Guns equal life term and death

Editorial, Normal

WE each face all forms of hazards in our respective jobs.
From the builder laying bricks on a high-rise to the policeman going in search of an armed criminal, there is always the danger of coming to some grievous bodily harm or worse.
And, when disaster strikes, as it did our colleague Sent Timbi last Saturday in Mt Hagen, it leaves those living – friends, colleagues and especially relatives – feeling drained, empty inside and shattered.
We knew Timbi well as a forever smiling, respectful and even a little shy big fellow who did his work quietly. He basically thought himself journalism by working tirelessly as a stringer for The National (before he joined the Post-Courier), rarely bitter if his material was not run.
He will sorely be missed by all who knew him.
For reasons we are yet to ascertain, Timbi was shot dead in cold blood as he stood waiting unsuspectingly to meet a relative who had told him earlier by phone that he had a problem he needed sorting out.
Timbi met, instead, with a speeding bullet fired from a high-powered gun from just 10m away.
Such was the velocity of the bullet that it entered his chest, exited the back and wounded another person some metres behind him.
What Timbi had regularly reported on, and what we featured so often in our pages – the prevalence of high-powered weapons in this country – ironically turned around to take his life.
While we await police investigations and further information on what so motivated a person – apparently well known to Timbi – to turn around and murder another in cold blood, we realise at the same time just how fickle and fragile our lives are in a country where violence is never far away.
We realise too how dangerous all our work can be – as journalists or lawyers or just about any other professional – violence, perpetrated by evil people who would not like decency and the law to stand in their way, is increasingly becoming a bother.
Not too long ago, gunmen set upon and wounded Chief Ombudsmen Chronox Manek.
Perhaps, it was a crime of opportunity and, perhaps, it was not.
Perhaps, it was a crime that was premeditated and carried out to frighten or to stop him carrying out his lawful duties. That is truly frightening.
When fear causes a society to cower, when it frightens law-abiding citizens to employ self-censorship of a sort and to be less vigorous in their fight to stand a decent society, then that society can implode. That is our worst fear.
Timbi’s murder appears a little like it was premeditated.
He got a call, apparently from a person known to him – some say a relative. He was asked to meet up with the person at a specified meeting place.
He got to the appointed place, waited and met his death.  So, was it personal or was it professional? Whatever the fact, did it warrant his death – a young person in the prime of his life with a young wife and child?
And, more especially, would he have been murdered in so senseless a fashion it resembles some gangster movie plot if high-powered guns were not so prevalent and in the hands of trigger-happy individuals who do not value human lives?
We, yesterday, in this space wrote about the shooting of a pastor and his 20-year-old son. They, too, were gunned down senselessly.
How many more people must be killed, how many more women must be raped at gunpoint before the state takes drastic action?
The course of action available to the government is clear – a crackdown so severe in all areas where high-powered guns are thought to be held.
The entire highlands region is one such area.
Emergency laws should be brought in to make possession of a firearm punishable by life imprisonment or some such serious penalty and the discharge of any firearm with intent to harm should carry the death penalty. Such laws operate well in neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia.
Pour in millions of kina into the operation if that is what it takes. If outside force must be invited in, so be it. Money can be replaced – human lives cannot.
In any case, billions are coming in from the LNG project and other big mining projects that are in the offing and which are in grave danger of being seriously compromised or put off by our gun-totting hoodlums.