The culture of the gun

What in the past used to be just petty offenses often end up now as major crimes in impact on the victims, their families, and on the community or society.

Indeed, street snatchings of personal effects, say, watches, earrings, cellphones, purses, and wallets, or most "akyat-bahay" modus operandi on forcible entries are by legal definitions crimes of robbery, yet the pedestrian idea then prevailing just shrugged them off as petty robbery. Obviously, such "antiquated" small-time offenses often involved small value.

But now, regardless of the value of the thing, it's the killing attitude of the perpetrator that has radically changed the culture, such that any resistance, or refusal to part with the object of robbery or thievery, often results in gun shooting or knife-thrust into the victim.

That's one angle that a trivial incident gravitates and escalates into fatal ending… For another, an accidental slight bumping into a shoulder may end up a full-blown melee, and a shooting battle when the parties are the Crips and Bloods gangs. Or if an Ahkro young man makes leery eyes on a girl whose beau is Tau Gamma, and the girl stokes the "insult" to her beau, a donny-brook between the frats is sure to follow with fatal results.

Brickbats that get settled with words or by cooler heads, or at most in fisticuffs, if at all, are now serious fuses for riots. Petty offenses worsen into major crimes exacting lives after the gunsmoke clears. Killings become cheaper by the dozen.

The dire events some fortnight or so ago within Metro Cebu bespeak that the culture of the gun has sadly arrived. While the motives or the causes of the killings vary, like, personal grudge, revenge, poverty-related, politics, or whatever, the common factor is that assassination by gun-for-hire seems the modus. And, the consideration is getting cheaper.

This led Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia to wonder that the recent spate of killings by hired assassins could be the handiwork of former "vigilantes" who have no more "business" now that they accept cheap fee of P200 to P300.

"Binuang man na", reacted former Mayor Tommy Osmeña on whom insinuations - just loose talks - had been attributed inre the "vigilantes" few years back, and who targeted criminals especially prisoners just released from the BBRC.

Whatever be the factual background, the reported killings by gun-for-hire is increasing. There are now many who "sell" their "services" in order to rub out victims. Talks are even rife that a "sapya" or "lapad", in reference to a small bottle of local wine or brandy is enough initial "motivator" to finalize the "contract", plus a motorcycle and a rider in pillion as trigger man.

Hence, to the innocent and naïve, or the uninitiated in the stark realities of life, like, killing is absolute taboo in religion and the law, killing practically for mere "peanuts" is beyond belief or comprehension. Such is the theme of Ernest Hemingway's short story "The Killers" wherein the hired guns in effect "killed" the innocent youthful impression and naïve personality of a young man who happens to be an innocent bystander of an intended crime that didn't happen yet.

With the worsening culture of the gun in the present milieu, what must have caused it? Perhaps, it could be a mixture of causes leading to the ugly impression that human lives are cheaper by the dozen. And that lives are not that sacred as taught in catechism in childhood, and as preached in the church constantly. The fact remains that in Cebu alone, everybody knows where, is making guns practically a mere "cottage industry".

What seems consoling though, is that the recent cases of gun-for-hire assassinations, have mostly been solved, say the police. But then, more often than not, the "solution" is up to the filing of cases against the "suspected" hired killer(s) whose conviction may still be a toss-up, but the "mastermind" remains scot-free.

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