here’s the problem: you’re using the official Founders’ version of the Second Amendment, while Brian is using the official Wayne Lapierre/NRA version of that amendment.
Choirs sound terrible when everyone isn’t reading from the same hymnal.
Wow, we're 40 plus paragraphs into this story before we find out that the gun "Briana" is not actually self aware, did not smuggle itself into the country and go on an autonomous killing spree. We finally find out in spite of extremely strict gun laws, both internationally and in Jamaica, a criminal obtained "Briana" and used it to commit multiple homicides. I guess stories about criminals committing crimes aren't sufficiently dramatic and require embellishment.
7
Wr don't care about our own 'hawkeyes' so we're gonna care about elsewhere?
1
I think the point you are missing is the fact that guns purchased legally in the United States are causing havoc at home and abroad.
I understand your sentiment of assuming authorities don't care as after mass shootings little is done to address it. It is a touchy subject for law abiding citizens who fear their guns will be taken away but something needs to change as beating around the bush does not solve problems.
4
And, here in Canada, we get the spillover from the U.S. being awash in guns. More than 50% of the illegal guns on the streets of Toronto are smuggled in from the bounty of guns in our next-door neighbour country.
6
@gschultens--smuggled in either by canadian criminals of for canadian criminals.
4
The USA is now synonymous with death and radicalism. Shame shame shame.
3
The second amendment protects militia.
If you join the militia, such as the army, they can give you tasks even psychological tests. If you fail you are not in the militia or the army etc. in the militia you hold guns which is legalized. But since you failed you do not become a member of the militia.
Then you become a member of the United
Former Justice Scalia wanted people to own guns to be our militia. Yet many of these fail to be in that militia and become citizens.
Since people owning guns are not defending and protecting in our militia according to Scalia and other members we have guns to defend this is completely contradictory
Today those people owning guns are not in the militia and we assassinate each other.
Scalia and others defended him. And because of that indecisiveness gun holders are in the our militia, but we are assassinating each other. Time for a change
The court has aired before and they need to re-look an established militia !
.
@Bob Washick
10 U.S. Code § 246. Militia: composition and classes
U.S. Code
Notes
prev | next
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
The militia consists of a much wider group than you are aware of.
1
Guns do not cause violence. Jamaica is socially broken. It must become a family Afro-Jamaican focused society and revere it's African lineage. Full stop.
4
Jamaica is not our problem. Sure, some of you will twist it around and blame their violent society on our dopers, but that's a stretch. American arms manufacturers have made between 5 and 10 million AR15 style rifles. Kalashnikovs (AK47) are over 100 million and in use by over 106 nations. We aren't a drop in the bucket.
2
How is this possible? The Left is constantly telling us that draconian anti-gun laws will reduce crime.
In Jamaica, the penalty for possessing an illegal weapon, or even a single bullet, is mandatory life imprisonment without parole. Yet the murder rate in Jamaica is 47.1 per 100,00 residents, nearly ten times as high as in the United States.
Articles like this suggest that perhaps the Jamaicans would be better served by adopting the lenient gun laws of the United States, and allowing its citizens to shoot back when they are attacked by armed criminals.
6
@John Skookum
Was Tyler Hicks an accessory to murder for not trying to get the AK-47 wielding gang member apprehended?
There have been studies that indicate that 90 percent of incarcerated criminals admitted that they obtained the guns used in their crimes NOT THROUGH THEFT, but through a variety of unregulated, "off-the-book" means such as straw purchases, as gifts or inheritances given by family members or friends, or by means of "sharing" arrangements with other criminals. This highlights a major loophole in our gun laws. It is essential that background checks be truly universal. In addition, there should be laws mandating that owners report the theft or "loss" of any of their guns under penalty of law.
3
@Elizabeth Moore--source please. I tend to think you are just speaking anecdotally.
4
Yes, please cite your reference.
2
Gangs are mostly a product of poverty and intimidation of those too afraid or ignorant to resist.
Gun manufacturers are amoral murderers. Until they are held accountable for the carnage their products cause, nothing will change.
4
Ladies. Same with alcohol brewers, tobacco manufacturers, car manufacturers, swimming pool manufacturers, McDonalds because of the 500 lb people that graze there. so where does it stop?
5
I have yet to see a swimming pool go on a shooting spree, but God help us when that becomes a thing.
1
...and we have a son tax that helps pay for the effects of these things. Amen to that. Tax gun owners annually.
I was hoping from the title of the article that I would learn about all of the weapons that are being sent from the US to Europe, Russia, China, India, South America, Japan, and Africa. Instead there is an overly long discussion about Jamaica, with a few words about Mexico. Of course President Obama shipped assault weapons to Mexico. It would also have been useful to learn how proposed detailed background checks and a ban on assault weapons would stop the flow of handguns to Jamaica.
4
The USA is an arms dealer, at both the large scale armaments level, and the illegal trade in smaller arms used by criminals around the world. There are others too (notably, Russia) but its a huge trade in smuggled dangerous weapons intended to threaten, kill and oppress people in many countries around the world. Its just disgusting.
10
Great photojournalism - and not without personal risks. Would like to hear the backstory on how Mr. Hicks managed to photograph the gang member with the AK. Regardless, that was a life-threatening exposure.
3
Spreading gun rights and gun deaths to the world.
8
nothing about guns is going to change in this country. trump is a slave to the NRA, as are the entire GOP. about 8 years ago i had lunch with an irishman who went to college in the U.S. and i asked him if he had thought to live here. his response? "too many guns." i don't know how the pro-gun crowd can live with themselves after all of the mass gun slaughters.
9
The NRA and the small arms industry it represents are natural born killers. The blood of millions is on their hands, though they doth protest too much. Of course, the larger arms industry, of which Browning is also a part, is swimming in blood, run by sovereigns like the US, French, Russian, etc. governments and other renegades cloaked in suits of respectability.
9
I would suggest several things that American business could do to reduce the incidence of gun violence.
1) Require, as a condition of issuing a homeowner or apartment insurance policy that the serial number of every gun owned by the insured or any resident in the household be furnished to the company, along with a photograph and a bullet fired from the gun.
2) Require a copy of the driver license of anyone that a gun is transferred to.
3) Not paying for any losses (even ones not related to guns) if it learns of any unreported guns on the premises.
This would have the effect of creating a national gun registry AND a system of tracing gun transfers.
14
Most gang members have stolen guns or unregistered black market guns (just look at the number of unsolved murders in Chicago or St. Louis or Memphis). Most gang members do not own houses or have homeowners insurance. But you want to punish the law abiding, responsible people, because you don't like guns. Your argument doesn't hold water.
6
Since when has it ever been a good idea to have a insurance company govern anything? As an example, Have you never received healthcare in America in any capacity? To be categorized into groups and offered a lump sum for services and having the insurance company dictate payments and length of stay is disgusting.
Now, take your example and consider the Times article. If these "phantom" guns are not recorded the renter homeowner or whatever could not report it, obtain what they want and if a crime is committed simply say, as is the case often, it's not my gun I never seen it before.
1
It’s not punishment, Boris. It’s not any different than what you have to do to own a car.
2
It would be interesting to know how many murders in Central America used a weapon from the United States. I would expect that number to be very high resulting in a circle of death - murders committed with U.S. weapons threaten residents who try to escape to the United States which will not let them in.
4
Although the U.S public is demanding real changes for much better safety in weapons regulation, the toxic results of our current lack of adequate weapons control policies are spreading to other countries. The USA cannot any longer allow politicians to get away with hiding or changing the subject, hoping the public forgets about the problem until the next mass shooting.
By using denial over many years to reject and avoid the need for stringent gun control legislation, the GOP and some Democrats have fallen into a miasma of self induced indifference and dangerous permissiveness toward gun ownership and its deadly consequences. These same politicians and many of their supporters often use amateur analysis of the psychology/mental illness of killers to provide much-needed camouflage and distraction for the profiteering military/gun/industrial complex/NRA program of easy access to arsenals of weaponry.
Declare that it is "all a mental health problem", "all in the killer’s mind" and perhaps we won’t notice that our pathetic non-control weapons policies results in amazingly high murder rates, suicides and frequent mass murders, with this USA virus now spreading to other countries.
80
@F.Douglas Stephenson, LCSW, BCD Well, it is in the final analysis a "mental health problem" - a Republican insanity problem - the whole party is insane to keep dancing to the NRA's tune.
14
@R. Zeyen. Yes Mr. Zeyen, GOP insanity run amok in tandem with the even more insane NRA!
7
Why does a gun, used most likely by men, to kill other people, have a woman’s name?
4
"And most of those guns come from the United States, amassed by exploiting loose American gun laws that facilitate the carnage."
In the dispassionate words of a journalist, the situation is described. As a person who wakes up most weekends to hear about yet another shooting - often shootings - on the radio, let me translate to the passionate emotions I feel. Our children and young men in their twenties are victims of the stupid gun laws of a rogue nation that exports its terror all over the world.
15
Gangs exist for a reason. Exploitation of women, children. Unless we begin to address the social economic issues plaguing these countries, inner cities,
There is no end to rich people and no end to poverty
We need to address the issues of poverty emotional isolation then we can begin to scratch the surface of why guns are so prevalent in our daily lives.
Thank you NYT for doing the extensive research opening the curtains so we know how we are exporting our gun issue without being aware.
3
No end to rich people? What's wrong with rich people? It is what In striving for, to be wealthy. But to demonize successful people? That's the mark of an unsuccessful person.
1
So the drug problem is a demand problem (America’s fault,) but the gun problem is a supply problem (America’s fault.) I think I am starting to see a pattern.
7
Yes. America creates problems around the world. You didn’t realize this before?
4
Does poverty, low wage jobs if there are jobs, and other negative economic factors have any influence in this discussion?
2
@Pamela H
That doesn't fit the narrative..
2
No mention of the connection between gun murder rates in other countries - i.e. in Central America - and the numbers of immigrants showing up at our southern border asking for asylum based on fears of violence and murder in their home countries?
4
The problem isn't just the law....it's the enforcement of the law. Given that there are now more guns than people in the US, combined with the length's of our borders, means it's inevitable that guns manufactured in the US are going to find their way to other countries.
1
There is a presumption that if no guns could be obtained legally in the U.S., professional assassins in nearby countries could not have used guns.
If the U.S. could identify who sold or gave the guns to those kinds of assassins, then the suppliers could be prosecuted. But assassins will find the weapons that they need in any case.
1
@Casual Observer, the article doesn't talk about professional assassins. It describes gang members. These are no more professional assassins than the Hatfields and McCoys. The fighting between gangs would continue, but without guns it would be much less lethal.
Our lax gun laws are responsible for the flood of illegal guns in Jamaica. They're also responsible for the flood of illegal guns in our own cities. Enact universal background checks, crack down on straw purchasers, require owners to report when their guns are lost, stolen or sold, and you save thousands of lives.
3
Having succeeded in preventing the creation of a
gun registry that “will take away our guns”-
which is quite a frightening image, alt-fact and
fantasy- a selected, known, few,
personally “unaccountables,”
individuals and groups, are,
and continue to be responsible for
taking away daily safety
and wellbeing for the many!
5
Dishonest politicians courting the anti-gun advocates who fear and want private gun ownership diminished and restricted have no credibility when they say that they don’t seek to remove people’s guns.
3
@Casual Observer, I'm not anti-gun--I'm pro-gun safety. I want gun ownership "restricted" to LEGAL gun ownership--no felons, no gang members, no domestic abusers (and potential mass killers), etc. The NRA's propaganda about guns being confiscated is meant to inspire fear, like most propaganda. It has no basis in reality.
8
Should have called Philippe Claessens, the Belgian CEO of Browning's parent company
2
Surely you jest...
There are likely ten AK47's out there for every AR15...
The only enforcer still preferring S&W to Glock is Harry – and we’ve known for decades he’s dirty...
Actually- It's the American appetite for -illegal- narcotics that provides money and guns to drug wars the world over, causing carnage. So this article lacks basic research.
It is not American respect for our Second Amendment that causes violence in other countries.
So... if you really wanna "peace out".... stop using illegal narcotics. Just move to Colorado.
3
Never mind Jamaica, US guns are responsible for almost all gun crime in Canada. Maybe Canada needs a southern border wall too.
22
That's odd.
It's almost like illegal guns in high crimes areas are the issue in America, too.
Better go after those legal gun owners who commit gun 1/5 of all gun crimes with more laws and gloss over the 4/5 that do not.
3
Did you even read the story? It's about a legally purchased gun that then can't even be tracked because the NRA and Ronald Reagan banned any controls after that. In fact, almost all guns were legally purchased initially. The gun lobby has made sure any criminal who wants to buy one secondhand, or at a gun show, or online, will have no problem. More profits for them; they think the dead are someone else's problem.
