We have no gun factories in Jamaica, no matter where you look you wont find one, all of this is mainly because in Jamaica we lack an important resource in making guns, that resource is metal. We do have Bauxite, which can make alumina, which can then make aluminum which is in fact a very useful metal, however the process of Bauxite to aluminum is so expensive that a country that doesn't have either its own independent and strong enough source of energy will stand to lose much if it attempts to produce it themselves. So since we dont have oil like our caribbean neighbours we simply dont produce aluminum and as I said before we have no metal so we dont make guns.

However a strange thing happens in Jamaica, week after week after week, or I daresay day after day, there is some major ammunitions find somewhere in Jamaica. Its kinda wierd, I mean how exactly does a country that not make guns, afford to have this many guns in its possession. There are a number of answers to this question and it stems far back in our history specifically in the 1970s - 1980's when Jamaica went through what can only be described as a mini civil-war... and that's where I'll start.

Essentially in this 70's-80's period there was what can only be described as political violence and unrest. Jamaica had always been under a 2 party system, and people by this time had aligned themselves strongly to a party, so strongly in fact that people were willing to fight for and die for their parties. The politicians at this time realized that a way to gain votes was to make this fight a part of life and they fueled the fight by getting more weapons and distributing them to whoever wanted them (and whoever were willing to align to a party). Of course all the politicians who were active in this period of time will deny that such a thing ever happened, of course this was embarassing behaviour and also quite damaging to the political clout, however anybody who was alive during the time period will tell you that they saw these things happening on a day by day basis. It is basically a part of an unwritten but immensely truthful Jamaican history, and this proved to be one of the first and main sources of guns in Jamaica. Literally thousands of guns came into the islands and changed hands throughout the ages and as any gun enthusiast will tell you, these things have a really long shelf life (as long as they are being cared for), so dont be surprised if guns are found which seem to be decades old... they probably are.

However the 1970s and 80s were 30 years ago... Jamaica has mostly calmed since then, well in the 90's anyway. Towards the end of the 90s though we had yet another spike in crime rates that has been continuing where up till now we are easily one of the world leaders in our crime rate (it seems we try to be number 1 in whatever we do, though this isn't something to be proud of). Previously alot of the blame has been placed on the guns for drugs trade which has been taking place between Jamaica and Haiti, and various people all over the parishes of Jamaica. Recently however alot of speeches have been made publicly chastising the role of the United States of America due to their liberal firearms agenda. Quite frankly people have been really angry recently at the US and are laying much blame on the USA calling for them to place stronger restrictions on who can gain access to guns and the exportation of their weapons.

These arguments are sound I mean after all the guns cant be coming from Jamaica and the US is our largest, closest and most powerful gun producing neighbour and its highly probable that this could be the major source of weapons. But how exactly can we prove their role in the trade? Also what measures do we put in place (especially under our current economic situation) to try to curb this trade? Therein lies the problem... One thing should not be left unsaid though, whoever is causing our current crime situation with all the guns and ammunition found is working really hard at his job (even today there was a major weapons find), and something needs to be done to stop it.