Tomorrow will be one week since the murder of City Administrator, Stephanie Lindo-Garbutt. Her death brought a spotlight on the issue of guns being in the hands of persons in mental health crises, such as her husband, who took his own life after he killed her - while their teenaged son was in an adjoining room.
Then, days later, the mental health of Haitian American Robert Joseph, who murdered a mother and a child at the Belmopan Market, was also questioned.
You heard the Minister of Home Affairs say that he agrees there should be mental health evaluations for current gun license holders. But as you may know, his boss, the prime minister, is completely anti-gun. And today, following these two events that shook society, he reiterated this position.
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"I will repeat, if it was left up to me, there would be no guns on the streets, I don't think anybody should have a gun. I know somebody told me, some reggae/dancehall singer said guns don't kill people, people kill people, yes but you don't help people to kill people by giving them guns, allowing them to
have easy access to the guns. So as far as I'm concerned, we should ban guns. We believe that we have to go after those people that commit these kinds of crimes to ensure that we can get the guns from these people. There's been massive discussions in the United States, the United States again they don't want to do anything when it comes to the control of guns and wanting to blame it on mental health issues. Well, in Belize we have the same issue, that many of the gun holders have mental health issues so probably we also need to take a look at that and those we believe should not have a gun, we should take it away from them as far as I'm concerned."