22
@Scott, all illegal guns were originally purchased by legal gun owners. The point of the article is to trace this trajectory for guns legally purchased by two Americans.
3
A horrific by-product of our lax gun laws, unknown to American public, where some 100k are killed each year (in a country of 3M) by US origin guns! That's more than double our own carnage.
6
I know Jamaica. This level of reportage is the reason I subscribe to the Times.
9
Most civilized countries should consider the USA to be a terrorist enabling nation and subject to boycotts and sanctions.
14
It’s this unregulated after market that the NRA seeks to protect. They only use the 2nd amendment to sucker otherwise well meaning Americans to support their murderous profit machine.
10
The situation in Jamaica is very similar to Haiti, where politicians armed local groups, mostly youth, for their own purposes, but now those gangs have taken on a life of their own, terrorizing communities where the police cannot go as they battle each other.
7
If not "the Browning", then "the Sig Sauer". The reality, local cultural ethos is the weapon of choice. Still, an interesting NYT propaganda piece about the lineage of American guns and how they are misused, stolen, or sold. Sadly, even total confiscation on planet earth would not have stopped one of these killings, which is real story here.
6
Then why is there such a close cross-country correlation between guns and gun deaths? You must believe the NRA theory, that the US has more gun deaths than other countries because it has more evil people than other countries. That may seem true if you look at the list of presidents, but in reality the US just has more guns - - and they get used. That's why houses with guns are more likely to have gun deaths than houses without guns. "Protection" is a lie as well.
8
@Alice's Restaurant
What makes this a "propaganda piece?" Every number, date, quote, etc. is appropriately supported with sources and verified facts.
Your assertion about "total confiscation" not stopping "one of these killings," is completely wrong and demonstrably false. First, consider the trajectory of death and mayhem in Australia, UK and other places where the government has taken action after unspeakable tragedy to get guns off the streets and control who can own them. Or, consider reports over the last couple years where a mentally ill person has used a knife (presumably because a gun wasn't available to them) and tried to harm as many as possible in a building with many people - a couple have died and some injured in each case. From memory, such stories have come out of Japan, Russia and China over the past few years. Contrast these outcomes with the results of recent shootings in Las Vegas, Aurora, Orlando, on and on...
We need gun control, period! Enough said.
10
@Jeff White
If I wanted to be Canadian, I'd move there. Been enough to B.C. and Alberta over the years--flying my own plane about--to know that Canada is a beautiful place to visit, in the summer, but that's about it.
1
Network effects: Toronto has seen a big surge of gun violence this summer; seized weapons can be traced to the US.
6
It is virtually impossible to legitimately purchase a handgun in Canada yet there are guns galore on the streets of Toronto, largely in the hands of gang bangers and drug dealers. Nearly all of the illicit handguns are smuggled into Canada from the United States. Over 80% of the 228 shootings and 55 deaths in Toronto in 2018 were gang related. Gang violence in Toronto is most often related to the drug trade.
Toronto is no more or less immune to drug related activity or violent crime than any other large North American city but the source of the guns that support these activities is the definitely the USA!
131
ALL nations must ban tourism in USA now. Japan, Greece and Ecuador recently have. Stating it is too dangerous to travel to USA due to the loose gun laws and frequency of carnage.
Demand when you travel in USA- pre contact hotel and ask "do you allow concealed carry guns" If so, speak to manager and let them know the $ loss and you will stay elsewhere. Then post on your social media.
CONSUMERS IN USA CAN CONTROL this and be heros!
8
@museNtutor. Ecuador? Have you been to Quito? Hardly a non-violent city. Scary.
5
@museNtutor
Who controls whom? Doesn't Ecuador use the U.S. Dollar as its national currency?
2
It has always been the abundance of Guns. If an automobile can have a VIN number, than every gun should have a bar code. To think of the $billions spent on "those weapons of mass destruction" overseas in faraway countries, when America has weapons of mass destructions throughout our entire nation. We've made it a sport here, shooting ranges where you can take the family, sharpen your skills with the human body outlined for your aim The US even allows our citizens to load up on assault weapons, you can gobble up all the ammunition you desire. Everyone is packing heat with their pistols close at hand. We must as a nation, as a society track every gun. The current gun laws have no teeth for guns move so freely over state lines and as we can see here out of our country. We must be accountable America for you were shaming other countries for their weapons of mass destruction on their people, and you fail to look after your own.
9
Just to point out: Cuba is actually closer to the USA than Jamaica in physical terms. Cuba's gun deaths per 100,000 in 2015: 0.47 (per GunPolicy.org). For that same year, from that same source, the gun deaths per 100,000 in Jamaica: 35.22.
While both countries have restrictive gun laws, only Cuba has a strained relationship with the USA that inhibits the flow of goods and services -- and guns -- between Cuba and Uncle Sam.
One could surmise, looking at the figures, that Cuba's tense relationship with the USA ultimately means it is able to keep its gun death rate low.
16
Cubans are a more homogeneous population than Jamaica. I have been there and while they don’t enjoy all the freedoms and pleasures of life they are a happy people. On another note Russia does trade with Cuba, as do many other countries who produce guns. It’s about a population not the guns.
1
Gun control works so well where is it strictly enforced that criminals have to get their guns elsewhere. The sad thing about the gun lobby is they think this proves their point. But here’s my question: why don’t mass shooters and other criminals ever use fully automatic weapons? The Las Vegas shooter used a bump stock, which is very nearly the same in effect. The best answer? Because fully automatics are *controlled*. Some how Bad Guy doesn’t get them. One wonders how this could be so since we are told gun restrictions don’t work.
8
No matter where or how strict anti-gun and ammunition are passed and enforced here is the result; Criminals ignore the laws and make victims of everyone else who is unarmed. Anti-gun laws just make the general population, the great majority, easy prey. They also make life more insecure and fearful for those who are unarmed. And finally it makes criminals out of innocent citizens who keep firearms to protect themselves.
The AR 15 rifle ban passed during the Clinton administration did absolutely nothing to end the sale of AR type rifles. The manufacturers simply modified them and continued to sell them. Now we can all but get the parts we need out of a box of cereal and build whatever firearm we'd like.
The most used gun for all crimes according to the F.B.I. annual crime report is the lowly .22 pistol. They're cheap, small, easily concealed and ammunition is available everywhere. Gas, Cigarettes, Groceries and Ammo.
This article tried to make it seem like the 9mms are the great villains of the century. It's just not true. The .22 is the gun of choice. Put it in your pocket, purse or glove box and you're all set to go.
This article is false, misleading and misguided. The violence in Jamaica is the fault of criminal Jamaicans not American gun laws. What needs fixing is Jamaica.
6
I trust you believe drug use is the problem of the Americans then, who want to consume them, and not the South American (cocaine, heroin, etc) or Chinese (opioids) groups that produce and distribute the drugs to the streets of the US.
5
@Jay, the violence in Jamaica is the result of Jamaican gangs AND America's lax gun laws. Gangs armed with knives would be much less deadly.
The guns in this story were all purchased LEGALLY in the United States. The point is that every illegal gun starts out as a legal gun. Straw purchasers in the U.S. are now buying guns for Jamaican criminal enterprises.
We can no longer use the excuse that criminals ignore the law. There would be no illegal market in guns if our own laws weren't so weak.
5
Yep.
It’s all about money and greed.
An open weapons market in the US means that people in other countries can get in on the fun.
I’m certain that the NRA is well aware of this phenomenon.
6
If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
Fine - now we know who to arrest.
8
And in 2018 the US legally sold over $192 billion worth of weapons overseas. How many must die in the US and other countries to profit the weapons merchants?
3
@Paco varela
per capita, Swiss weapons sales are even higher.
1
Exceptional photos by the intrepid Tyler Hicks! This important story is enhanced by the visual realities.
2
@Margaret O. Yes, the photos are quite wonderful and artful but several of them look posed. They don't challenge the reader but instead reinforce generic ideas about Third World violence. They don't really show Jamaica in any unique way. This could be anywhere.
3
Criminals who use guns is a given in this equation. What is difficult for me to understand are law-abiding otherwise sane, moral Americans who feel so insecure they own a gun. I have relatives who fit this mold. They admit they will never use their guns, but there is a psychological urge to seek security in gun ownership. Why?
4
Fear!
2
It derives from an ancient instinct that was useful before the dawn of civilization: kill or be killed. Kill them before they take your food; kill them before they get your wife; kill them before they kill you. These triggers are completely incompatible with life in even the most rudimentary community, but they are powerful and persistent. It is a mindset that drives gun ownership which some cynical companies turn into profit.
3
American guns come into Canada too with resulting gang gun violence and death. One person on Facebook knowing I was Canadian said Canada sends its drugs to the U.S. I replied that those drugs were probably purchased with American guns.
1
Great article. In-depth journalism at its best. And, as usual, Tyler Hicks's photographs are works of art. Now if only we could replace the cowards in Congress who have been bought and paid for by the utterly corrupt NRA, a lot of lives could be saved.
4
A small fraction of people drives drunk, but we still have DUI roadblocks.
10
Criminals will obtain weapons illegally. Anyone who thinks that weapons can be kept from people who kill people for a living is just being clueless. However, registering of guns will enable law enforcement to track arms and to identify who are trafficking in firearms.
4
@Casual Observer, but how do criminals get those illegal guns? That's the question.
And the answer is that these guns were originally purchased by law-abiding owners.
That is the deadly cycle that needs to be broken.
2
No surprise here. Isn’t USA also the world’s biggest arms dealer?
6
It's mystifying that we have such strict drug laws but it's so easy to get a gun. You can't get Ritalin for ADD, but you can get an AK 47 and shoot up a movie house.
2
I can't believe that people (especially liberal journalists) can be so brainwashed as to believe the obvious failure of gun control in all other countries is the result of not having enough gun control in the United States. If the United States passed extreme gun control measures it would somehow magically work here. Really?
1
@Peter Reed Federal gun control measures would work here. Strict laws have certainly worked in New York, but their effect is countered by the ability of any knucklehead to head down South on I-95 and buy a truckload with no questions asked.
10
I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner!
2
Canada has been dealing with trafficked guns from the US for years, and a huge proportion end up in Toronto fueling gang violence. The resulting fiscal and logistical cost to the Toronto Police Service is immense.
A few of our news stories:
November 2018 - 30 handguns seized in Windsor, Ontario:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/30-handguns-seized-in-investigation-into-cross-border-smuggling-police-1.4167043
June 2018 - 78 guns originating in Florida, seized by Toronto Police Services (their largest seizure ever at that time):
https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2018/06/22/toronto-police-seize-their-largest-single-stash-of-guns-in-raids-targeting-street-gang.html
Meanwhile on the border itself:
2018-19: To date, the Canada Border Security Agency (CBSA) has seized 696 guns entering Canada from the US
2017-2018 The CBSA seized 751 guns from the US
https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/security-securite/seizure-saisie-eng.html
Make no mistake, America's guns are a blight on all of us.
14
As if it weren't bad enough that these United States are drowning in guns...for the asking, and the steady killings, exporting them abroad seems a lucrative business as well, however shameful and irresponsible it may be. I guess that god Greed, coupled with the licentious N.R.A., do like having blood flowing into their arms, and hands, with a steady supply of victims. What a promiscuous, disgraceful trade, and usually with the complacency of authorities and politicians prostituted by money. The lame excuse that 'guns don't pull the trigger,people do', is stupid, hypocritical, and even complicit with the carnage we see, day in and day out, wherever one cares to look. It may be safe to assume that, unless it becomes personal, the maiming shall go on, uninterrupted (Ugh!), and where our indifference tells it all.
4
And how does the theory, that the gun rights that Americans posses, explain why American guns have not affected crime in Canada that has an open unguarded three thousand miles border with the US. This article is another application of the Times 1619 Project that seeks to connect American history, traditions, constitutional rights and widely successful capitalism to the misfortunes of every social, national and cultural group that can be identified. But even the ever progressive theory favoring NYT has to admit that gun violence in Jamaica is rooted in local cultural customs and not totally“fueled” by American guns. Might it be that poverty resulting in social strife in Jamaica was “fueled” by the policies of the Democratic Socialist Party under Edward Seaga and Michael Manley, during which a violent political culture was the norm? Would such a theory even occur to the writers at the NYT?
4
While crime has trended downward in Canada, gun crimes have risen in several cities -- sometimes dramatically. Most are committed with handguns and most handguns used in crimes enter Canada from the USA (Virginia and Florida are common origin points).
