GUN-CARRYING FOR SELF DEFENSE WOULD NOT PROTECT THE VICTIM OF ASSASSINATION
The PROGUN Philippines Inc. Position Paper of May 2009 cited many assassination and they suggested gun-carrying for self defense would be a solution to protect the victim. The PROGUN Inc believes that a gun-armed person is a hard-target for the assassins, and an unarmed person is a soft-target for the assassins. The PROGUN Inc believes that an assassin will more likely not be successful in hitting an armed victim.
In my opinion, PROGUN argument is less right and more of a wrong.
I believe that a profesional assassin will execute will execute his mission to hit whether or not the target is armed or unarmed. Even if the victim had a gun, the assasin would still accomplish his mission using the element of surprise, which is a very basic element in the tactics of combat. The element of surprise is the execution of the hit while the target is UNAWARE of the attack in the most advantageous PLACE and MOMENT. Even if you are heavily armed, your chances of surviving a well-planned ambush and assassination is almost zero. I can cite thousands of cases to prove it.
A platoon of heavily armed soldiers whould least likely survive an ambush because of the element of surprise. An armed policeman would least likely survive a assasination because of the element of surprise. There are many heavily armed personalities who were gunned down by assassins even if they are carrying a gun.
A husband of a widow I personally know was a Barangay Captain. He was always carrying a loaded cal .45 in quick-draw holster. He went to practice target shooting frequently. He cleaned his gun everyday. Yet still, he was assassinated while in the gas station, 26 bullets in the body. A person can only observe 150 degrees of his sight view, a rapid surprise attack from behind whould render useless the gun being carried by victim. Very few people can survive an assassination because of this thing we call element of surprise.
For the purpose of deriving at a possible preventive measure, I would be asking two basic questions. How did the assassin knew the whereabouts of the target and the best time to execute the hit? How did these assassins successfully moved to and from their target using the streets? I thought there is a gun ban, so I thought there should be checkpoints.
In my position, I think a successful assassination is primarily caused by a failure of the police to operationalize an effective checkpoint system. If the gun-carying assassins were able to go to the crime site and get away from it, it means the cops were not doing their checkpoint operation. In the cases they have cited, the Police should be held responsible for lax checkpoint operation.
Another equally important consideration that makes a successful assassination is the assassin's access to information of the victim. Any assassin could not make a hit if he don't know where the victim is at any point in time.
When I was working with the US Government on a security-critical position, we were always told in an annual Personal Security Seminar that personal information management is what matters in distinguishing a hard target and a soft target -- the fact of whether the person is armed or not is not a factor in the determination of a hard target and a soft target.
Having this in mind, I believe that if you are in the hih-risk profession, I would advice you to attend the PNP's Personal Safety Seminar (for FREE). Securely managing your personal information would make you overall chances of not getting assassinated is almost zero. The basic is, you can't be assassinated if the assasin won't know where you are in any given day he would be ready to make a hit.
What hassles the assassin is TIGHT GUN-CARRY POLICY and CHECKPOINT. This twin approach gives the hitman a big problem and hassle in moving from one place to another with a gun. An effective checkpoint system, especially in a gunless zone (like malls, airports, and train station) makes that particular zone a disadvantageous place for the assassin. I myself, as a person in the high-risk profession of advocacy, spends most of my time outdoors in a gunless zone. I conduct my meeting with new people in venues that pass through security x-ray machines.
Everytime there is an assassination, people always ask, "who are those gunmen/assassins?" The answer is, we don't know. Professional sssassins hide their identities well. Perpetrators of crimes are sometimes identified and sometimes they are only named as John Doe or Jane Doe.
There is one thing that I am 100% absolutely sure. I am definitely sure that gun-aided crimes are committed by people who have access to guns.
The five kinds of persons who commit gun-aided crimes are police, military, private armies, hired criminals, licensed gun holders, unlicensed gun holders, accidental gun-holders, or maybe PROGUN-runners who wants to create a gun-aided crime for the sole purpose of using it as publicity to lift the gun ban.
The best policy to put in place is something that will tighten people's access to private information, tighten the gun-carry policy, and effective checkpoint systems. We can have an high chance to prevent crime by regulating people's access to INFORMATION and GUN for some persons, places, and moments.
CONTROLLING PRIVATE INFORMATION. Most assassins get private information like name, address, whereabouts, relatives, age, gender, hobbies, from database of government and private sectors. When in comes to PERSONAL SECURITY and NATIONAL SECURITY, moreso important than the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is the Private Information Privacy Act (PIPA). PIPA should provide guidelines to protect personal identifiable private information. One of its feature is it disallows companies and agencies to collect excessive information. It also disallows release of personally identifiable information to any person WITHOUT the authority of the subject. The recent PNP Advisory on Facebook Security is one of the best initiatives of the PNP.
CONTROLLING PERSONS. We can have exams and interview and background check, and complaint management to filter out those persons who are unfit to carry firearm. We can disallow the law enforcers from carying guns when they are outside their uniform and duty time. We have already figured out that most criminal gunmen use motor bikes as mode of transportation, so I think we are in the right direction if we should pay more attention to bikers in the checkpoint operation.
CONTROLLING SPACE. We can gradually increase the area covered by gunless zones by putting in place some new effective checkpoint systems. We can enclose certain places where criminals most-likely reside and install a decent checkpoint system with proper x-ray machines.
CONTROLLING TIME. We can have total gun bans during moments when gun-aided crime rate is very high such as during election period and pay-days. We can set gun-carry curfew hours if we find it feasible.
PREVENTION is always better than REACTION. Controlling the information, persons, time, and space is the best strategy to prevent and deter gun-aided criminals.
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By the way, it is a WRONG POLICY to say that ALL judges must be exempted from the gun-carry ban because A judge was assasinated. It is a WRONG POLICY to say that ALL journalists must be exempted from the gun-carry ban because A journalist was assasinated. The wrongness is just like saying that ALL male must be exempted from the gun-carry ban because a male was assasinated.
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Collection of blogs to eradicate Gun-Aided Crimes can be found at
http://petalcorinpolitics.blogspot.com/search/label/On%20Firearm%20Control
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I dedicate this blog to my FB friends who celebrate their birthdays today.
Dalma Petalcorin, Greg Mariano, Luwi Coloma, Stephen Lalas Cabanlet
