The An­tigua and Bar­bu­da gov­ern­ment is urg­ing peo­ple to take full ad­van­tage of a gun amnesty that be­gins on Mon­day and ends at the end of the month, says it rep­re­sents an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to hand over un­law­ful firearms.

Chief of Staff in the Prime Min­is­ter’s Of­fice, Am­bas­sador Li­onel Hurst, said sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als have al­ready been brought be­fore the courts and sen­tenced to up to two years in prison un­der the coun­try’s up­dat­ed firearms laws.

“This is yet an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to hand over un­law­ful firearms. There’s now a manda­to­ry jail sen­tence for those found in pos­ses­sion. So we urge in­di­vid­u­als to do the right thing and turn them in,” he added.

Cab­i­net had agreed to the gun amnesty ini­tia­tive from to­day un­til April 30 this year aimed at re­duc­ing gun vi­o­lence and re­mov­ing il­le­gal firearms and am­mu­ni­tion from the streets.

Dur­ing the amnesty pe­ri­od, in­di­vid­u­als are en­cour­aged to vol­un­tar­i­ly sur­ren­der il­le­gal firearms and am­mu­ni­tion with­out fear of ar­rest or pros­e­cu­tion. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the gov­ern­ment is al­so of­fer­ing re­wards for cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion that leads to the suc­cess­ful re­cov­ery of il­le­gal weapons.

The au­thor­i­ties said that peo­ple can be as­sured that all po­lice sta­tions have been equipped and pre­pared to fa­cil­i­tate the safe and dis­creet han­dling of this process.

“All in­for­ma­tion shared with the po­lice dur­ing this amnesty will be treat­ed with strict con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. Let us work to­geth­er to keep our com­mu­ni­ties safe and free from the threats of il­le­gal firearms,” the po­lice said.

Hurst said that even one gun hand­ed in could save a life, and re­it­er­at­ed that the goal is to cre­ate safer com­mu­ni­ties.

“We hope this mea­sure will be seen as a fi­nal chance for in­di­vid­u­als to avoid jail. This is about mak­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da safer for every­one,” Hurst added.

ST. JOHN’S, An­tigua, Apr 7, CMC

CMC/gh/ir/2025