5
@Boreal North
Some quick research, before this section is closed, indicates that @Boreal North is correct that some Canadian cities have registered an increase in gun related homicides, and that in the past homicides, not specifically in these instances, a large fraction of the guns are from the US. As in Jamaica, social problems such as gangs, high crime among native peoples, and a mosque shooting played a substantial role in the statistics. Canadian gun laws are slightly more restrictive than US so then a reasonable approach might be stronger databases and checks and control of gangs, domestic or imported.
1
@Paul, your theory assumes that illegal guns from the U.S. aren't a problem in Canada. They are, and gun crimes have gone up.
Murder is always more lethal with guns. For example, how many people would the Dayton shooter have killed in 30 seconds if he were armed only with a knife?
2
This is the same as once we call Freedom fighters ( 1980's Mujahideen means Jihadist) turned out be Al Qaeda and ISIS.
We are wrecking havoc on some nations , we are not even aware of.
Who cares... Long live NRA and Long live king , sorry La Pierre.
Gun pollution from the US contaminates Canada too.
American gun culture is a blight that infects much of the New World.
4
In Canada gun violence statistics are used to promote the danger if not point out the lack of responsible citizenship in owning a firearm. The reality is that gun violence is largely gang related in this country and they certainly are not legal gun owners. My guess is that a fair number of illegal guns come up from the US to Canada through gang affiliations up here.
9
Jamaica had a lower murder rate than the United States before they banned and confiscated firearms from law-abiding citizens. Now it is ran by criminals and not surprisingly none of their gun control laws are working. It is pitiful to try and blame an island nation's gun control failure on the United States. Illegal goods will continue to flow into Jamaica regardless of what the United States has for gun laws. The ATF only traces firearms from other countries that are already suspected to be from the United States. The 71% of firearms that were successfully traced to the United States does not include all of the illegal firearms found in Jamaica.
102
@Peter Reed
This is the kind of ignorance that is portrayed as informed opinions online and have very little basis in facts. Jamaica’s stringent gun control laws were initiated in the mid 1970s in response to an alarming rise in gun related crimes. Prior to that gun crimes in Jamaica were infrequent and somewhat of an anomaly. Much of the increase in gun related crimes was as the article intimated tied to politically driven violence. Guns that at the time arrived in the island also primarily from the USA and were mostly smuggled in as part of the growing drug trade.
This epidemic of gun violence that has been allowed to spread in the US has also been exported to other neighboring nations and defended with typical nonsensical NRA rhetoric about how stringent gun laws are the real culprit.
The people who advocate easy access to guns are not much better than the animals who murder innocents in and out the USA. They revel in spreading their savagery worldwide constantly contributing to others pain, suffering and a vicious cycle of violence. You need to admit you have no care for life outside of your own and stop pretending as if your cause is noble.
205
Your response, which I feel is accurate and based on facts from history and statistics, made me cry.
7
@Peter Reed countries with strict gun laws on the whole have way lower gun deaths and gun death rates than the US. Having lots of guns is the direct cause of having lots of gun deaths. The number of shootings stopped by "good people with guns" is miniscule. If the US is pouring guns into Jamaica through our lax gun laws we are responsible in part for the issues there. Can you cite facts to back up your allegation about high percentages guns from other countries? 71% from the US is a very high number - your comment makes it sound like you do not agree - 71% is a large majority.
56
what a pitifully ignorant and hypocritical country we live in / espousing freedom and prosperity but promoting death and destruction / from the proxy wars of central america to the invasion of iraq to the debacle of vietnam to the daily gunfire in our cities and now come to find out about the trade in firearms that reaches beyond our shores and disrupts the civil society of other countries / ah well let's turn the page change the channel and watch some tv sports
11
Democrat Presidential candidates must promise to confiscate legal weapons from law abiding citizens in the suburbs and rural areas. Only then will the killings stop.
2
When I was growing up in the 50's and 60's, mass shootings with weapons of war simply did not happen. We had stricter gun laws back then. But I don't suppose you would admit the connection.
3
This brilliant piece of reporting echoes a similar problem in Canada where criminals too easily acquire illegal firearms smuggled from the U.S.
The position of the gun lobby -- echoed by some your readers -- is that despite Jamaica's and Canada's tougher gun laws, illegal firearms will continue to flow into Jamaica (and presumably Canada) "... regardless of what the United States has for gun laws."
What nonsense.
Would they use the same logic to avoid curbing other illegal activities? What if heroin was flooding into the U.S. because it was widely and legally available in Canada, fueling a rise in heroin addiction? Would these people say: "There's no point in forcing Canada to control its heroin supply because, regardless, addicts in the U.S. would find a way to get heroin anyway."
Gun violence -- whether in Jamaica, America or my home town of Toronto -- is a complex issue requiring a multi-track approach. Controlling the supply of guns is an integral part of the solution. Let's make it as hard as possible for criminals to get guns. Let's not take the cowardly cynical approach, throw up our hands, and say: "What's the point of gun control: The bad guys will get their guns anyway."
16
Being of a cynical nature, I can’t help but wonder how our CIA, as it does in so many places, could have fueled internecine retribution and feuds so as to keep Jamaica destabilized like much of Central America?
Analogous to the way FBI infiltrated ghettos and facilitated drug use in 60s. Did we already forget about DEA smuggling weapons into Mexico 5years ago? Wasn’t that to increase gang- related killings and Stabilize petty overlords? creating a buffer of resources for the very wealthy elsewhere?
I don’t believe in accidents.
By fomenting rivalry, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this was a facilitated state of relative dispair.
When I visited Kingston in the late 80s, streets were full of stoned young men listening to loud music. Lots of dissonance and anger that neurolinguistically remodels brains to keep amygdala’s reactive, short- circuit the hippocampus, reducing higher abstract learning, decreasing prefrontal cortex reasoning.
Jobs and opportunities were lacking. You could own a storefront, repair stuff, or provide services to hotels. Plenty of sex and drug trafficking. Schools teach BASIC skills. The boredom was palpable.
Climbing the little mountain there, children older than three harvested coffee- they were paid 50cents a day for coffee the Japanese bought, even then, for $30 a pound. Those tending the coffee most assuredly didn’t see that money! The Rastafarians i met on the mountain were peaceful and kind- not unlike our First Nations peoples.
4
Why look to Jamaica to illustrate the carnage caused by American gun culture when a better example is close at hand. So far this year, there have been 274 shootings and 412 shooting victims in the city of Toronto. Both numbers would be records, according to Toronto police data, which dates to 2004. This the result of gangs armed with guns smuggled in from the US
4
Guns, tobacco, and alcohol are the big death industries of the United States.
8
Yep, and it is really convenient having one agency enforcing laws in all three areas. We should make the logo for the ATF a smiling Death, holding an assault rifle in one hand, and a cigarette and whisky bottle in the other.
1
Pinch me!
How is it that:
- handguns record of sale is not available to assist an investigation into who used it to kill?
-and yet my internet browsing log is visible to private enterprise and governments?
12
Anthropomorphism at its
most absurd.
3
Neither the 1st or 2nd Amendment came from God.
Maybe they both should be repealed.
3
Repeal the second amendment and ban all assault weapons. Say no weapons, Trust the police for maintaining law and order.
People all over the world abide by these basic principles and live peacefully. Why not people in USA ?
7
This story really brought Briana to life for me.
2
So the US is basically an exporter of crime.
5
Trump demands that China immediately stop exporting fentanyl to the U.S. We are a nation of hypocrites.
10
As long as the US politicians leading cities keep ignoring the thousands killed each year in their inner cities - where the most strict gun laws already exist but are not enforced - nothing will ever change.
13
My state strict gun control laws. My city has a high (compared to suburbs) percentage of poor and working poor residents and is Latin American immigrant-friendly. Gun violence, gun crime and murder has been declining for years and is at its lowest since the early 1960s. Yes...the early to mid-90s were bad when illegal drugs related commerce was at its peak. Illegal drug merchants need guns like corporations need courts and lawyers. The worst of that is over...at least for now.
Please understand...not all “inner city” poor environments are the killing zones everyone who is constantly barraged with bad news from Baltimore, Chicago and St Louis seems to think they are.
If I or a member of my family became severely depressed, I would not be able to just go out and purchase a gun to kill myself and I wouldn’t know where to buy one illegally. That is a meaningful, if not perfect deterrent. If I wanted to purchase a handgun for security, I could, provided that I get certified, learn to shoot and safely store my weapon...a level of hassle and community scrutiny that would actually deter some disturbed and impulsive suburban high schooler thinking about to shooting up his school. I know it may be hard for many people to believe but he probably wouldn’t know where to buy a weapon illegally and his poor inner city peer quite frankly, would in most cases not be able afford one even if he had a cousin in North Carolina who might purchase it for him.
3
@Dr. John
At least in NY, the laws are enforced, but their effect is countered by easy access to guns in the South (which are brought back North). It's hard for Chicago to stem gun violence when anyone can drive a few miles to Indiana and buy anything they want with no questions asked. Federal gun laws would be much more effective.
6
@MarcS Under Federal law, it is a felony criminal offense, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for a person to purchase a handgun in any state other than the one in which he/she is a legal resident. The same penalty applies to anyone who is the seller in such a transaction.
I guess we should close the border. Something Trump has been asking for. Democrats support the illegal arms trade out of the United States, that much is clear.
5
This article asserts that Jamaica's murders today are no longer about drugs. How about some data?
8
Rather sensational story and a bit overboard. Where is the documentation supporting the assertion that "Hundreds of thousands of guns sold in the United States vanish because of loose American gun laws." I don't doubt that guns are illegally exported, or that a few people purchase them for that very purpose, but "hundreds of thousands" doesn't withstand commonsense evaluation. "Loose American gun laws" is an opinion; "loose" compared to what? To the author's desire for national gun registration? That's a slippery slope, and there are plenty of examples of such registration leading to confiscation. The violence is horrifying, but sensationalizing the entire story based on one gun that could not be traced is not the kind of journalism I expect in the Times.
16
Maybe loose compared to the countries obtaining our guns illegally. A guys buys 4 guns and within a few months one is involve in a murder in Jamaica. Pretty loose laws here.
2
@RML
"Loose" compared to the rest of the civilized world. Why doesn't hundreds of thousands "withstand commonsense evaluation"? We already have millions in the US, and hundreds of thousands are produced every year. You think they all stay here? By the way, the gun cited was traced back to the US (its subsequent journey couldn't be, because of your fear of a "slippery slope").
2
@RML, the article provides a data based argument and then uses an example to illustrate the point - add some colour. Your assertion that the piece sensationalizes a single case is more akin to tactics used by defenders of gun rights - finding a few examples of the so-called "good guy with a gun", but skipping the need for data to back it up. The data would show that having a gun increases the risk of someone getting shot. As you know, correlation does not prove causation. Since Congress has banned any research into finding the truth, I guess it's unknowable.
1
Seems we need to add a new tactic to our gun control efforts... figuring out ways for other countries to 'charge' the US govt. with aiding and abetting gun violence in other countries, by way of our lax gun laws.
We control the sale of beer...the operation of vehicles...better than we do the sale of items whose sole purpose is to maim and to kill
4
We can’t even require voters to prove who they are with official IDs. The same crowd fighting that initiative wants to log all gun owners.
3
How about Canada!!,...American Guns...just keep flooding into our country. Yes, we have a drug and gang problem, just like the U.S. When you add guns you get more killings..thank goodness we have fewer military style weapons up here.
The fourth largest city in North America is Toronto ...murder rate is somewhere around 40-50 by guns...something like 650 in the country...too much...
It's a complex problem...that many politicians think there are easy answers...let's start by eliminating military style weapons, giving kids more opportunities black or white , and passing a few laws that benefit all not just the gun lobby.
Say, what ever happened to FIELD and STREAM?
11
A friend's brother, a Catholic priest, spoke at our church in the early 1980s. He'd lived in Guatemala for decades, through the civil war, & told us of the despair of the families he ministered to, & unimaginable violence. At the end of his talk, he looked around & asked, "Does no one in the United States realize that both sides have U.S.-made guns? You're selling weapons to both sides in this war. Do you care?"
I was young and not cynical at the times, but I could have told him that probably no one in the U.S. knew--I didn't--& if they knew, it would take facing too many unwanted facts to care.
That was decades ago, & the amoral war profiteering & flow of weapons south of our border has never stopped, whether those weapons have fueled civil wars, drug wars, or everyday violence. We've exported our own sickness, our own epidemic.
Now I would add to my observations when I was young--not only are people not aware about our deadly exports--but they sure don't want to learn any history that connects Americans' actions, our gun manufacturers profits, our foreign policy, and our indifference as reasons that cause families to flee violence in Central America & seek a more hopeful future in the U.S.
