Yvonne Webb

Fol­low­ing the theft of 13 guns from a se­cu­ri­ty firm and mount­ing deaths caused by firearms, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is say­ing "no" to calls for a gun amnesty. "The mat­ter has been dis­cussed and the con­clu­sion has been that when you set up a gun amnesty and you pay peo­ple to re­turn guns, all you are do­ing is fund­ing new­er guns than they bring in. "That is not the thing to do," Man­ning told re­porters fol­low­ing a walk­a­bout in Pleas­antville, in his con­stituen­cy, San Fer­nan­do East yes­ter­day evening. Man­ning who walked for an hour, said there were a lot of il­le­gal guns in the coun­try.

He al­so ex­pressed re­gret for the death of school boy Dar­rion Cal­en­dar Dun­can, 15, who was killed fol­low­ing a foot­ball match at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um last Fri­day evening. Man­ning said young peo­ple had too many al­ter­na­tives to get in­volved in crime. On the is­sue of be­ing Ex­ec­u­tive Pres­i­dent of this coun­try, Man­ning said, "it holds no spe­cial in­ter­est for me." He said it was un­like­ly he would be in line for this po­si­tion which may come about long af­ter he has demit­ted of­fice, be­cause the gov­ern­ment does not at this time en­joy a par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty to pass such leg­is­la­tion.

Man­ning al­so said he was en­joy­ing good health, but had missed his Sep­tem­ber date with his Cuban doc­tors and added he would go for a check up be­fore the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in No­vem­ber. He al­so said that he did not be­lieve that lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions will be post­poned again, al­though the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee look­ing at the leg­is­la­tion is yet to re­port. Man­ning said his walk­a­bout yes­ter­day had noth­ing to do with elec­tions or Diego Mar­tin West MP Dr Kei­th Row­ley.