Rubio accepts Jamaica’s gun problem starts in USA
(CNS): US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has acknowledged that many of the guns and weapons in Jamaica that are used by gangs to commit acts of violence were purchased in the United States and shipped to the island nation. Rubio visited Jamaica on Wednesday as part of a trip to the region and addressed the issue of guns at a joint press briefing with Prime Minister Andrew Holness.
After admitting that the US is the source of the weapons, he said that “we want to commit to doing more to stopping that flow” and help Jamaica increase its own capacity to address the problem.
Almost all the guns used in violent crime in Cayman also originate in the US, generally getting here indirectly via Jamaica.
Speaking at the press conference in Kingston yesterday, Rubio said the problem of criminal gangs was becoming the leading world security problem, which Holness has called the “global war on gangs”.
Rubio said, “It’s amazing, if you look across the region — and really, many parts of the world — how many of the threats we face in the world now that once came from a ideological terrorist organisation or from a nation state, are now coming from non-governmental criminal organisations, who in some cases are more powerful than the governments in some of these countries.
“It’s a challenge in Mexico. It’s a challenge on the border between Venezuela and Colombia. It is the challenge in Haiti, and it’s been a challenge here,” he added.
He said that in future, aid would be about mutual interests. “[W]hen we talk about American assistance, it’s America helping Jamaica build its own capacity, its own ability to confront these challenges and solve these problems because security is a baseline for everything.”
Rubio said the US would be helping the Jamaican government with security equipment and intelligence software to help combat its gang problem. However, he noted that Jamaica had made strides and the State Department would “re-evaluate the travel advisories” to ensure they reflect what new numbers show. “Because you’ve made very impressive progress in your general numbers overall when it comes to the murder rate.”
He said that the advisories needed to be analysed so they accurately reflect the status quo and take the progress made into account.
The visit by the US secretary of state comes amidst the significant global and regional uncertainty and the unpredictability of American foreign policy under the Trump presidency that could have seriously detrimental impacts on the Caribbean, from tariffs and aid cuts to threatened hikes on shipping costs.
Read a transcript of the press briefing on the US State Department website here.
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Category: Caribbean, Crime, USA, World News
9.08…Tell that to our Bodden town MPs.
You can always tell by the look on Rubio’s face that his diaper is full, and he’s full of it too!
Ok, wtf are they going to do about it??? Let me take a shot at it….As soon as the gun lobby gets to the ear of the master orange gorilla, this little lap dog will come out and say he was misunderstood on his statement. He will then place the blame on someone else.
True story
little marco…just another spineless, stupid, trump puppet
1:53 So you don’t want Orange Face and Little Marco assisting in stopping shipments and removing guns from Jamaica?
Are you familiar with the phrase “a mouth can say anything”?
ignore him and his orange master. muppett.
12:04, you’re allowed to hate anyone you like, but if that person or persons are doing good things, it would be well to recognize them and let them push that policy. No one politician has all the right answers.
Brilliant deduction by both parties but why the hell does Jamaica have to export them and their violence elsewhere can’t blame that $#@!on the USA now can you ???
The USA is the root of most problems.
9:21 so then, could you suggest a solution?
Perhaps the weapons point is valid. However, Jamaican culture is almost uniquely toxic:
“Jamaican culture is among the most violent in the world. For example, murder rates are fifty times higher than in Britain. Guns are normal, so it is unsurprising that Jamaican immigrants brought their gun culture with them; indeed, the gun culture of the Afro-Caribbean community is now a specific concern of British crime policy. That culture is perhaps why Duggan carried a gun: his uncle had been a gun-toting gang leader in Manchester, and he did not recognise it as breaking a taboo. Manchester itself is struggling to live down its description as “Gunchester.” In 2012 it was the scene of a tragedy in which, for the first time in Britain, two policewomen were shot dead.”
Exodus: Immigration and Multiculturalism in the 21st Century, Paul Collier (Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University and a former director of Development Research at the World Bank), https://www.amazon.co.uk/Exodus-Immigration-Multiculturalism-21st-Century-ebook/dp/B00ELXQYM0
Even the supposed positive stories from Jamaica are often false. E.g.
“…social justice warriors pretend that history was more diverse than it really was. An infamous example is Mary Secole. Secole was a Jamaican black businesswoman … thanks to major historical revisionism, she is now said to be a nurse. But not just any nurse. She is a nurse whose heroism rivals that of her more famous counterpart, Florence Nightingale. … However, Secole never was a nurse. Indeed, she never called herself a nurse or worked in a hospital. She occasionally referred to herself figuratively as a “doctress, nurse and mother” to her patrons, and she sold herbal remedies at her hotel. Additionally, her own autobiography focuses on her hotel and restaurant business.”
IDiots: How Identity Politics is Destroying the Left, Katie Roche, https://www.amazon.co.uk/IDiots-Identity-Politics-Destroying-Left-ebook/dp/B08S31WQLQ (Kindle Location 2254)
Seems like you have a ace to grind. I suggest that you go and do the research before you start talking. Crime is a global phenomenon. Why are you singling out Jamaica. Crime is a global problem. Especially in less developed countries.