The gun manufactures have waged a war here at home, & along with the corrupt NRA that represents them, reaped monetary profits off of 40,000 annual American deaths by gun. That doesn't happen anywhere else outside a war zone. When I marched against guns, it's for all of our children.
12
The more guns that leave out country the better.
This shows why, in addition to fighting for the various forms of gun control, we also need to keep increasing pressure to repeal the Second Amendment. Though this will take a long time, it must happen. The (mis)understanding that many Americans (and others) have of the Second Amendment's purpose must be challenged at every step. The Second Amendment did not come from God. It was man-made and can be relegated to the dustbin of history, like capital punishment, by human effort.
12
As long as our politician's keep accepting "bribe money" from the gun lobby nothing will ever change.
9
Good ole Ronnie, his legacy to the USA, now the world, will live on in infamy. We must be so proud, our culture of guns spreading around the world.
7
I witnessed a gang related killing in Jamaica right before I migrated to the U.S. for college and it changed my perspective. This moment humanized many of the issues highlighted in this piece for the first time. Unfortunately, the scourge of violence on the island is so common that Jamaican news outlets tend to report murders like a sports journalist would for a highlight reel. The stories of victims and their families are downplayed and are unfortunately reduced to statistics.
Few on the island are willing and even fewer able to contextualize the cycle of U.S. fueled gun violence. But this article humanized the issue in a way that will resonate on the island and overseas. I hope the Jamaica’s reporters take note.
10
So I gather that many law abiding gun owners are part of the problem, acting as straw purchasers or giving their guns to criminals. Seems like a national database would solve some of these problems.
8
@Matt Law abiding gun owners don't do straw purchases or give their guns away to criminals. Criminals do that.
Hundreds of millions of guns are responsibly owned in the US.
4
@Bill
A good proportion of those guns are in circulation, not moldering away in an attic for 70 years. Everyone who sells, trades, or gives away a gun, or has their gun stolen, or dies with intact guns, is part of the problem. Furthermore, many gun owners oppose a federal gun registration law, increasing their complicity.
4
@Matt - A straw seller cannot be law-abiding - straw sales are illegal. Law-abiding gun owners don’t do that.
2
What concerns me most is that this article gives credence to the argument that with strict gun control "only criminals will have guns." But peel back the issues and it still boils down to economics and poverty.
2
Isn't it odd that 100 million Americans own 300 million guns legally and do not commit homicide, yet the same guns in Jamaica, or Chicago, go on murderous rampages. Someone has to go to great expense to buy a gun illegally, learn how to use it, buy ammunition, load the weapon, find his human target, aim, and pull the trigger. That is a great deal of human intention and planning yet because we are unable to hold people responsible for their actions we blame the hardware and call it 'gun violence' rather than murder.
We cannot bring ourselves to admit that there is a culture of violence in a few US neighborhoods and a few countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. This is the real racism in today's America - we are so narcissistic and arrogant that only we can be responsible when others behave badly.
Medicine made no progress for millennia as long as we blamed illness on demons and witchcraft, but as soon as we began to learn about bacteria, viruses, and physiology the average human lifespan doubled. We will never overcome cultural violence as long as we blame the demon of weapons rather than focusing on violent cultures.
11
@Someone else
This entire country has a "violent culture" (compared to the rest of the civilized world). Restricting access to weapons that multiply the effects of that violent mindset seems to make sense.
2
@Someone else Your first sentence is completely false in any imaginable context that it can be taken. In fact the US has stood out for many years for the number of homicides it has. The culture that you speak of is much more correctly stated as poverty and desperation. A first step to decreasing the killing is removing the guns, period.
2
@Desden The US has stood out from the rest of the western world because the terrible violence in those few neighborhoods skew the statistics for the country as a whole. Outside of those few urban neighborhoods, the rate of violence in the US is comparable to most of Europe.
And as nearly all the gun used in urban violence are not held legally, how do you plan to remove them? Ask the gangsters politely to give them up?
The firearms industry knows where their products end up. They know about trafficking, theft, all of it. They do not care because they don't have to. There is no downside for them because they are virtually invisible in this fight. Unless something causes a dip in profits, and because they and the NRA define even one less gun being sold as a dip in profits, they will do nothing and support nothing that risks even one less gun being sold. Greed and unethical business behavior, that's what it's all about, they don't even care as much about the 2A as they claim. Money. It's all about money.
11
@Diane-They do care. They count on guns leaking out and increasing sales. They know who the illegal dealers are and protect them.
7
The US is arms dealer to the world; the US has no right to claim any moral high ground here. The US exports its human misery and suffering through the fundamental right of capitalism - the right to make a buck. Background checks and registration make me laugh because all the while they are just paper windmills that you all dance around while the robber barons continue to make their bombs and guns and weapons and sell to whoever wants them. You can cluck all you want but as long the US continues to enshrine the rights of companies like Ruger and Smith & Wesson and protect them from civil suits and other measures nothing will change. This isn't like changing people's ideas on smoking, either, as I've seen some allude to about cultural change - this is like getting people to change religion, and it's just not going to happen.
8
The US is in the arms business. We are the biggest supplier in the world. If you're a death merchant in the arms business there's nothing better for business than a high body count that creates an arms race.
More criminals with high capacity weapons, more cops with high capacity weapons, more citizens with high capacity weapons to protect themselves from the criminals and the cops.
The President never talks about the US guns that MS 13 is being supplied when he talks about women and children fleeing from gang violence.
3
@HL. Perhaps we can get Holder to talk about Fast and Furious.
5
I can hear a representative from the NRA saying that people kill people, not guns. What about the finger that pulls the trigger of the gun. What about the bullet that leaves the chamber and lodges in or flies through someone's body because another fired the gun with murderous intentions? If that gun hadn't been available the person in question might have been injured but still alive. Guns make it easier to murder people. That we are supplying guns, however indirectly, to Jamaica and other neighbors is abhorrent.
No civilian in any country needs to own or possess a weapon that can fire off several dozen rounds and shred a human being. Our Second Amendment rights and the mistaken insistence on the absolute right to own a gun without the responsibility it entails is enabling violence in other countries. Our president is ranting about caravans of undocumented immigrants invading America. Jamaica and its neighbors ought to be furious and raving about their undocumented immigrants killing their citizens especially when those immigrants are our stolen guns making their way to Jamaica.
5
@hen3ry. Then why doesn’t Jamaica do something?
5
@Jackson like what? Build a wall? Why don't WE do something?
5
@hen3ry
Jamaican has fewer guns than the US and is ten times more violent (homicide rate).
Why is that?
If the US has more guns, and we do, why isn't the US seeing violence on the levels that exist in Jamaica?
I’m tired of people clinging to their guns and assault weapons, etc., etc. like these killing machines were some type of holy icon. The evidence strongly shows many more people die from their own hand, or family members kill or are killed when guns are in a house than some type of actual protection happens. Guns are constantly stolen in home burglaries. Add to that handguns left in unlocked cars. I’m not sure what level of social hostility is at work here, but we need laws that stop pandering to this form of mental illness. Needed now: All guns insured and licensed. Gun owners prove ability to use a gun safely and store securely as well as mental stability. Drunks can’t drive and people with hostile, violent backgrounds don’t need weapons. I would like every member of the NRA tested for mental stability. I doubt they would be able to tamp down apparent anger and aggression long enough to prove they can be allowed to have a weapon, and that may be the main problem. Most sane members in our country are tired of the carnage that is spreading all over our continent and adjoining islands.
11
@Barbara Snider. Drunks can’t drive? Since when? Guns are constantly stolen? You have no data for that.
5
@Jackson
A friend of mine lives in Ocala FL. I had lunch with her a few weeks ago and she told me about the anything goes gun mentality in Fl. Her subdivision does not prohibit residents firing their guns in their yards and so she is often subjected to ongoing noise from gunfire.
I asked her if this is still a problem . During that conversation , she told me that she often reads the local paper about the theft of guns from unlocked vehicles. She did not quantitate it but it is often enough to make an impression on her.
So could that gun be used in the commission of a crime? For sure. But without registration, how could it be traced to the original owner?
The law abiding gun owner is just an empty phrase. These thefts surely indicate carelessness at the very least.
I personally know of many cases where gun owners were careless or not law abiding . I could list them but that would take too long!
5
@Barbara Snider
Background checks for weapons purchased from federally licensed dealers already check for felony convictions or involuntary commitments.
There's not much more we can do beyond that.
There is no test to determine mental stability or hostile intent. Someone may hate THOSE people (insert whatever group) with the burning heat of a thousand suns, but political, racial or ideological leanings are not legitimate reasons to deny someone his right to bear arms.
Blame the US, why not always blame us for the worlds problems?.
As if other countries don't manufacture and distribute arms? If every gun were removed worldwide it would change nothing. Humans will continue to kill each other until the only thing left to hold is a rock and even then. You can't legislate evil away no matter where you are.
12
The cold war left an untold amount of weapons into the hands of criminals and terrorists. The contra war in the Reagan/Bush years left Central America with huge arms caches in drug dealers hands. Who won the cold war in Central America? The drug lords and associated criminal elements which are behind the horrendous conditions there that have led to waves of migrants heading north. The war in Mexico with the drug cartels was armed by legal gun purchases in the US. The NRA and its allies in Washington are responsible for too many pointless deaths.
3
Guns need to be registered and insured like cars, and all sales of guns need to be traceable. What happened to Mr. Dunn's gun? What did he do with it? Did someone steal it? Did he sell it to someone else, who in turn sold it on to someone else? Guns have no other purpose other than to kill our fellow humans and other creatures. They need to be regulated. They used to be better regulated in this country, and we had fewer murders. Look what happens when we allow libertarians and anarchists to get their way when it comes to guns. Regular mass murders and gun trafficking, not only here, but in our neighbors' yards, too. The U.S. has become dysfunctional and we are now a lousy neighbor.
7
Mere correlation or direct causality? Somewhere in between, I suppose. Congress usually does not act in gray areas unless members sense that enough of their constituency wants action. It won't happen in red or swing states until the NRA loses more sway.
What a unique and eye-opening perspective on the impact of US gun laws. As a gun reform advocate, I've never even considered the impact that U.S. guns have on other countries and while it clearly demonstrates that guns kill people, it also shows that people kill people. The truth is that gun violence kills people, and we should only have one primary concern, how do we reduce gun violence? We need to reduce the number of highly lethal or concealable weapons, and trace the weapons to understand more about the violence.
NYT, please keep up the investigative reporting with unique perspectives like this. It represents some of the only research in the US available on the subject of gun violence.
191
Republicans banned all other credible research.
Nice solution! Don’t like it? Ban it!
27
Well, as everybody knows...if you don’t look, it’s not there.
8
@Cs, yes it is. It leaves one numb at the stupidity of our government when it comes to the NRA. Guns kill and people with guns can and do kill others. Our country seems unique in that we encourage violent solutions. I cannot remember when I've heard anything as ridiculous as arming good citizens with guns so that those good citizens can kill the bad guys with guns. Considering how often police officers miss this reader wonders why the NRA thinks civilians would be any better.
20
In 1964 almost one half of the adult population smoked cigarettes on a daily basis. Over the last 50 years, we changed the cultural behavior. No easy feat. Still almost 500,000 US citizens die prematurely every year. Imagine the death toll if we did not change the culture. We need to do the same with firearms. Cultural change is difficult. For starters, warning labels on all advertisements like- If you buy this gun you increase the odds 5 times that you or someone in you family will be harmed. And maybe over the next 50 years we can change the gun culture without out harming individual liberty.
251
I’m not sure a stern warning label on a gun box is going to change the culture of a criminal mind ,,, when in fact most cigarettes now are consumed by low mindset populations
1
@Joe " If you buy this gun you increase the odds 5 times that you or someone in you family will be harmed."
I don't think that message is being aimed at criminals, Joe.
5
I live in Jamaica. It is a wonderful country. Like the US, the gun problem here is dominated by gangs in the urban neighborhoods. The gun laws here in Jamaica are very strict and enforced. This includes being found with a single bullet and no gun. Unlike the US one doesn’t get judicial leniency if caught with an illegal gun or bullet. Surely the gun laws in Jamaica and the US mitigate the problem, but how the gun problem is solved amongst the criminal element is a far more difficult issue.
126
@Byron The problem is that gun laws only work if EVERYONE is doing them. We have very stringent gun laws here in New York State, but people just import guns from the south to skirt the laws. According to FBI statistics, 91% of the guns used to commit crimes in New York City come from either North or South Carolina.
