Guns from America fuel Jamaica's gang wars

[baldguy]

KINGSTON, Jamaica – Ships from Miami steam into Jamaica's main harbor loaded with TV sets and blue jeans. But some of the most popular U.S. imports never appear on the manifests: handguns, rifles and bullets that stoke one of the world's highest murder rates.

The volume is much less than the flow of U.S. guns into Mexico that end up in the hands of drug cartels — Jamaican authorities recover fewer than 1,000 firearms a year. But of those whose origin can be traced, 80 percent come from the U.S., Jamaican law enforcement officials have said in interviews with The Associated Press.

And as the Obama administration cracks down on smuggling into Mexico, Jamaicans fear even more firearms will reach the gangs whose turf wars plague the island of 2.8 million people.

"It's going to push a lot of that trade back toward the Caribbean like it was back in the '80s," said Vance Callender, an attache at the U.S. Embassy in Kingston for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

U.S. authorities are beginning to target the Jamaican gun-smuggling network as part of a broad effort to boost security in the Caribbean.

more
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090621/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_jamaica_gun_smuggling;_ylt=A0wNdOtVxz5KFFwBuI2s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTM4N2VmcGlyBGFzc2V0Ay9hcC8yMDA5MDYyMS9hcF9vbl9yZV9sYV9hbV9jYS9jYl9qYW1haWNhX2d1bl9zbXVnZ2xpbmcEcG9zAzYEc2VjA3luX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDZ3Vuc2Zyb21hbWVy

[X_Digger]

1. "But of those whose origin can be traced"

How many of that 1,000 does this figure represent? 500? 100? 50? 10?

[izquierdista]

2. Ironic

That getting rid of guns is the prescription for better security. Probably completely sails over the head of NRA knuckle draggers.

[pocoloco]

3. The Constitution is just

"a god damned piece of paper anyway!"

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

4. How about getting rid of illegally possessed firearms makes for better security?

I believe that is the suggestion of many of the pro gun people here.

David

[JonQ]

5. Sounds like prohibition

is to blame for this. When we outlawed alcohol in the states the murder rate skyrocketed, when we repealed the ban the rates went immediately down.

Plus these numbers are suspect anyway. And I doubt they would be deterred from using guns to achieve their goals if they had to buy from someone farther away, like former soviet nations, or china.

[Euromutt]

6. Obvious counterpoint: what if the problem is the gangs?

I mean, I know I'm just an "NRA knuckledragger," but it hasn't escaped me that there have been similar problems with Jamaican "Yardie" gangs in the United Kingdom for over twenty years, to the extent that since 2000, the Metropolitan Police has been running Operation Trident, a 300-man task force specifically directed at drug-related gun crime in London's black community. Here's a piece from the BBC from 2002: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2220907.stm
It states that the Yardie gangs conduct turf wars, mainly over crack distribution, which has spawned a culture of gun violence; this (I note myself) in spite of the UK's stringent laws on firearms ownership.

Every description of Yardies' methods and lifestyle sounds remarkably like inner-city drug gangs in American cities like Baltimore and Detroit, down to killing people over minor slights (like stepping on the toes of one in a crowded nightclub). And again, the Yardies seem to have no problems acquiring firearms in the UK. Why would it be any more difficult in Jamaica, even if there were a crackdown on gun-running from the US?