But who caused the problem? Americans. Jamaica was much safer in the 50s and 60s, but because of the rise of socialism in Jamaica in the 80s, it is ALLEGED that out of fear of the spread of socialism in the western hemisphere (with Cuba already falling to communism), US agencies trafficked weapons in to give to the gangs to destabilize the country, and since then Jamaica’s crime and poverty rates have remained high, leaving them with a strategic economic and social dependence on the US. So you can thank the US for the current state of Jamaica.
More hot air. The USA gun lobby, the NRA, and their donor base, are pro-arms dealing. If the USA doesn’t sell them, the Russians, or others will. That’s always been the refrain, but we can hope for sensible policy change. However, even domestically, even after countless mass shootings and sniper headlines, the USA can’t yet see fit to regulate fully-automatic assault weapons.
“You cannot invade mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.”
You can’t regulate guns in the USA because everyone already has one or access to one illegal or not. More rifles than people.
Horse shit! I’m a USA and don’t know where a gun is.
Survey says bullcrap. It is very heavily regulated in the U.S. as to full auto rifles. The term “assault weapons” has little meaning. Most people who use that term are referring to military grade semi-auto rifles.
Be informed:
https://thegunzone.com/are-fully-automatic-firearms-legal-in-the-us/
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/automatic-weapons-legality-by-state
If that’s true, how do Jamaicans acquire weapons for export? Even Rubio admits regulation is too loose.
Guns don’t kill people; people kill people with guns.
Should we regulate knives, swords, acid, ropes, bats, clubs, etc….
Which of those items listed can (and often do in the continental US) mow down dozens of people effortlessly from 50ft?
Which of those have been used to commit mass murders in schools? Maybe you support that kind of thing?
Let’s not forget that the first guns in JA came from the USA and were handed out by politicians not so very long ago.
The first guns which came into Jamaica were brought by the Spanish. After the first Spanish-English war wherein England annexed Jamaica from the Spanish, they brought in their own guns. Those were the first guns.
However, what you may be attempting to refer to pertains more to the context of modern history. It was in the immediacy of the power vacuum created by the pseudo-exit of the English at the initiation of Jamaican independence, at a time when many places and peoples around the world where turned into proxy battlegrounds for the major world powers fighting for control and influence in the Cold War, that the creation of the Jamaican “posse” gangs came about. Jamaican people have always loved going to the movies, and westerns were hugely popular. Both sides of this supplanted conflict, with Manley receiving guns from the Soviets based in Cuba in order to force their doctrines and Seaga receiving guns from the CIA of the USA in order to force their doctrines, were both handing out guns and each were paying JA $10.00 per head to members of the posses of their own creation to go out and shoot/kill/maim/injure/torture/rape/pillage/terrorize people from rival garrisonized communities. Even to this day drinking a beer of the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time can result in issues. The war between the red and the green still exists, but the master of all is now the golden cow of greed. Of course, once the profitability of drug smuggling showed itself to be far more lucrative than being terrorists for politicians, the politicians could no longer control the rabid dogs which they had each set upon their own society and communities for the purposes of their own political expediencies and ideological agendas.
Jamaica is one of the most violent places on earth. For reference; “When Jamaica gained independence in 1962, the murder rate was 3.9 per 100,000 people, one of the lowest in the world. In 2022 Jamaica had 1,508 murders, for a murder rate of 53.34 per 100,000 people, the highest murder rate in the world.”
There is no doubt that the USA is a major source of the firearms flowing into the island nation of Jamaica, but they are not the only source by any conceivable stretch of the imagination. Moreover, a culture which celebrates criminality, murder, theft, prostitution, gangsterism and fraud will not see true healing or better days simply with the removal of or stemming the tide of smuggled in firearms.
Jamaica never really had an opportunity to heal and/or rise out of the wounds created by the dehumanization of slavery and colonialism. Jamaica was immediately beset upon by the warring world powers which saw Jamaica (much like Nicaragua and other countries) become the killing fields in a proxy war wherein the puppet masters themselves were thousands of miles away from the actual bloodshed.
This is why Bob Marley himself caught hot lead for bringing the two warring factions on stage to shake hands. There were those for whom peace was, and to this day is, not their friend.
That being said, it is now incumbent upon the Jamaican people themselves to rise out of the ashes and throw the concept of celebrating gangsterism and criminality down into to the fire of the refuse pit where it belongs. Unless and/or until that happens, regardless of whether or not every single firearm is removed from the entirety of the landmass of Jamaica, nothing will change. The issue itself lives within the hearts and the minds of the people themselves. Machetes, rocks, sticks and all manner of implements and objects can be used to kill, maim and terrorize. Guns are tools. People are the killers, not the guns themselves.
If one has any interest in beginning learn more about these issues, then one should seek to find and read the book “Born Fi Dead” written by Laurie Gunst.
No. it starts with hate craven and greedy lazy hearts
those emotions will forever be present in some humans. preventing them from illegally obtaining weapons to express those emotions is a start.
Astounding. Well as a Jamaican I can tell you that Andrew Holness is capable of anything especially in exchange for money. So I would love to know what was given in exchange for this wonderful endorsement from Trump. We will know soon enough.