Complaining that gun laws don't work is like complaining that the lock on your house doesn't work because you keep getting burglarized, but ignoring the fact that your neighbor has a spare key and has been opening the place up for burglars every night. The issue isn't the lock, it's the neighbor undermining it.
Jamaica might have strong gun laws, but at the end of the day they're meaningless if guns can just be imported cheaply and easily from the US.
80
@Samuel
I didn’t say gun laws don’t work, I said they are a mitigating factor. That the guns come from the US is no surprise, the US is a major trading partner with Jamaica meaning smuggling small items in cargo containers is common, and as a practical matter unstoppable. The majority of guns flowing from the US into Jamaica is a matter of commercial convenience, and yes, that of the liberal laws in the US. But the gun trade is international in scope. If the US were more stringent in its laws and ownership, Jamaicans, Haitians and other New World denizens would source elsewhere (with the exception of totalitarian governed societies like Cuba). Modern communication and transportation facilitates all manner of trade, legal and illegal. Guns, like drugs are a difficult problem. Laws work well in changing the behaviors of the law abiding, but much less so with criminals. Yes in the US it’s easy to source about anything, and surely Jamaica is impacted by that. But the world is awash in guns. To be clear, the problem of illegal guns in the hands of criminals is difficult to solve, even if the US had no guns.
17
@Byron
This really is the equivalent of the child's argument that "mom, everyone does it".
The fact that guns are available elsewhere does not excuse the lax oversight in the US.
Secondly, if gun laws are merely a "mitigating factor," what will work? Laws are all we have.
23
Owning a gun should be similar to owning a car. Has to be registered in the State you reside and carry title. Title can only be transferred with the proper paperwork, and a tax collected on the sale. All guns owners should be required to register their guns and its serial number to the State in 1 year. This should be done online tho save the countless wait times at Government offices.
All unregistered guns and guns without serial numbers should carry a stiff fine and penalty. I'll leave the penalty assessment to higher authorities.
397
@Bill Woodson. Exactly what I was just thinking. Avoiding government knowledge of one’s gun ownership suggests one might want to do something dodgy with it. I don’t see anyone objecting to registering their automobiles.
60
@Bill Woodson: And....all gun owners would have to carry mandatory liability insurance, as with automobiles, with a minimum coverage of one million dollars!
75
@WPN
Not exactly. Owning a car comes with a trunk full of restrictions.
You must have the vehicle insured. It must pass mandatory safety inspections. You must obtain and keep a license in order to operate it. If you drive it in an unsafe manner you lose your right to use it.
So far as the second amendment, what part of "well regulated" do you not understand?
For the record, I support the second amendment. So long as the "well regulated" part is strongly enforced.
36
Musical companion piece: “Autobiography of a Pistol” by Ellis Paul.
1
Supply and demand.
1
Wow, what a great article. I never realized that guns could walk around and kill people. What a wonderful piece of liberal journalism. Informing us that guns actually kill people on their own and that they are female; thanks so much for opening my eyes. You people really are getting desperate.
9
Guns don’t kill people. People do.
In Israel almost all families have a gun (in case of mobilization),yet the murder rate is very low. How do you explain that?
6
Oh, I dunno...because reality?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/comparing-america-to-israel-on-gun-laws-is-dishonest-and-revealing/
Not only do all those gun owners have compulsory military training, they are required to license their weapons, allowed only one gun at a time, are limited to 50 rounds, and may not sell their gun without government permission.
11
@Marika in Israel gun owners are trained heavily and regulation is stringent. The "guns don't kill people" argument is not valid
7
Show us the facts, don’t just make them up.
3
The NRA must be really proud. “Guns for Everyone”, not only in the USA but worldwide.
4
We need to send thoughts and prayers
2
The US hotspots of killings are the inner cities, with many thousands of murders each year.
And with hundreds of innocent children killed in the cross fire annually.
As Jamaica did, the US should send military troops to those inner cities.
Why not?
Um, the major reason is 18 USC 1385, known as “The Posse Comitatus act” which prohibits the federal government from using the US military for local law enforcement except under the most extraordinary circumstances.
1
@D Edward
~7500 dead Americans annually including several hundred innocent children in inner cities is certainly extraordinary.
2
Yes, why not? The question should be , why do freedom loving republicans always turn to fascism to protect their desires?
3
I've been saying this for decades, we have strict gun control in Canada but USA's are so lax that their problems becomes ours. And that's true of too many things from the USA damaging other countries.
And that is why the world police is the UN not the USA.
30
@Sébastien, we actually have a very lax system of gun control in Canada. It only appears strict due to our proximity to the USA.
At the time of Independence, around 1960, Jamaica had a very low crime rate and was actually one of the safest places in the world. A lot has changed, and it is not all the fault of the US.
Also, a number of comments from Canadians. Toronto does not have a lot of shootings compared to a same-size US city like Chicago, but it still has too many.
Canada should simply ban all handguns, including those held by target shooters, collectors and all the rest. No handguns, period.This won't solve all our crime problems, but it would make a start.
11
No 2nd Amendment, what a great experiment Canadians could provide. It’s a shame the States are not allowed to try this solution in our individual democratic incubators, banning the most important piece in the bullet-death epidemic, the part that provides the storage and delivery of supersonic chunks of metal. I liked the comment from a Jamaican about how varying even a single bullet was a criminal offense, and heard some years back from a Senator who proposed bullet bans. Chris Rock made a good point when he proposed bullets costing $1000 each, we might not need 100 round magazines after all, and only rich criminals could afford to kill people with bullets. I think we could make the case that the right to bear arms is not infringed by the restriction of ammunition, which is where we should start. To be perfectly precise, guns don’t kill people, it is the bullet propelled from the gun that rips the life from people. I have no problem having spirited discussions with folks carrying guns, but if they are loaded I avoid the person and the discussion like the Plaque. Come on Canada, ban Gus or ammo or both, show us what that looks like!
2
Just a random thought, but the same gun tied to 9 distinct murders says that either the supply of guns is very constrained, the career criminals are extremely poor and desperate and have no choice, or law enforcement is simply overwhelmed, corrupted or unable to get cooperation from anyone. It could also be "some or all of the above".
Why would someone on an island keep a gun in circulation if it can be tied to a murder? That seems like a terrible risk to take if many more guns were available - unless it is not a terrible risk. If it is not a terrible risk, that seems like strong evidence of a very big problem.
3
The UK also has seen more guns being spirited in from the USA as a result of such lax controls here. Automobiles kill as many as die by guns and we have strict control the type of auto allowed, their registration and the very strict licensing to drive. We need at least the same control on guns and usage
8
The Indispensable Nation - spreading its magic around the world. We should all be so proud.
17
"She" Really? Is there some kind of pretzel logic being used to justify that personification?
11
Does it offend you because you can't use the excuse of reducing guns to dismissable objects and have to think about them as killers? That's what they do, they kill people. Author seems to have done a good job evoking emotion and making people question their perspective.
4
Wasn’t this one named by Jamaican law enforcement? Or did I misunderstand?
1
Very well written and informative article. There is a direct correlation between the availability of guns and the propensity for humans to use them to kill each other.
The idea that if everyone is armed then we protect ourselves is utter nonsense. The US is complicit in arming the world with everything from handguns to missiles. It's no surprise that hundreds of thousands across the globe are dead because of our love affair with weapons.
35
If, as you say, there is a direct correlation between the availability of guns and the propensity for humans to kill each other, why is Jamaica's murder rate 10x that of the United States', where guns are 10x more common? If you plot intentional homicide rate vs estimated per capita gun ownership for all of the countries in the world, what you find is that there is no correlation. Clearly, there are other factors involved.
5
There are certainly many factors. How many shall we choose to address? Because there are more than one, shall we just drop the conversation, in the face of the fantasy that some gun toting vigilante hero will likely stop any violent occurrence?
@Count zero Obviously we should not drop any of them... but neither should we focus all of our attention on one, particularly one that clearly isn't the primary contributor.
According to Don Robotham, Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, writing in September 2010:
'When Jamaica gained political independence in 1962, the murder rate was 3.9 per 100,000 inhabitants —among the lowest in the world.
In the last 10 years, homicide rates averaged 55 per 100,000 inhabitants, soaring to 62 in 2009, or the astonishing figure of 1,680 murders in a population of just under 2.7 million.
In comparison, in 2009 drug violent Mexico had a homicide rate of 14 per 100,000 inhabitants while Brazil had one of 25 and South Africa of 37; Canada, for its part, had a rate of 1.8.'
https://www.focal.ca/en/publications/focalpoint/307-september-2010-don-robotham
In 2019, a civil society has an annual murder rate of less than 1 per 100,000.
Conversely, if the murder rate is much above 1 per 100,000, then your society ain't civil.
5
Our lax gun laws are responsible for the extreme violence in Jamaica? Really? Then it must also be true, conversely, that lax drug laws there and in South and Central America are responsible for the terrible drug epidemic here in the U.S., yes? Simple solution: tell them that when they pass "common sense" drug regulations and end our problem we will reciprocate and pass similar legislation so as to end theirs. Utter rubbish.
12
America has the biggest appetite for drugs in the world.
6
How about this: since they have great difficulty controlling their drug traffic, the USA tries MIGHTILY to dabble in their law and enforcement. Isn’t that the better analogy?
Drug laws in Jamaica are not lax! They are incredibly strict because Jamaica lives and dies by the numerous international treaties it is party too, which are all highly anti-drug. Please folks, do a bit of research before you make statements like these.
We have the same problem in Canada. Here, only criminals have guns, usually US smuggled-in ones. The police, not every Tom, Dick and Harry, are armed and they do 'serve and protect' as is written on the cars.
15
@Anthony Jenkins It's not a new problem either. I remember reading about this problem of handguns being smuggled into Canada from the US in a Canadian newspaper when I visited 20 years ago.
6
@Gary It is worse now. More organized.
4
A leading export! And, with 390,000,000 available, no shortage ever! And, no tariffs...it’s a lose, lose, lose!
2
No different than US being world's major hawker of arms - especially to desperado countries, and used to kills countless thousands of people in an expanding trend.
1
Tragic story! And again, it deals with something originating in North Carolina! North Carolina is not having a good year! Especially, in The New York Times.
4
Looking at the pictures in Kingston and reading the article have me thinking it is no different than the Favelas in Brazil - crime ridden and very dangerous.
3
Please do not give female names to guns (ie Briana). The vast majority of shootings are done by men....call them Wayne (as in "la Pierre") or "Donald" as in our president. Otherwise, this is an important artlcle, but as one can see from one obviously pro-gun commentor, there will always be those who see no gun laws as sensible.
16
WHats the point of the article it states that Jamaica’s gun laws are very strict ,so people are already breaking the law by having a gun, so more laws in the US will prevent criminals in another country who are already breaking laws from breaking more? So US citizens rights have to curtailed to stop criminals from breaking more laws in a foreign country the logic fails me, should we ban the import of alcohol to the US from other countries because sometimes people drink imported alcohol and cause deaths by their illegal actions? The bottom line is criminals also find a way.
12
@EAH
The old "nothing can be done" argument.
I reject that.
15
@EAH Agreed. And after all the guns in Haiti are removed, they'll go back to being the nice, peaceful, progressive, enlightened. prosperous, tolerant (good luck to you if you're gay in Haiti) society they've been for centuries, yes?
3
@EAH - The way is to buy American guns, so people die.
Unfortunately, there's a certain mindset here in the United States, such that the very good idea of making it harder for our weapons to flood into other countries makes some people say "the logic fails me" and then spout unconvincing platitudes like criminals find a way, or try falsely to equate alchohol and guns. (a great combination that contributes a great deal to the 30000+ deaths from guns here, by the way).
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..."
1
And guns are turning up in Canada more and more .Do not remember this many gun shootings in Canada when I was growing up there . I googled how guns were getting across the US /Canadian border and some of the ways were crazy The guns in one scenario were crossing via a library . People with guns are a scary situation .It has become so bad that people can hardly remember one shooting incident from another .I wish with all my heart that the powers that be would address this problem and put an end to more families ,suffering from the loss of a loved one due to another illegal gun shooting .
5
Test fire all new guns and record the ballistics. Keep records of all subsequent owners the same as for automobiles. Face the fact that the Second Amendment was long ago rendered moot by the establishment of standing armies.
25
@Clark Landrum Unfortunately, even if it were financially able to do so, the common street criminals, say nothing of the roaming gangs, are much more clever than this and can not only alter any identification on the gun, but also fiddle with the rifling and change that almost as easily.
It's the alarm, justifiable, that people have looking for and proposing ways to make guns traceable but it only highlights what little the common citizen knows about guns. And to place the gun in someone's possession at the time of use is even harder.
