One of the great failures of crime fighting in Jamaica is that we confuse weapon possession with criminal intent.  As an example, the police are quite proud to advertise the collection hundreds of ratchet knives and machetes as if this has something to do with reducing crime. 

It’s an understandable mistake since so many victims of crime turn up at hospital or are found dead with wounds from machetes and ratchet knives.

The problem with this approach is that it ignores the fact that all weapons serve a dual purpose.  Attack and Defense.  For attack one dose not need to carry the weapon around.  Just pick it up when you have a victim in mind.  Commit the crime and then hide or discard the weapon.  A murderer who kills 5 people a year could get by with touching his weapon only on 5 days, for that year and having it in his possession for less than a hour each time.

Statistically, for every hour in which you can catch such a man with a weapon, their are 1752 hours in which you would search him and find nothing.

On the other hand, a person who caries a weapon for defense dose not have that luxury.  He must walk with it all day, every day, hoping that he doesn’t have to use it. The time and place of it’s use is never chosen by him but rather by an attacker. 

So where dose that put our police action?  For the most part they are disarming people who carry weapons for self defense while hardly bothering those who use them to attack innocent people.  In effect their success in weapon seizures will achieve the opposite effect, to what is intended.  I.e. It will leave more people unable to protect themselves from the predators who stalk us.

One cannot fault the police for this however.  In fairness the Government has shown it’s firm support for this activity by enacting gun court legislation and keeping it in place for over 3 decades despite it’s glaring failure. to make anyone safer.  Except for the criminal of course.