Ke­jan Haynes

Three US law­mak­ers are call­ing on their gov­ern­ment to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to how guns man­u­fac­tured in the Unit­ed States are mak­ing their way to the Caribbean.

Mem­bers of the House For­eign Af­fairs Com­mit­tee Con­gress­man Joaquin Cas­tro and Con­gress­man Gre­go­ry W Meeks, along with Sen­a­tor  Richard J Durbin, wrote to Gene Do­daro, Comp­trol­ler Gen­er­al of the US Gov­ern­ment Ac­count­abil­i­ty Of­fice, ask­ing for the lat­est coun­try-by-coun­try in­for­ma­tion on the num­ber and types of US arms be­ing traf­ficked to Caribbean coun­tries.

“Arms traf­fick­ing orig­i­nat­ing in the Unit­ed States is draw­ing in­creased scruti­ny from US law en­force­ment and in­creas­ing con­cern from Caribbean lead­ers,” the let­ter read. “Me­dia re­ports cite Ba­hami­an claims that more than 90 per cent of guns con­fis­cat­ed and used as mur­der weapons in The Ba­hamas can be traced back to US man­u­fac­tur­ers and gun shops.”

The law­mak­ers cite sev­er­al re­ports dat­ing back to 2020 which ac­knowl­edge the role guns play in in­creas­ing rates of vi­o­lent crimes and homi­cides in Ja­maica, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, and Haiti—coun­tries which al­so have high num­bers of il­lic­it firearms traf­fick­ing.

The US Bu­reau of Al­co­hol, To­bac­co, Firearms, and Ex­plo­sives main­tains an on­line data­base of firearms trace da­ta.

“For the Caribbean in 2021, the data­base pro­vides in­for­ma­tion on a to­tal of 1,038 US-sourced firearms re­cov­ered and sub­mit­ted to the ATF for trac­ing in five Caribbean coun­tries: The Ba­hamas, 236; the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, 94; Haiti, 106; Ja­maica, 400; and Trinidad and To­ba­go, 202,” the let­ter said.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, we would like to ob­tain more in-depth in­for­ma­tion on the ex­tent of the il­lic­it Amer­i­can arms traf­fick­ing in the Caribbean and re­lat­ed ef­fects, as well as cur­rent prac­tices, and what more could be done to cur­tail the flow of these weapons.”

The re­quest al­so comes as Caribbean lead­ers have been tak­ing a more unit­ed front to com­bat the traf­fick­ing of arms in­to the is­lands, in­clud­ing sign­ing on to a law­suit with the gov­ern­ment of  Mex­i­co against gun man­u­fac­tur­ers.

Min­is­ter of For­eign And Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne told Guardian Me­dia, “It is quite en­cour­ag­ing that this is­sue has been at­tract­ing ad­di­tion­al ad­vo­cates. It is im­por­tant to note that the le­gal pro­ceed­ings with which Trinidad and To­ba­go and some oth­er Cari­com mem­ber states have as­so­ci­at­ed them­selves are fo­cused on the ac­tions and lack of ac­tion by pri­vate sec­tor gun man­u­fac­tur­ers in the USA, and are not di­rect­ed against the US Gov­ern­ment which over­all has been work­ing well with us to­ward re­duc­ing the in­ci­dence of vi­o­lent crime in our re­gion.”