The most remarkable aspects of the incident at Arimu in the Mazaruni-Cuyuni last February when a police and army squad killed three wanted men were the small size of the gang, their modest weaponry and the limited scale of their alleged crimes. Police retrieved two .38 revolvers with eight rounds and one .32 pistol with six rounds from the dead men, hardly a huge arsenal.

While residents of Bartica were relieved at the elimination of the gang which they believed was behind the spate of neighbourhood gun crimes, the administration should be concerned about the apparently easy availability of handguns, the frequency and ubiquity of armed robberies, the random quarries of assault, and the mushrooming of reckless little gangs of young men and women.

Head of the Police Criminal Investigation Department Seelall Persaud last November confirmed that, on average, there were now about two armed robberies every day.  Easier to acquire, carry, conceal and use than the AK-47 assault rifles favoured in the heyday of the big gangs such as the Rondell Rawlins enterprise until last year, handguns are becoming as  great a menace as yesteryear’s long guns.  Many armed robberies are carried out by only one or two persons without masks to conceal their identity, often in broad daylight and on motor scooters or even on foot. The criminals’ spoils are usually quite paltry.

Over the past month, for example, robbery victims included a minibus driver in Sophia who was attacked by two armed men who took $10,000 from his pocket; an Internet Service in  Campbellville from which the robbers took some mobile phones, two wrist watches, three MP4 players, and $15,000; the Hotel Tower in Cummingsburg where employees were robbed by three armed men of $111,000, two mobile phones and a quantity of personal jewellery; and in Charlestown where a taxi driver was robbed of $10,000, the vehicle’s radio set and his personal jewellery. Other armed robberies occurred as far apart as at Bush Lot on the Corentyne Coast,  Blankenburg Village on the West Coast, Arimu in the Mazaruni-Cuyuni and Big Creek in the Barima-Waini region. In the main, these have hardly been huge hauls.

The administration and the public at large should not expect any quick fixes in the fight against handgun crimes and the proliferation of these little gangs. There has been little new legislation. The Firearms (Amendment) Act, 2007 allows for increases in penalties for persons found with unlicensed firearms but there has been no move to curb private possession of handguns some of which are stolen and fall into the hands of criminals. Legislation is necessary, but not sufficient, to deal with the growing menace. There will always be questions about the Guyana Police Force’s capability to enforce those laws and to staunch the supply of firearms from neighbouring countries when, clearly, it does not have a clue about the amount of handguns in circulation or the number of gangs in operation.

Most armed robberies involve the use of illegal firearms. Sixty-one per cent of those recovered by the police last year were manufactured in Brazil but, over the past decade, border security has been so lax that handguns poured into the country. Unless the police force is provided with the manpower and material resources to suppress gun running, the number of illegal firearms will increase.

The character of these new gangs and the causes of handgun crimes are complex. The Ministry of Home Affairs and the Guyana Police Force must lead a sustained multi-agency commitment in partnership with communities, families and the media to confront the mushrooming of criminal gangs and the menace of handgun robberies.