I'm more alarmed by what has happened to our communities. Every time there is a shooting in Minneapolis or surrounding areas, families of children who are hit by 'random shootings' go on TV pleading for those who know (and there are many who do know) to give anonymous tips to the police. But gang fear of retaliation has effectively (so far) muzzled those who are now too frightened by the gangs to speak up.
That has to change. It never was present 50 years ago when nearly the same number of guns were around but not the deterioration of the communities as we see now.
6
Nonsense.
There were NOT this many guns around years ago, it’s beyond the ability of average criminals to retool guns this way, and it’s dead simple to put “taggers,” in all ammo.
3
It makes more sense to put an identifier on casings and make folks register bullet purchases.
Fascinating, isn’t it, that so many Americans believe that a gun registry would result in massive illegal gun seizures by the government?
We require automobile registration, and so far only very few autos are seized, usually by financial institutions for money owed them.
Meanwhile in neighboring nations American guns are wreaking havoc. That one gun in the hands of a serial killer could ruin so many lives in so short a time, all because no one here or in Jamaica knew where it was, is beyond tragic and criminal.
17
@Patrick McCord
No. Registration is for keeping track of the item, just like the car registration. Background checks are for checking if there are contraindications to own a gun. Not the same thing. If the sole purpose of the car was to kill or maim, then we would probably have background checks for cars, too (given that the right to own a car is no where in the constitution and there is no law that specifically forbids it.)
5
@Joan In California
Well, seizure of legally owned registered firearms happened in the UK and was strongly attempted by EU Commission in recent years, why the same should'nt happen in the US?
1
Registering is not denying ownership. Make people responsible for their property and notifying authorities if stolen or lost.
1
Tip of the iceberg. For decades, the US weapons industry has been delivering guns to many countries throughout the world. Billions of dollars worth of guns have been authorized for distribution by politicians of both parties. Journalists should investigate and report on how those guns have been used.
15
@RC
And the MIC salivates when Mr.Trump sells billions of dollars of weapons to countries like Saudi Arabia...which then deploy them on Yemen, etc, which means they need more weapons & ammunition, and the loop becomes more & more profitable.
The exceptional USA--built on violence & running on violence.
2
Regarding the "US weapons industry", it's interesting to note that the star of this article is a Beretta. Beretta is an Italian company. Glock is an Austrian company. SIG Sauer, H&K and Walther are German. FN is Belgian. I could go on. There is, of course, a substantial US firearms industry, including Colt, Smith & Wesson, Winchester and more, but the point is that the industry is in fact global. The US has the largest retail sales, but isn't so dominant in terms of production (i.e. industry).
3
I guess my home state can gain a little bit of infamy from its most recent export, along with its famous potatoes.
Highly recommended is, "A Brief History of Seven Killings" by Marlon James. It is an amazing book about Bob Marley, yes, but also about Jamaica, about Kingston, guns, and gangs- excellent read.
6
@Debbie and the CIA’s role in all of it.
1
@Debbie I just put it on hold at the library...it's out on loan at the moment so it must be a popular book, thanks for the recommendation.
@AMN- Yes, exactly!
1
As usual, the NYT omits information that does not support their argument. Jamaica passed very strict gun laws in 1967 and strengthened them in the early 1970's with the Gun Court Act. One of my friend's fathers was a Jamaican politician who opposed the 1967 law saying it would not decrease the murder rate, only increase machete murders, which it did. Murder begins in the heart; those intent on murder will commit it with a rock if need be. This is merely another article that shows that gun laws are not effective even though they placate the anti-gun crowd. Furthermore, when a gun is stolen and a police report is filed, there is no investigation. The serial number is recorded and the crime is only resolved if the gun is confiscated during a subsequent crime.
11
@Eli And your point is what? I only wish the Pulse nightclub killer had had a machete, instead of the guns he did -- same for Dylan Roof, and the guy in Las Vegas who murdered over 50 people and injured over 500. All with guns -- Aurora, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland etc etc etc.
11
@Vicki
My point is there are more guns than people in the US. You are never going to be able to do anything about that including pass more laws. And if this bothers you so much, you should leave Palm Beach County and go to a state that has a few million guns less than Florida which would be...almost nowhere. Or try Jamaica.
Google knife crimes for an education, but only if your will accept what you find
I took the effort to sit down with my police chief last year to ask about what we are doing locally to enforce gun access in my small Cape Cod town. I was disturbed when he told me that our police department had changed to safer hand guns for our officers. The department had legally sold all of the previous issued ones to a dealer. After three transactions, one of those was used in a murder in Los Angeles, CA.
Just a week after our meeting, a retired police officer in town "accidentally" discharged his personal firearm in a local restaurant. To my knowledge, he was not prosecuted, and his name has been sealed so our local paper cannot publish his name.
I personally know neighbors who have developed dementia and still own guns, and others who are taking psychiatric medication who own many firearms.
All this is in just one town on Cape Cod. We are awash in guns, and until some serious jeopardy is attached to the awesome responsibility of ownership, nothing will change. It is no wonder that they are overflowing into neighboring countries. Wayne LaPierre's meeting with the President after the recent mass shootings clearly illustrates how campaign finance reform is desperately needed, and not just for this issue. The way forward to ensure public safety is well studied and understood. We simply cannot bring ourselves to act. In the words of Donald Trump..."so sad". How hollow his rhetoric has become.
6
The owners of all the guns in the USA will expire as they do every day. What then happens to the guns when grandpa passes away? Does junior get his hands on them? Are guns handed down to sane stable people? Guess we will never know since there is no registry and no anual re-registration.
10
The proliferation of guns and gun violence in Jamaica began with the proxy war between Cuba and America. That pipeline of easy guns remains. today. Sadly, Jamaican politicians are also responsible, especially for the current state of things.
As someone who was born on that beautiful island, I was lucky to live far from the ghettos, but have seen first hand how corrupt the whole system in Jamaica has become.
4
Maybe Jamaica needs to start detaining people, especially American tourists with no family ties to try to find out how these guns are coming onto the island. Do as the U.S. does to everyone else, and don't even bother to give a formal reason.
2
The gun is a necessary ingredient in this kind of gun violence. So is a violent person. If you remove either you will prevent harm.
3
@willt26 actually only one ingredient is needed in any violent crime. A violent person.
6
No, the gun allows killing without responsibility—is that what you believe?
3
Okay, I’ll bite. How exactly would a national gun registry have helped keep this gun out of Jamaica?
2
@Joe C., legal responsibility should come with ownership. Buy a gun and you should be responsible for how it is used. If it’s stolen,report it. If you sell it, the next registered owner assumes the responsibility.
6
Here in Mexico we suffer the consequences because you - you CHILDREN - can't understand that it's 2019, not 1909, and the Wild Wild West has been over for a hundred years. What kind of people make it illegal to buy an antibiotic over the counter but will happily sell you an assault rifle? It's time you woke, and joined the rest of the world. Guns are for police and army, not for Joe Sixpack on the street.
42
@Laughingdog
The kind who adhere to the rule of law. We don't have pharmacies selling anti-biotics under the counter to people without prescriptions do we? Guns are for Law Abiding Citizens in the United States and will find their way to Criminals in Mexico one way or the other no matter what happens to the Law Abiding Citizen's rights here.
3
@Laughingdog
"What kind of people make it illegal to buy an antibiotic over the counter but will happily sell you an assault rifle?"
Because unregulated sale or dispensing of antibiotics is a public health problem and unregulated sale or dispensing of guns is................not?
That is sarcasm. I am with you, Laughingdog. 100%.
4
The template for an effective solution already exists: regulate guns for safety like cars:
1. Certificates of title and transfer in a central registry, with licenses for users;
2. Liability insurance for safer use and secure storage;
3. "Rules of the Road".
Be sensible. Be sensible.
4
so I can then carry essentially EVERYWHERE IN ALL 50 STATES? YA!!!!
1
When I moved to Canada in 2005 from Virginia, I was amused to hear local news report convenience stores held up at knife point. Unfortunately, the flow of illegal guns northward has made that as much an anachronism here as in the US.
5
With ownership should there should be responsibility. I have always been puzzled why a rules based country such as ours abhors the concept of ownership responsibility and accountability when it comes to guns. There should be registration and insurance requirements associated with gun ownership.
23
This is an excellent article. Essentially, it traces connections between instruments built to kill, and their eventual targets.
We are all so shocked about gun violence, but few really get it. The essential moral question of our time gets to the heart of this paradox: we feel we need protection, but some also feel the fierce desire (and legal right) to own a gun. how does this square with the fact that these devices, whose main function is to rip through human flesh, are manufactured and sold with little regard for the consequences? It’s not a legal question. It’s a profound moral issue that the human species is wrestling with, and grieving over.
17
America's second amendment wreaking havoc on a society unprepared to deal with the atrocities of gun violence. Members of the NRA ought to take a vacation in areas like Kingston, and other parishes with gun violence and not in the touristy areas like Ocho Rios or Montego Bay where the real paradise in Jamaica resides.
12
@Wayne: Is there any society that is actually prepared “to deal with atrocities of gun violence”?
@Wayne
Dear Wayne, If only Ochi was a paradise. Mainly white tourists have access to the hotels and beaches. People living in Ochi and surrounds cannot enter their own beaches, except for a couple of exceptions which charge a fee. So life is no paradise for the majority who live off of the crumbs left by the tourists and are servants of them in the hotels and restaurants. This is partly the legacy of slavery and of the American active anti socialist takeover of the Jamaican economy during the Michael Manley years. It is the economy as always.
1
New Zealand
1
come on, no we are responsible for gun violence innJamaica. I am 100% in favor of gun control. anti-trump and abti-NRA. But this is really stretching it.
15
Sadly, in recent years America’s gun culture and a highly porous border have fuelled a rise in illegal firearms in Canada.
19
"Law enforcement officials, politicians and even gangsters on the street agree: It’s the abundance of guns, typically from the United States, that makes the country so deadly."
Actually, it's the abundance of criminals which makes the country so deadly. It's not clear from the story why Jamaicans place such a tiny value on human life. Maybe that cavalier attitude also explains why they place small value on human freedom.
It's actually comical how you ascribe agency to a piece of metal.
But considering the carnage the folks in Latin America are willing to inflict on one another, and the patent disregard for human life all too many of them exhibit, what would motivate anyone to want to throw the US borders open, so that what happens there can increasingly happen here?
23
@Michael there are really no differences between people in Jamaica, Mexico, or Japan, and yet when you limit the number of guns available, like they do in Japan, there are very, very few gun deaths.
10
@Michael It's very clear that the vast majority of this carnage would not happen if the guns weren't there, just the same inside the US.
6
@Michael
Criminality is rampant anywhere that is awash in poverty. This is true domestic and abroad. The point you are missing is that the presence of guns unequivocally makes areas with crime more deadly for both the criminal and non-criminal elements. To say that the problem is the existence and attitude of the criminals is somewhat lacking in pragmatism. This is the classic NRA talking point of "guns don't kill people, people kill people." The cause of gun violence is not univariable. It's not just the guns, and it's not just the people. It involves an element of both that must be addressed. Also for many Americans (and most non-Americans), gun ownership is not the pinnacle of the "free-do-meter" despite the insistence of politicians and lobbying groups.
8
The tiny US Virgin Islands has the same problem...constant shootings murders retribution neighborhood housing community turf wars and no respect for life. Decades of talk-talk by police chiefs and governors and legislators, still 30, 40, 50 murders per year, and not one thing has changed. Money is exchanging hands and nobody knows nothing bout nothing. The islands are teeny tiny specks of land, yet nobody knows nothing bout nothing. It’s a puzzle alright.
8
Arms dealer to the world ... not a proud title unless you are an American gun manufacturer or the NRA. We all know about the American carnage, now we learn our American carnage is exported.
Not a fine moment for the American image. We are the Ugly American, once an unattractive tourist and now a dealer of death and family destruction abroad. Congress, please get a grip on this problem, both foreign and domestic.
Looks like we'd have to #DitchMitch to do it.
22
@D. Lebedeff Maybe everyone should email this article to their senators and representatives.
We have the same problem in Canada. Illegal weapons smuggled out of the US are used in gun crimes in our country. Its the same all over the world. When will the rest of the world stand up to America, the merchant of death, and say enough is enough!
44
@Libbie
There are over 70 million AK 47s in the world, and most are not made in the USA. If there is demand for guns, they often come from the USA because that is easiest, but that does not mean they would not come from somewhere else if supply from the USA were cut off.
6
@Libbie, it's a problem in US cities as well. Something like 40%, if not more, of guns recovered from crime scenes in Chicago were brought in from Indiana, which is very nearby and has much looser restrictions.
