As a follow-up to my article, ‘The Armed and the Dangerous: who are they really?’, I would simply like to show two interesting figures from the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In all recorded journalist murder cases since 1992:
- Government officials were the suspected source of fire 71% of the time
- The overwhelming majority of victims covered politics (61%) and corruption (41%)
So, whenever we hear from politicians and journalists who support anti-gun legislation, we should ask them, who are the real armed and dangerous groups in our society?
Cracking down on civilian firearms ownership will not solve the problem of violent crime in the Philippines. If politicians are serious about tackling this issue, they should be looking elsewhere.
This is a very interesting point. SO essentially what the figures and statistics tell us is that the journalists who are killed cover mostly corruption issues and government officials are the source of the violence. Now that is a real eye-opener. Normally we would associate killings and assasinations with criminal activity, but apparently, the figures tell us that these incidents of violence are more likely the product of government officials silencing their jounalist crtiics. Hmmm… SO where does that lead us? Back to our critics in government who are guilty of perpetuating these murders of journlists and the police who are inept, incompetent, and/or in cahoots with these government officials.
No wonder these killings of journalists have been going on unabated.
The thesis of the article is an apt question: Who exactly are the armed and dangerous? Who in this country have the money to buy and store arsenals of illegal guns and fund private armies? And lastly, why do our law enforcement and military continue to allow warlords and politicians to wield their arsenals of weapons and private armies? The persons who are supposed to protect us are the very ones who are the perpetrators of killings and violence. So why should journalists and we disarm ourselves and make ourselves sitting ducks for these corrupt politicians?
If you look at this, you’d think the government people should be restricted on guns and us civilians, not.