We were sit­ting in the stu­dio of Free­dom 106.5—jour­nal­ists and ed­i­tors Soyi­ni Grey and me, for a call-in pro­gramme on World Press Free­dom Day ably host­ed by Satesh Ma­habir, who I had worked with in the ear­ly days in tele­vi­sion (now a dy­nam­ic ra­dio chat show host) jug­gling us with Zoom par­tic­i­pants—me­dia pow­er­hous­es in­clud­ing Kay­mar Jor­dan (Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor, GML), Irv­ing Ward, Suzanne Shep­pard (ed­i­tors/vet­er­an jour­nal­ists) and Jo­van John­son of the Ja­maica Glean­er. There were five of us.

I sud­den­ly thought of some­thing I had read—we are the sum of the av­er­age of the five peo­ple you spend the most time with. I hadn’t spent time with any of these col­leagues, but they felt like home. They were like the peo­ple I spend time with. It was May 3. World Press Free­dom Day.

We were ex­plor­ing chal­lenges fac­ing jour­nal­ists, each com­ing at it from mul­ti­ple view­points, in­clud­ing the cor­ro­sive ef­fects of so­cial me­dia on jour­nal­ism, lengthy ex­pla­na­tions as to why we must cov­er “bad” news (As the Fourth Es­tate, we stand as watch­dogs over all in­sti­tu­tions) the fact that jour­nal­ists are con­stant­ly ac­cused of bias by peo­ple whose agen­da the news doesn’t serve, the fact that jour­nal­ism is a vo­ca­tion, so of­ten jour­nal­ists die young, and on the job, work for rel­a­tive­ly low pay, for long and odd hours to meet dead­lines.

We spoke about the mur­der of our col­leagues in Haiti, Mex­i­co and Ukraine, and the con­stant vig­i­lance and fight for in­for­ma­tion from gov­ern­ment quar­ters.

We heard two news­casts while I was in the build­ing read by Satesh, and with each hour, the num­ber of mur­ders went up from two to five to two wound­ed men.

Now we heard it from both hats on—as jour­nal­ists in­ter­est­ed in the news AND cit­i­zens won­der­ing where this would stop. At that point, Soyi­ni Grey said some­thing that re­al­ly struck me. Jour­nal­ists need com­mu­ni­ty with one an­oth­er and be close to the peo­ple whose lives we cov­er.

That not on­ly made good sense (thank­ful­ly, the me­dia fra­ter­ni­ty is stronger, stretch­es from rook­ies to vet­er­ans and is more unit­ed than ever), but I re­alised lat­er it would help us live longer. Stick a pin there.

Lat­er that day, I was ac­cost­ed by a mem­ber of the pub­lic (we are like hair­dressers and doc­tors—peo­ple tell us every­thing) who loud­ly went on about how im­por­tant it was to own guns (some­thing, wor­ry­ing­ly, cer­tain politi­cians are call­ing for).

I re­alised with a start that once that hap­pened, our jour­nal­ists would be on the front­line—cov­er­ing more and more crime, with more guns about.

So let me just say what I told that loud man who want­ed a gun against the ban­dits based on my re­search.

Ac­cord­ing to the mag­a­zine, The Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, some 30 stud­ies show that more guns are linked to more crimes, in­clud­ing mur­ders and rapes. There is lit­tle re­search to show guns help pro­tect peo­ple.

The claim that gun own­er­ship stops crime is com­mon (in the US—and a grow­ing be­lief in Trinidad) and dri­ves laws that make it easy to own and keep firearms.

David Hemen­way, di­rec­tor of the Har­vard In­jury Con­trol Re­search Cen­ter: Even if keep­ing a gun at home can put your fam­i­ly more at risk.

“It may mean you take chances you shouldn’t oth­er­wise take, go to places where it’s not safe, but you feel safe.”

Where there are more guns, more op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­ist for peo­ple to steal them and use them ne­far­i­ous­ly.

Now I like to join up the dots. Ul­ti­mate­ly, all hu­man be­hav­iour is a de­sire to live long and sat­is­fy hu­man in­stincts and de­sires for love, pow­er, and com­mu­ni­ty. Young men get all three things in a gang, plus the prospect of in­famy. (If not fame)

What if, in­stead of hand­ing peo­ple guns, we hand them sports, art, or busi­ness, or sim­ply hands they could hold?

I have this fan­ta­sy of gov­ern­ment min­is­ters led by the prime min­is­ter and the po­lice force and com­mu­ni­ty work­ers walk­ing to­geth­er in­to the ar­eas where fam­i­lies feel iso­lat­ed, for­got­ten, with­out pur­pose, where peo­ple die young, shoot and are shot at.

I thought of that stu­dio again. Of how every­thing is con­nect­ed.

How jour­nal­ists and crim­i­nals, chil­dren, pen­sion­ers, the home­less, house­wives, busi­ness­peo­ple, politi­cians and judges are al­so cit­i­zens.

How we all face stress­es in our pro­fes­sions and com­mu­ni­ty, how right now we all feel un­der threat and how with the right kind of love, we might just heal by com­ing clos­er to­geth­er in safe spaces, by of­fer­ing a leg up, a help­ing hand in­stead of shut­ting up our doors.

Colum­nist Ira Math­ur is the pres­i­dent of MATT and the au­thor of an award-win­ning mem­oir, Love The Dark Days.