AS 18-YEAR-OLD Kemal Haynes lay in hospital nursing injuries from the latest shooting incident, online readers turned their attention to the causes and punishment.
Haynes was shot on Thursday while liming on a bridge in Durants Village, St James. The incident came after two footballers were shot during a game in Belfield, St Michael, the previous night, and days after a St Christopher resident was shot at Bourne’s Land, Christ Church.
There have already been three shooting deaths for the year and readers say not only must gunplay be stamped out, but the punishment as meted out by the courts needs to be more severe, acting as a deterrent.
Here are their views:
Robert Taylor: No father figure in many of these homes to lead and involve the young boys into sports and other family-related activities.
Harriet Toppin: How come Barbados youths have so many guns? The Government and police need to crackdown on this or that beautiful island is only going to get worse.
Ashanda Coward: Will repeat: the wicked killing and hurting the wicked. Why is this surprising any of you though? [The] enemy got them snuffing out each other. When you find out what it’s over, it’s nothing but evil.
Gail Agard Wallace: And as always . . . it’s easier to be involved in criminal activity than get a real job. And don’t tell me there are no jobs. That’s ludicrous.
Ryvan Springer: I don’t think the police [and] Government are doing enough to catch these so-called gangsters – that’s what they want the public to think they are. Put more police out on the streets, put up cameras.
Epaphras D. Williams: Gun crime in Bim is concentrated in the ranks of “lower class male Negroes”. What is the root cause? How do we stop the rot?
Glyne Roderick Sobers: You should be given ten years for every illegal firearm and an extra year for every bullet, and then you would see a change.
• Sherrylyn Toppin is The Nation’s Online Editor.