Gun control

EDITORIAL
There is no doubt stricter gun controls should be imposed by the government as wayward elements are seemingly becoming bolder and brazen ignoring gun laws and are using deadly weapons to kill with impunity or forward their illegal interests. There is supposed to be an election gun ban but still. Just by looking at news reports, killings are on the rise with the use guns.

In the Cordillera, two men working for an Abra town mayor became the first gun ban violators in the region. Cordillera police director Chief Supt. Benjamin Magalong said Reynaldo Baruela, 49; and Jun Palecpec, 51; both of barangay Malapa-ao, Langiden were arrested by policemen led by Supt. Mario Mayam-es and Supt. Virgilio Pascua who seized from the suspects two Cal/ 45 pistols at a barangay fiesta in Langiden town on Jan. 20. The two were reportedly “men” of Langiden town, Abra mayor Noel Castillo, formerly Abra province’s provincial jail warden.

In far Cebu, a former Canadian journalist, on trial for malicious mischief for threatening a doctor with a gun, managed to enter a courtroom Tuesday with not just one but two guns. John Holdridge Pope fatally shot the doctor who sued him plus his lawyer. Pope then left the courtroom and was reportedly trying to shoot more people before he was shot and wounded by a policeman. Pope, reportedly despondent over personal problems, then shot himself and died later in a hospital. Pope was reportedly frisked before entering the courtroom on the fourth floor of the hall of justice. But the frisking failed to detect the gun hidden in his sock and another in his bag. There is no metal detector in the hall of justice. After all the deaths from gun violence since the Christmas Season and with a gun ban in place, there is supposed to be tighter enforcement of gun control.

The series of incidents involving guns resulting to deaths should lead to a review of security systems and review of the enforcement of the ban on carrying firearms outside homes during the election period. More effective law enforcement is needed.