Say no to guns: ‘You can’t spread love with a gun’

Only 12 weapons were surrendered voluntarily during the deweaponsiation drive in the city.

KARACHI:

Imagine living in a Pakistan where you’re not afraid of being shot, or in a city where no one is armed, or better still can you imagine what it would feel like living in a place where carrying a weapon is considered a criminal offence?

This may sound like an unachievable dream, but Naeem Sadiq, a Karachi-based health, safety and environment consultant believes that citizens can bring about a change by working together with the government.

To eliminate gun culture from the country, Sadiq put forward a proposition of establishing a national deweaponisation commission.

While speaking at an event at the Urban Resource Centre on Thursday, Sadiq said that he deweaponised his house and has it written on a board outside his gate. When the Sindh government launched the deweaponisation drive, Sadiq was one of few people who surrendered their weapons. In Karachi, only 12 guns were surrendered voluntarily.

Sadiq started his presentation by defining violence and the three main reasons behind it - social inequity, economic disparity and bad governance, while the weapon is an instrument of violence.

He explained that it was impossible to spread love with a gun. “If you hold a weapon in your hand then the message you’re giving is that you are powerful and no one can argue with you,” he said “The Pakistani government is the single largest promoter and patron of weapons in the country thus it has created, promoted and patronised violence; and now violence has gotten out of their hands.”

He gave figures of licenced and illegal weapons in the country to support his arguments - there are an estimated 18 million firearms out of which seven million are licensed and 11 million are illegal. He claimed that the federal government issued 1,202,470 arms licenses to people while the Sindh government had issued 0.4 million licences.

“If you have a weapon then you are not a good man,” he said. “This is a standard in civilised society.”

During the presentation he showed a slide of Karachi’s iconic personalities who were shot dead, the participants agreed with his points and said that this list kept increasing day by day.

Sadiq also spoke about article 256 of the Constitution which forbids private armies in the country but there more than 1,000 private armies which the rich and influential have kept for themselves. “The state has no control over the violence,” he said. “The ruling elite and militants have the monopoly.”

Sadiq shared examples of countries like Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom where keeping firearms is strictly prohibited. He said that Australia introduced a buyback plan for its deweaponisation in 1996 and since then not a single murder has been carried out with a gun. “In the last eight months 130 policemen have been killed in Karachi with weapons,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 12^th, 2014.