Tina Terry: How Gun Control "Worked" in Jamaica

Jamaica continues to have one of the highest homicide rates on the planet.  It has had draconian gun control policies for 43 years. 

Around 1972, the political situation in Jamaica had so seriously deteriorated that there were constant shootings and gun battles throughout the city of Kingston and in many of the outlying parishes (counties). In years past no one had even had to lock their doors, but now many people hardly dared venture out of their homes. This was especially true for white people, and even more especially for Americans, because of the real risk of being gunned down or kidnapped and held hostage by Jamaicans, who had become increasingly hostile towards whites and foreigners. My father took his life into his hands every morning simply driving to work. Going to the market or to do a simple errand was often a terrifying prospect. The open hatred and hostility which was directed at us seemed ready at any time to explode into violence, and indeed did so towards many people on many occasions, often with tragic or fatal results.

The Jamaican government decided that the only solution to this volatile situation was to declare martial law overnight, and to demand that all guns and bullets owned by anyone but the police and the military be turned into the police within 24 hours. The government decreed that anyone caught with even one bullet would be immediately, and without trial, incarcerated in what was essentially a barbed-wire enclosed concentration camp which had been speedily erected in the middle of Kingston. In true Orwellian fashion, the government referred to this camp as "the gun court."

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