Another gun-related homicide

A college student was gunned down in broad daylight on Dec 3^rd, Sunday morning while a friend of his suffered bullet wounds at Do Darya in Defence Housing Authority in Karachi. The two young boys, along with their two other friends, had hit a motorcyclist who was involved in bike-racing at the beach when the motorcyclist’s friends travelling in a Vigo chased the college boys and opened indiscriminate fire on them, killing one and severely wounding the other.

Though the suspects, who had managed to escape, have been arrested with the help of CCTV footage obtained from the area and witnesses, in the wake of retrial being granted in the 2012 Shahzaib Khan’s murder case the incident leaves the question of accountability of the due process. The accused, Shahrukh Jatoi, the son of an influential business tycoon, was awarded a death sentence by an anti-terrorism court. But five years on, a retrial of the case has been ordered in a sessions court as Jatoi’s lawyer argued that the murder did not fall under the ambit of anti-terrorism courts.

The Sunday morning incident is reminiscent of Shahzaib’s murder case as it not only deals with murder led by rage and the main suspect allegedly belonging to an influential family, but also highlights the lack of gun-control laws in the country. A 2012 survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes ranked Pakistan 57 in the world for civilian gun ownership — 18,000,000 civilian firearms, which means 11.6 for every 100 people. The country loses a significant number of citizens to gun-related homicides every year but mere licensing makes anyone eligible to own firearms in the country. Yet the authorities concerned are reluctant to control the burgeoning growth of firearms in the country. A look into the numbers of gun-related homicides paints the importance of having stringent gun-control laws and stricter vetting process for licensing before more innocent lives are lost.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 5^th, 2017.

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