Holness open to Firearms Act review, but insists gains cannot be undone

PRIME Minister Dr Andrew Holness says the Government is listening to concerns about the Firearms Act but will not allow efforts to reform it to undermine the significant reduction in murders and violent crime Jamaica has been experiencing in recent years. Addressing the Central Executive of the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) on Sunday, Holness said the Administration is prepared to consider improvements to the legislation but argued that the law must remain strong enough to deter people from illegally possessing and using guns. The prime minister’s comments come amid calls from sections of the legal profession for amendments to the Firearms (Prohibition, Restriction and Regulation) Act, 2022, particularly its mandatory minimum sentencing provisions, which lawyers say have significantly restricted judicial discretion.

Holness said the Government was already considering the concerns being raised, including at the highest level of the Administration. “As a responsible Government and as a listening Administration, whenever any of these issues are raised we pay attention to them. We go back, we reflect, and I can tell you this matter was discussed at length in the National Security Council meeting.

The minister of national security and myself, we are discussing it. The minister of justice and myself, we are discussing it. I have no problems with legitimate protests but the position of this Administration is that we are not going to sit by defenceless.

We are going to put our position to the public as well,” said Holness, the JLP leader. He also maintained that the review must be approached against the backdrop of the country’s recent reduction in violent crime. Murders are down 23 per cent so far this year, according to the figures cited by the prime minister, following a 43 per cent decline last year.

He argued that the reduction should not be divorced from the Government’s broader approach to tackling illegal guns, which includes legislation, policing, intelligence gathering, and international partnerships. “It’s a puzzle to me that there are those who would seek to argue that neither the actions of the police nor the legislation that we have put in place to address guns have had an impact on bringing down the main metric of insecurity in the country, which would be murders. It has to be reinforced in the strongest poss…