Guns – How many lying around?

Sep 20, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column Kaieteur News – One gun seizure by law enforcement could be dismissed as unusual. A second seizure should alarm Guyanese, prompt sitting up, urge paying attention. A third gun seizure close to the others is out of the ordinary.

The roiling becomes the routine, these sporadic seizures by the police. The seizures are not of pistols and smaller caliber firearms. They are submachine guns: high-powered, modern, and with compelling strength about what is law and order and what is not.

In a big sprawling society with a population to match, the seizures could be taken in stride, few eyelids batted. On the other hand, in a society as coiled and as on the edge as Guyana, when guns of this type are found, then those who ignore do so at their own risk. GHK Lall Amid these seizures, a question nips, nags: how many illegal guns are lying around out there undiscovered in underground Guyana? A second reads like this: are they all the property of criminal gangs? A third question is if they are of the same automatic sophistication and all that that means, or are they even better? That is, possessing more killing power more rapidly and more efficiently.

Too often, the other issues in boiling Guyana that roil take centerstage and shove developments involving more seized submachine guns to the side. We pass by these at our peril. I say this because the sense is of severe tensions growing and gathering a full head of steam in the local envi.