Kap Kirwok

Let us talk about guns and violence. Or more accurately, gun ownership and insecurity.

Does allowing every citizen — of sound mind and no criminal record — to own a gun make society more or less secure? If, for instance, the victims of Mungiki death squads had guns, would the marauding gang have attacked them?

As we contemplate Constitutional reforms, should the citizen’s right to keep and bear arms be entrenched in the Constitution as part of our bill of rights? This is a matter of great concern; it needs to be debated.

By way of introductory context, let us take a long detour via the United States, China and Mexico before returning to Kenya.

According to its own Justice Department’s statistics, the US has the highest documented incarceration rate and total documented prison population. At the end of 2007, there were 7.2 million people behind bars, on probation or on parole. With only about 4.5 per cent of the world population, the US has a staggering 25 per cent of the total world prison population. Most of these incarcerations involve gun crime.

Gun Control enforcement

By contrast, the People’s Republic of China, with 20 per cent of the world population, ranked second in 2007 with a prison population of 1.5 million. Here, gun control is strictly enforced, and gun crime is negligible.

In the US, gun ownership is part of the Bill of Rights — the so-called Second Amendment — and is protected under the constitution. Especially the powerful National Rifle Association lobby vigorously opposes any threat of abrogation of that right. Gun ownership is a highly emotive issue; so much so that when Barack Obama won the Presidency, there was a surge in gun sales, driven by the fear that he would push for gun control. In November alone, soon after Obama’s victory, gun sales jumped 42 per cent, according to SportsOneSource, a research firm that tracks the sporting-goods industry.

The surge in gun sales, the threat of right wing extremists and the twin anniversaries of the Columbine School massacre and the Oklahoma City bombing have combined to spark a fierce debate about gun violence. So far, the powerful gun lobby has the upper hand. Most observers agree that the Obama administration is unlikely to propose any gun control legislation any time soon; it is simply too explosive.

And yet all indications are that gun violence is a real problem: majority of homicides and over half of the suicides are associated with guns. American children are more at risk from firearms than the children of any other industrialised nation. In a typical year, firearms kill 5,285 children in the US, according to the Centres for Disease Control. Contrast this with zero in Japan, 19 in Great Britain, 57 in Germany, 109 in France and 153 in Canada.

In ten years since the Columbine School massacre, 300,000 people have died of gun violence in the US — more than all Americans who died in the wars with Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan; and nearly as many as those who died during World War II.

And that is not all: four presidents have been cut down by guns (Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F Kennedy). Five escaped assassination attempts (Andrew Jackson, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. And there are other high-profile assassinations such as those of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Junior and Malcolm X.

This is truly gun country.

Legalising armament

Across the border in Mexico, gun-related violence is so rampant, there are fears that the Mexican Government is losing the battle to criminals; about 7,000 have died of gun violence in the last 15 months alone. The fact that gun ownership is strictly controlled — only the Ministry of Defense may approve application for gun purchases — has not stopped Mexico from becoming among world leaders in gun-crime rates. Here, it is not a bill of rights guaranteeing gun ownership, which is driving up the crime rate, but the lucrative drug trade and lax gun laws across the border.

So, should the right of Kenyans to keep and bear arms be entrenched in the constitution?

Does the fact that here in the US, I can sometimes leave the door to my non-fenced house open all night, without incident, evidence that guns provide protection? (I have no guns…but don’t tell anyone!).

One thing seems certain: the right of citizens to keep and bear arms makes governments less inclined to abuse power.

Is gun violence the price citizens must pay to tame a dictatorial government? Over to you.

The writer works for an international development agency in the US

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