The Manicou Report

Reading this story in the Express a few days ago made me realize something. When last anybody ever hear of a homemade shotgun being seized? Remember long time we will always hear about somebody getting caught with a homemade shotgun along with so many round of ammunition. There are no more homemade weapons probably entirely because we have a constant stream of weapons flowing in from South America. Consider that the enormous drug trade in South America (and Columbia specifically) depends on the Caribbean as a transshipment point with the Unites States and Europe as its target. It’s well known that the drugs are accompanied by guns and that even though the guns move on, the drugs stay in Trinidad. Does anyone have any idea how many guns there are in South America?

Take for example Brazil and Venezuela. Brazil has a population of about 186,405,000. It’s estimated that there are 17.5 million guns in circulation in Brazil, 90% of which are in the hands of civilians. There are 38,000 gun deaths per year in Brazil which works out to about 100 shooting deaths every day. And that’s just shooting deaths. Murders by other methods such as stabbings haven’t been included. Whereas in Brazil, 21.72 people out of every 100,000 are murdered with guns, in Venezuela the gun death rate is even higher at 22.15 per 100,000. So when one considers that we live under Venezuela’s left armpit, it’s not a mystery why we’ve begun to smell bad.

Our entire southern coast including the south-western peninsula is fair game for all South American drug runners. So quite possibly, that in itself is the key in turning around the crime trend.

What makes this hit home even more is this: While Brazil’s yearly 38,000 gun death per year is ghastly, do u know what Brazil’s death toll from shootings would be if they had a population of 1,300,000 instead of 186,405,000 (keeping the same rate)? It would be 282 gun deaths per year.

What’s our gun death total per year again? Doesn’t that fact seem to put it all into perspective?