Torian Earle, January 28 – 21 years old
Josiah Clairmont, February 15 – 22 years old
Travis Bramble, February 19 – 28 years old
Charley Dume, April 25 – 25 years
Derrick Hunte, June 3 – 48 years old
Shamar Ifill, June 10 – 28 years old
Dario Lloyd, July 15 – 20 years old
Jemaine Harper, July 30 – 26 years old
Mark Walton, August 4 – 23 years old
Romario Yarde, August 10 – 20 years old
What do these people have in common? They all died from gunshot wounds, victims of a side of Barbadian society that is becoming all too familiar – a growing cycle of violence that ought by now to be causing every law-abiding citizen to stop and take note.
We recognise that these ten youth do not represent the full extent of the alleged murders that have occurred in our land since the start of the year. But they do present us with food for thought based largely on what is a clear trend toward the apparent preferred use of firearms.
In our society, it is quite normal every time a violent death of this nature occurs to jump to conclusions about the character of the victims. It would appear almost as a way of distancing ourselves from the fallen, while trying to “justify” the death. It is very possible some of the persons listed above led lives that contributed to their demise, but that is hardly our concern right now.
Instead, ours is two-fold: the apparent easy access of Barbadians to illegal firearms, and perhaps even more important, the little regard that so many in our society now seem to have for the sacredness of life. We see the need to make this point because while the gun, unlike the knife or some other weapon, allows the perpetrator to carry out his act without getting too close to the victim and to do so knowing that the probability of his act being fatal is significantly higher, we are not sure the lack of a firearm would lessen the desire to kill.
When a society starts to place little value on the lives or good health of others, even if we take away the guns, we will still have a major problem – and that is where we believe a national effort to change this growing trend needs to be focused.
We have really moved far away from the morals and values that our foreparents worked so hard to cultivate when a dispute over a lover, a debt (sometimes of only a few dollars), a damaged item of clothing, being bounced at a party, smoking someone’s cigarette (legal or illegal), or blowing smoke in the personal space of a stranger can provoke an action so potentially final as the drawing of a weapon.
We need to pause from our forever busy schedules and pay attention to the baby-faced youth who are appearing on police wanted posters with the warning “armed and dangerous”. We need to figure out why this is occurring and to do so without reverting to the easy excuse of “guns and drugs”.
These may be tools of the trade, and stamping them out may be critical, but there is a much deeper root that engenders the behaviour in the first place. And that is what we need to identify and address.