The Football Gun Amnesty Plan seeks to leverage the influence our national football team’s recent success has had on communities across the nation. Many of the players come from these very troubled communities where drugs are as commonplace as doubles vendors and crime is a career choice. Gang leaders in these neighbourhoods came out in their numbers to celebrate the national team’s historic success; they identified with the players and their achievements.
Perhaps, there is a window of opportunity to reach some of these misguided young people. Members of the current Soca Warriors team have pledged to do what they can by making an impassioned plea to these gangs to put down their guns and give themselves, their families, communities and country a chance for a better, safer and more secure future. If any voice can reach the hearts and minds of these troubled young souls, it is those of the very members of the Football side some of whom grew up side by side with them, and with whom they share a kind of brotherhood.
If Jack Warner’s initiative brings in just a few guns or positively alters just one life, it would have been well worth the effort. Mr Warner has proposed an idea that is so necessary in a country which is being swept away by a tsunami wave of crime and where authorities seem either powerless to do anything or too powerful to care. So the initiatives however small they may be have to come from us, ordinary citizens. Obviously, the Gun Amnesty proposal will require the support of the Minister of National Security and the Police Service if its effect is to be maximized. But even if the politicizing of the issue prevents such an ideal, the Gun Amnesty Plan should proceed, simply because it must.
A multi-media campaign will be launched within the next month utilizing the music of reggae artiste Mr King whose song Laventille is a plaintive cry for gangs to put down their guns. Mr King’s video, which was shot on location in the very crime ridden areas, unfortunately turned out to be a reality television production as three of the people seen in the show were shot and killed between the brief period of video recording and editing. It underscores the need for the message to get out there. Time is running out. Radio ads and flyers distributed in appropriate areas will form part of the publicity programme. Assistance will be sought from the Police Service as to where the guns can be dropped off since as was found in the United Kingdom gangsters will not walk into a police station to surrender their firearms.
All around the world, the success of gun amnesty programmes are being lauded. In Brazil, a country which records more firearm deaths than any other in the world, a similar gun-buy back scheme has seen the number of people killed by guns drop. This illustrates the parallel between a safer country and fewer guns. In Toronto, widely considered one of the world’s safest cities, a gun amnesty programme was launched last November in which 261 weapons and more than 1,500 rounds of ammunition were collected. Even in Basra, a gun amnesty programme was introduced in an attempt to reduce the crime spree. It is the intention of the Football Gun Amnesty Plan to get assistance and guidance from some of the agencies in these very countries where such an initiative has worked.