4
Is the author saying, if it weren't for American guns, Jamaica would be a safe peaceful place? If so he is wrong. Maybe different people would be getting killed or weaker people would be abused but I doubt the guns are the cause of the violence. Without guns, all women are weaker than men. Small men are weaker than big men. Guns are the great equalizer. Maybe what Jamaica needs is more guns in the hands of law abiding citizens. A better question is how Jamaica, a true paradise, a Garden of Eden, spiraled into this violent mess. Obviously, they are not responsible. It must be the result of slavery and racism.
16
@Michael Green, not safe and peaceful, but safer and more peaceful maybe. More guns in homes might deter certain crimes, but doesn't help with gang warfare and comes with other risks. Even law abiding citizens get angry and sad. Two thirds of gun deaths in the US are suicides, and a large chunk are related to domestic violence. Those are conditions that exist without guns, but the guns increase the number of deaths because they are more efficient tools.
5
The United States is not to blame for criminal elements in Jamaica seeking to take advantage of American gun laws. Attack the criminality in Jamaica.
14
When I read the headline I thought the story might be about Canada where US handguns also cause problems.
5
The 9mm Browning Hi-Power 245PN70462 was probably built in Belgium before 1991, maybe even as early as 1976. That means it was imported into the United States and was sold as an inexpensive but reliable handgun.
What this means is that the basic premise of the article is greatly misleading. The title of this article is "One Handgun, 9 Murders: How American Firearms Cause Carnage Abroad."
A gun built in Belgium is NOT an American firearm. Nor is the Kalishnikov semi-auto rifle held by a Jamaican gang member shown in the picture. The Kalashnikov may come from China, Russia, Vietnam, Pakistan or Eastern Europe. Guns and ammunition that come from overseas are NOT of American origin and are not the cause of the carnage in Jamaica.
It is false and misleading to indict American manufacturers and legitimate gun dealers by making the assertion that the guns of Jamaica are sourced solely from American industry.
The guns can also come from kits and be built from scratch. It's not hard to do. Also, guns are sold privately, pawned, and are stolen too.
There are more than 300 million firearms held by American citizens. To make the claim that 1500 came to Jamaica and represent a flood of firearms and are responsible for mass murder is irresponsible and wrong.
A more detailed and honest assessment is required before making these claims.
29
@Jay
Actually it was manufactured in 1989. And most likely in Belgium.
It would be very informative to know what ammunition was used and where that came from. A gun without ammunition is nothing but a paperweight.
Also, just because there are two so-called origins, manufacture and transfer to a distributor it doesn't mean that the last stop before Jamaica was the U.S. This gun may have traveled to Mexico or Central America and been stolen/redistributed/sold many times.
9
@Jay
Yes. But why ruin a "good" story with otherwise logical questions and salient points. Remember this is not about the truth, but about the editorial agenda of the news outlet. You will never read a piece on here about how someone's life was saved because they had a firearm handy.
9
@Mark They are nice looking junk .Most owners get rid of them after finding that out .Surprised it functioned at all.But the glock ,now that's dangerous,meaning they actually work.
1
Just another branch on the legacy tree of an immoral, irrational American electorate and the NRA....all clinging to the ridiculously outdated 2nd Amendment, though for differing reasons.
11
The new standard for flying the US flag.
It must fly below the NRA flag. It has the added bonus of being in a permanent half mast status. Which is where the new world 2nd amendment now resides.
11
Oh, so now the U.S. gun policy is responsible for murders in the rest of the world, notwithstanding sales of billions of handguns and weapons to terrorists by China, North Korea, and others? Sorry Ahmed, I don't buy it.
20
@Kent Kraus
Don't believe it? Just go Birmingham on a Saturday night.
4
Unusual that the two guns profiled in this article came from Idaho and North Carolina; the illegal guns that proliferate in Jamaica come overwhelmingly from Florida, where they are purchased and shipped to the island by criminals within the Jamaican-American community. They are able to enter the island due to the utter corruption of the Jamaican customs service. As noted in the article, Jamaica has a deep rooted problem with violence as a mechanism to resolve the pettiest of disputes. Jamaica's criminality, dysfunctionality, and corruption do not make a case for the NYTimes' gun control agenda.
22
"Guns are made for killing, they ain't good for nothing else, and if you like to drink your whiskey you might even shoot yourself..." - Lynyrd Skynyrd, 'Mr. Saturday Night Special'
That came out in the 70's and is even more true today. When we start valuing life like we value money, things may finally change...
16
Wow. An illegal handgun has been brought to “life” as a woman. Why not a man?
12
When recovered, the vast majority (70-80%) of weapons used in crime locally can be traced to the US, smuggled in and sold at huge mark-ups or rented on an ad hoc basis. They are handguns which has spiked a terrible rise in shootings caused by drug and gang wars....something else that is US sourced.
4
Of the 44, 000 Americans who die of gunshots every year about 2/3rds are suicides. And a majority are white men and veterans who tend to use handguns.
This factual narrative is an inconveniece for both sides the gun debate.
While mass shootings are increasing in frequency and deadliness, they are tiny portion of gun homicides. Most gun homicides in America involve family, friends, neighbors and thugs of the same ethnic sectarian color aka race socioeconomic educational group.
Much like Prohibition fueled the rise of white European American Judeo- Christian ethnic sectarian organized crime, the War on Drugs is doing the same thing for black African and brown Hispanic Latino American organized crime.
8
@Blackmamba
Are you saying suicides somehow don't count? They are tragic regardless and a handgun in the house makes them far more likely to happen.
2
@Jay--suicides dont count. Sorry that doesnt fit your agenda.
1
Lots of US handguns also end up in the hands of criminals in Canada.
5
It is no secret that our gun shows are a major supply chain to drug cartels in Mexico. Their runners were big buyers at our largest gun shows such as Las Vegas. But they are smart and now we see their runners at small gun shows evading attention. Just as important to them is buying guns in the US via the internet. They have so many ways to buying guns in the US.
It’s easier to buy an AK-47 than it is to buy a car or motorcycle in the US,
14
@citizenUS....notchina "Just as important to them is buying guns in the US via the internet"
All guns bought on the internet have to be transferred to a FFL dealer in order for the buyer to take possession. The internet is not a good source to get a gun illegally.
3
Violent humans have always killed other humans, even before the introduction of guns. Even chimpanzees, our evolutionary ancestors, have no qualms about killing their own family members and loved ones. Enacting strict control will not stop the increasing levels of violence in poverty burdened areas. Human nature will always be here, and it is not going away.
7
All guns and (legal) successional ownership can be tracked with blockchain technology. All data could be kept in a universal database at next to no cost. We have the technology to do this. America needs political leadership to require it.
3
Despite its strict gun control laws, the Jamaican murder rate is about 60 per 100,000 while the U.S. murder rate is about 5 per 100,000.
Jamaica’s murder rate was only 3.9 in 1962, but 1962 was the year Jamaica gained its independence from Great Britain. The Jamaican murder rate quickly went from one of the world’s lowest murder rate to one of the world’s highest murder rate.
16
But don’t forget the drug culture and smuggling.
It's not just the "Brianas" that America makes easy for the world at large to buy which create their wake of carnage (but on a small scale). It's also the large scale arms--missiles and heavy explosives and war planes and assault hardware---that can kill hundreds at a time--that our present Administration makes available to such countries as Saudi-Arabia for use on Yemen children and other civilians--that cause carnage abroad. We are the exporters of death, as long as there's a good profit to be made. Business above all else.
7
Let me start off by seeing guns don't kill people, the person with the gun is the one killing, on the flip side a gun in the hands of the right person can save someone else's life. There were murders happening long before guns were invented the gun just made it easier for someone who is already inherently evil to do what is already in their hearts to do. I agree that laws should be a little stricter to a point but I will also fight to protect the right to bear arms I actually believe in constitutional carry, though it had not come to my state yet I hope it will but with a deport look at the person the gun is being sold to. Just my two cents.
6
Not a peep about the killing fields in Chicago. They are averaging 40-50 shot in a single weekend with 4-8 dead. Of course it’s a blue city with strict gun control, so it doesn’t matter. How about the last administration’s Fast & Furious program where they gave Cartel’s weapons with no gps trackers. Hmmm. It’s almost like guns are provided to bad people on purpose to push a political narrative, one that would forfeit our civil rights.
8
@JOSEPH
St. Louis led the nation with 66.1 murders per 100,000 people in 2017, according to the FBI’s most recent yearly statistics, released in September. It was followed by Baltimore (55.8 per 100,000), Detroit (39.8 per 100,000), New Orleans (39.5 per 100,000) and Baton Rouge, Louisiana (38.3 per 100,000).
For its part, Chicago ranked 14th among cities with at least 100,000 people in 2017. (Pew)
5
How many American guns end up in Japan or South Korea? I’m not pro-gun but at the end of the day they’re inanimate objects, they don’t fire by themselves. The souls of the people, the culture of Jamaica needs to be addressed, guns are just the symptoms.
18
@Ed
"How many American guns end up in Japan or South Korea?"...they don't, because these two countries have very strict laws on gun ownership.
4
This is interesting but narrowly focused. Remember Fast and Furious? It was a four year program by the U.S. government under Obama, that purposely sold guns to be taken into Mexico and sold to the cartels and other criminals. At least one of our border patrol agents was killed by one of those guns. Haiti is foreign country. It has a violent and cruel history. Under Poppa Doc, people were not only shot. Just about anything that would kill, was used. Gasoline was cheap and old tires were plentiful. Add to those. a match and that method became very popular. Criminals and cruel oppressive governments will always find a way to kill and we have no authority to prevent them from buying guns in Haiti or remove the ones there. Haiti is a small country. It doesn't even occupy the whole island. Just about everything that happens there is under the control of the government. Where they get their guns is not the problem.
11
"The right to bear arms"....why do we suppose that means "guns"??? The Supreme Court can define "arms" as something else, much less lethal. Sewing pins or whatever. Gun laws would be much tighter then in the USA which is necessary now as some Americans move to Europe or Asia now to avoid having their kids do lock down drills, etc. Gun violence is throwing a toxic pall over America and its neighboring countries and even the gun makers will reap only dead economies battered by fear and loathing....
@Gemma if we want to take the route of simply redefining words to make the Constitution say what we want, why can't someone simply redefine "speech" to exclude anything critical of the government, or "houses, papers, and effects" to exclude any electronic communications? That way lies madness. If we don't want to have the second amendment, there is a proper way to repeal it: another amendment.
2
The US needs to start making the registered owners of guns accountable for them up until they are destroyed. A registry & system like we have here in Switzerland would go far. People here care about their community welfare and abhor violence. It’s why it works. They care. People in the US only care about their own personal rights, not those of others around them. As much as they say they are patriotic, they don’t seem to know what it means.
22
This is why we need strict nationwide gun control in the US. While guns are being smuggled out of the US in huge numbers, it is ludicrous to suggest that the opposite could ever occur.
3
You’re just now reporting on gun violence in Jamaica? Maybe reparations to victims families should be discussed as well. Briana didn’t kill 9 people, the assassin killed 9 people with a gun.
Remember this, there are many law abiding gun owners who advocate for universal back ground checks AND a uniform CWP process.
8
Trump is outraged by the drugs coming from Mexico and the Fentanyl coming from China, but never talks about the guns leaving the U.S. One can argue that drugs do less damage than guns and drug addicts are personally responsible for using drugs. Yet if I say America should not blame Mexico and China for all the drug addicted kids we have and it's all about personal responsibility ( like some are saying in the comments) suddenly that would be a problem. Illegal drugs and guns are one in the same, and the country of origin should do their best to keep these items from illegally leaving their country.
5
There's no surprise in any of this. Jamaica has been a violent place from very many decades back - it's baked into the country's history.
10
@Mark About 30 years ago a friend visited there, and when he returned I was aghast at the stories he told of being warned not to leave the grounds and beaches of the hotel, and when they did, the number of people approaching them to sell drugs. Not just weed, but cocaine (which at the time was about as bad as it came next to heroin) and I accused him of making up tall tales.
This proven mind set, and with only a few customers, no wonder those who are in the position to do so, will exercise any method to be top dog in a small market.
Don't blame the US; the problem predates this upswing in violence. There were always guns, it is the lack of morality and respect that is core-cause.
When Jamaica "gained independence" in 1962 they had one of the lower murder rates in the world, 3.9 per 100,000 inhabitants.
By 2005 they had the highest murder rate in the world.
People seem to have an irrepressible desire to kill each other in Somalia, in the Middle East, in many corners of the world, including Baltimore.
The weapons available are a factor - as are culture, history, poverty, demographics. At a time when Americans are killing each other in record numbers, the focus should be here for that simple reason.
I am surprised, though, that the NY Times didn't make this a story about how U.S. gun laws are racist because they are being illegally smuggled to places like this.
7
@William Murray The rise in the murder rate coincides with the guns being by smuggled in. The CIA was working with the JLP to fuel the war between political gangs. There is so much you don't know. There would be less murders if people are were sorting their differences with their fists but now everybody has a gun and you just side step that factor. That's the way it was before all the guns.
3
I am certainly for gun control in the United States but am at a loss to understand how that would impact the millions of handguns now in circulation here. But I am naive in thinking that people are being killed in Jamaica by other Jamaicans who are murderers? Or is that simply a right-wing canard?
6
Paradoxically, the fact that the Jamaican underworld rents out illegal firearms to aspiring criminals, and that they are considered very valuable capital goods, suggest that Jamaica is not awash in guns, but more the contrary. Guns are scare and hence have high value (at least to criminals, since legal ownership in Jamaica is rare).
Jamaica is a country of only 3 million people, so 200 smuggled guns a month sounds a lot, but consider that Brazil—a large manufacturer and exporter of firearms—legally exports about 2,000 firearms (mostly handguns) to the US every day. No doubt some Brazilian handguns make their way directly to Jamaica also.
But Jamaica has had problems with violent crime for decades. My guess is that law enforcement struggles to solve crimes and arrest criminals. Trying to blame US firearm laws sounds like a weak excuse and misdirection.
73
@Meg
No where in this article is it even implied that illegal firearms are scarce in Jamaica. On the contrary it states quite clearly that
'...it is awash in illegal weapons. The Jamaican authorities, who estimate that 200 guns are smuggled into the country from the United States every month,...'
Therefore I can not fathom how you are able to believe the opposite. Are you perhaps in possession of information that the writers and the Jamaican authorities are not aware of? If not why muddy the waters?
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@RHR
It is just economics. There aren’t enough illegal firearms to satisfy every criminal and gang member, so (as the article states) criminals have developed an active rental market for other criminals who want to use a firearm for their crime(s). The article explicitly states that illegal guns are very valuable based on their potential rental income. That implies that supply is scarce (and demand is high).
The Jamaican authorities even track the 30 guns used most frequently in crimes (presumably by different criminals, as per rentals above).
Further, on a per capita basis, 200 a month from the US is not a big number. As I noted, Brazil alone exports 3 times that number per capita to the US every month. And Brazil is not even the largest firearms exporter to the US (Austria is).
All of the above actually imply the country is not “awash” in illegal firearms, but that they are scarce relative to demand (although demand does seem very high).
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@Meg
It is worth noting that illegal weapons are scarce enough and hence valuable enough that the penalty for not returning it to its proper(?) owner is death.
3
There are many factors at play here:
1) The ancestors of Jamaicans were taken from a mesh of tribes in West Africa - often speaking distinct tongues - and transported thousands of miles across the Atlantic. Imagine being stripped of your heritage, your community, your identity? How do you rebuild it? Unlike other lands which were colonised, there is no pre-existing culture Jamaicans can fall back on. In some ways, they are still struggling to find their identity.
2) The vicious cycles of poverty and crime are hard to escape even in a few generations.
3) It is consoling that there is at least "no such debate" - as there is in America - about the lethality of guns. In this way, Jamaica resembles most of the world in that the conventional wisdom is that guns are dangerous. In Australia, Scotland (which has its own Parliament) and New Zealand, a single massacre was enough to prompt tougher gun laws and reduce gun ownership. Gun-related homicides plunged in both Australia and Scotland after these changes (New Zealand only enacted its measures this year). Even Switzerland, which has high gun ownership, has strict laws. After serving compulsory military service, Swiss males bring home guns. However, what conservatives miss is that they aren't allowed to keep the bullets. This is why the Swiss have low homicide despite high gun ownership. Few actually possess bullets. They'll only be distributed in wartime.
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The NRA lobbies for gun manufacturers and participates in writing laws and policies. It is now so easy to export weapons from the USA that gun manufacturers (e.g., Glock) have moved production to the USA so as to export to countries that would have been off limits under Austrian laws. In Mexico and Central America, a majority of the guns recovered from criminals originated from the USA. Violence in these countries is fueled by firearms, and some countries have become so dangerous that people attempt to flee to the USA, seeking asylum at the border. Ironically, NRA members partially fund the NRA and are therefore linked to the wave of immigrants seeking entry to the USA.
17
"American Firearms Cause Carnage Abroad" and that is just the illegal ones.
If one considers the death toll, in Yemen for example, that has resulted from the legal export of American weapons, the figure is truly mind boggling. The latest estimates put the death toll at 70 000.
Bi- partisan efforts to halt these arms sales have failed despite wide spread support in both Houses. The death toll from all legal arms exports cannot be accurately estimated but extrapolation from the Yemen figure would give a shockingly high number.
21
Blood on American hands. Truly an international phenomenon from the Middle East to the Caribbean and Central America. It is painful to read this and know that I would like this firearm proliferation in America eliminated and yet have the understanding that the folks like me who want to restrict firearms have no voice whatsoever in the American government.
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“Jamaica’s own gun laws are relatively strict, with fewer than 45,000 legal firearms in a country of almost three million.”
And yet Jamaica is awash in firearms. That’s telling.
10
Train, license, title, insure each owner and each gun. Like we do with cars. Simple, effective and responsible.
87
You cannot hide a car in your waistband under your t-shirt. So what good does a license do. A cop can pull over a car and ask: license, registration, insurance please. A gun is not seen until it is on the scene.
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@Bradley Stein
Most drivers are poorly trained, many are unlicensed and uninsured, and many people allow their car registrations to lapse.
It's not a good template for your argument.
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@Bradley Stein
Make it also mandatory to serve one year IN UNIFORM in any of the wars we get involved in as a pre-requisite for owning 1 gun.
5
A couple of years ago my mother, who was 92, was targeted by a Jamaican scam ring — they called her on the phone over several weeks, and convinced her that she had won a huge prize, and all she needed to do to collect it was send them $6000 for tax payment. This was extremely organized crime. They would call from Jamaica using numbers that looked like they were originating from the United States on caller ID. Eventually she sent a check, and it turned out that the address she sent it to was a gun dealer in Washington State. Around this time she also started to have her SS funds stolen (The direct deposit rerouted)
We made contact with another elderly Woman who also had been targeted by this gang. She said they threatened to kill her dog if she didn’t send money.
So, the guns are being smuggled into Jamaica, and are often paid for America’s elderly who are duped by Jamaican gangs. This is a problem that is very much unrecognized and under addressed. In our situation, there was very little anybody could or would do about it. Even the Social Security Administration is so under funded, they don’t have the resources to fight fraud.
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@Carol B
Now we are in Dr. Phil territory. Your 92 year old mother spoke to the scammers in two cases it seems-- who incidentally might have threatened her with jail if she did not call back in the case of the soc. sec scam. (The soc. sec. scam happened to me. I called back, the person from ?? at the other end had my name -- caller ID?-- maybe that should be eliminated?? -- I asked -- so I asked what is my soc. sec. number? and answered the other person's comments yes, yes, - he hun up on me. I also tell the person I am reporting their fraud -- they don't care and neither does the Treasury Dept.) Or a data breach?
In the case of the won prize… your mom sadly should not have engaged … but greed gets the best of all of us. BTW what action were the police? banks ? Soc Sec Admin willing to undertake to ID the gang, make the victim whole? Did the gun dealer get closed down? (The FBI has personnel to send out on stupid security clearance checks with a bit of harassment for the persons providing the data. Exactly when did you work for?? There people who could do this job-- otherwise occupied.)
3
Strange.. Names that pop up -- Reagan, NRA, I don't believe the word Congress appeared, nor military budget. Is the US the no.1 arms dealer in the world?
Guns kill -- or rather guns make it easier for people to kill. We know that.
Is there a single owner of these named guns in Jamaica? How were the guns bought in Idaho transported to Jamaica? (mostly by sea?? (It is of course legal to fly your gun with you on an airline.)
Guns traded for meat-- because meat is very valuable or easy to sell?
All sad and strange...and IMO male. The conclusion that is to be reached is that possibly fewer people would die if there were fewer/no guns, but that there would still be a good deal of violence -- the result of ?poverty? a drug culture? What do the gangs control? Is this about extortion? What are these "political conflicts"?
Lots of stories but not much information.
7
@Auntie Mame Supermarket meat is a barter commodity for drugs in every city here in the US,usually through the Ebt government food stamp card program.
2
Dunn may well have purchased his Browning and later sold it if he needed cash. But every year, hundreds of thousands of guns like Dunn's first enter criminal hands after being stolen.
The most frustrating part of this statistic is that about 100,000 guns are stolen every year from *unlocked*cars*.
10
Myrtle Beach SC new residents are really bad about that. So many complain their guns were stolen from their glove compartment yet they did not even lock their car!
Want a gun to sell for meth? Ride your bike down a neighborhood and look for an unlocked car. Good chance it will have a gun in the glove compartment.
5
The original owner of that weapon belongs in prison, if they cannot explain how it went from their ownership to the hands of murderous criminals.
I believe that people should have the right to bear arms, but I also believe that they should be held responsible for every round fired by their firearms, regardless of who pulled the trigger. If you own a firearm and it is stolen, and you do not IMMEDIATELY report it to the police, you should be held accountable for any damage it causes.
If you own a firearm, and sell it under the table without documentation to a criminal (or to a middle-man who will then sell it to a criminal) you should be held accountable for any damage it causes.
If you own a firearm, and you keep it in such an insecure place that your child can access it and take it to school, you should be held accountable for any damage it causes.
If we started holding gun owners responsible for their guns, they might actually learn to BE responsible for them. Radical idea, huh?
50
@Samuel - as the article states, the original owner died in 2011 so he won't be going to prison.
Further:
"By law, licensed gun merchants in the United States are not required to do much more than record retail sales, and usually don’t have to report them to the authorities. "
THAT is the problem. The law needs to be changed but as long as the NRA owns politicians it will not happen.
20
@Samuel The original owner is dead. Charlton Heston once famously said that "I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands." We probably ought to start with better laws concerning the living, and move on to the afterlife once we have things in order here.
1
@samuel Uh, most progressive states have this law- in CT NY CA - your gun is used in any shooting- you are charged with crime too! It needs to be a federal mandate in all states.
1
“Often, they slip through in small batches, broken down into parts and hidden in freezers or car engines to evade inspectors.
Of course, not all illegal guns in Latin America and the Caribbean come from the United States. In some countries, including those with weapons left over from civil wars, fewer than half of the illicit weapons trace back to American soil.”
So, buried deep in the article ... the guns get to Jamaica by smugglers who dismantle and hide them. And earlier we find that the gun you focused on for the story was originally legally purchased and the purchaser, who seems to have been clearly law abiding, was dead for years before the gun showed up in Jamaica.
Yeah, stop trying to make gun confiscation happen in the USA. It’s not going to happen. Especially not because admitted, proven gangsters want to acquire them illegally, smuggle them illegally and use them to kill each other (illegally).
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@A Contributor
I think that a glance at the way the rest of the democracies of the West approach gun legislation might be a good idea and allow a more balanced view of the positive and negative aspects of unregulated gun ownership.
6
Brilliantly written, researched and reported article. Difficult and meaningful subject...major kudos to the reporter(s) for this impactful piece.
31
I love visiting Jamaica. The people are warm, welcoming and humble. I was extremely sad for the people featured in this well-written article. My hope is that the U.S. will fix their gun culture so that desperate citizens, like the Jamaicans, do not continue to suffer.
36
@Nic: As with the inner cities of many US metropolitan areas, it's the local culture of gang violence that's to blame as much as US gun laws. Don't deflect the responsibility from the thugs who carry out this violence and the culture which enables it.
3
@Nic
Unfortunately, as long as people want to buy and use guns, these weapons will find their way into those willing hands. Economic development, education and availability of contraceptives could transform this society.
Wonderfully written article with photos that show us the real Jamaica beyond the resort walls. It was interesting to learn how the sources of violence have shifted from gangs to more personal feuds- over time. I would like to hear what the homicide clearance rate is for the police- I suspect it is quite low.
"At around 11 p.m. on April 28, an off-duty policeman was having a drink at a local bar in Clarendon when two men showed up to rob it. One of them was Mr. Daley, who flashed the Browning at patrons and demanded money. The officer drew on the two men and announced himself, officials say."
Unfortunately many people will focus on this section and argue that a 'only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy..."
I travel to Jamaica regularly and when there I stay in a home and I do not go out after dark.
19