With the changing of the guard in the Police Commissioner’s office, We have a great opportunity to make substantive changes in fighting the rampant violent crime wave. My hat is off to Mr. Jefferies for his service to the country, but having virtually stopped issuing hand gun permits to honest citizens and residents has left us defenseless against the criminals. It’s time for that to change.

When considering natural Law, our God gave us a natural right essential to the preservation of life and liberty. The Supreme Being invested man with an inviolable right to personal liberty and personal safety. This great natural law of self-preservation should not be superseded, or suspended by any human institution.

Positive Law generally used to describe man-made laws which bestow specific privileges upon, or remove them from, an individual or group. The Belize Constitution, city ordinances and such represents positive law. Even the Belize Constitution acknowledges the human right to self-defense.

Under Part 2 of the Constitution we are granted these “Protection of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms:

3. Whereas every person in Belize is entitled to the fundamental rights
and freedoms of the individual, that is to say, the right, whatever his race,
place of origin, political opinions, colour, creed or sex, but subject to respect
for the rights and freedoms of others and for the public interest, to each and
all of the following, namely-
(a) life, liberty, security of the person, and the protection of the
law;
(b) freedom of conscience, of expression and of assembly and
association;
(c) protection for his family life, his personal privacy, the privacy
of his home and other property and recognition of his
human dignity;

Although we have the God-given right to protect ourselves, family and property, it’s impossible to do when criminals are running around everywhere with 9mm hand guns and assault rifles single shot shotgun is useless when someone rides up on a bicycle when you are out on the street and starts shooting at you.

Why have the brass flouting our human rights when the criminals don’t care, they are going to commit crime anyway. It’s time to stop this silliness and let the honest people be able to arm and defend ourselves against this tidal wave of violent crime. Now is the time for change.

Do you really think that arming citizens is going to help?

Yup. Just think how many roberies, car jackins,home invasions, rape, and murders could have been stopped if people could defend themselves. The police should support this because they can't be everywhere all the time. Strict gun control laws are even more dangerous for women as in general they are physically weaker than men and have very little chance of fending off a male attacker.

I have absolutely nothing against people choosing to own guns. I make my own decision about gun ownership based on as much research as is available. All data I can find suggests that 1. Within the United States, counties with higher rates of household gun ownership may, if anything, have higher burglary rates. (Prof. Philip J. Cook of Duke University and Prof. Jens Ludwig of University of Chicago in a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution) 2. That people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.( Charles C. Branas, PhD, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine).

Min of Police will issue fewer gun licenses and is purposely sitting on many applications that will not be approved. We will do better with fewer guns, not more that get stolen or make a gun owner a target to steal one from.

Proffessor John Lott Jr. has a different opinion based on many years of research on this issue. He has rebuffed many challangers to his positions both in court and publicly.

John Richard Lott Jr. (born May 8, 1958) is an American academic and political commentator. He has previously held research positions at academic institutions including the University of Chicago, Yale University, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Maryland, College Park, and at the non-academic conservative American Enterprise Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA, and his areas of research include econometrics, law and economics, public choice theory, industrial organization, public finance, microeconomics, labor economics, and environmental regulation.

Lott is an author in both academia and in popular culture. A political conservative,[1][2][3][4] he is a frequent writer of opinion editorials, has published over 90 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals related to his research areas, and has authored five books, including More Guns, Less Crime, The Bias Against Guns, and Freedomnomics.

Outside of academia, Lott is best known for his participation in the gun rights debate, particularly his arguments against restrictions on owning and carrying guns.

Concealed weapons and crime rate
In an article written with David B. Mustard[14] and Lott's subsequent books More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns, Lott presents a statistical argument for the claim that allowing adults to carry concealed weapons significantly reduces crime in America. He supports this position by an exhaustive tabulation of various social and economic data from census and other population surveys of individual United States counties in different years, which he fits into a large multifactorial mathematical model of crime rate. His published results generally show a reduction in violent crime associated with the adoption by states of laws allowing the general adult population to freely carry concealed weapons.

The work was immediately controversial, drawing large amounts of support and opposition. Numerous academics praised Lott's methodology, including Florida State University economist Bruce Benson,[15] Cardozo School of Law professor John O. McGinnis,[16] and University of Mississippi professor William F. Shughart.[17] The book also received favorable reviews from academics Gary Kleck, Milton Friedman, and Thomas Sowell.[18]

Other reviews claimed that there were problems with Lott's model. In the New England Journal of Medicine, David Hemenway argued that Lott failed to account for several key variables, including drug consumption, and that therefore the model was flawed;[19] however, Lott's book did account for other variables such as cocaine prices.[20] Others agreed, and some researchers, including Ian Ayres and John J. Donohue, claimed that the model contained significant coding errors and systemic bias.[21] Gary Kleck considered it unlikely that such a large decrease in violent crime could be explained by a relatively modest increase in concealed carry,[22] and others claimed that removing portions of the data set caused the results to still show statistically significant drops only in aggravated assaults and robbery when all counties with fewer than 100,000 people and Florida's counties were both simultaneously dropped from the sample.[23]

Fact: Forty states (150), comprising the majority of the American population, are "right-to-carry" states. Statistics show that in these states the crime rate fell (or did not rise) after the right-tocarry law became active (as of July, 2006). Nine states deny or restrict the right to carry.

Fact: Crime rates involving gun owners with carry permits have consistently been about 0.02% of all carry permit holders since Florida’s right-to-carry law started in 1988. (151)

Fact: After passing their concealed carry law, Florida's homicide rate fell from 36% above the national average to 4% below, and remains below the national average (as of the last reporting (period, 2005). (152)

Fact: In Texas, murder rates fell 50% faster than the national average in the year after their concealed carry law passed. Rape rates fell 93% faster in the first year after enactment, and
( 150)At publication time two more states, Kansas and Nebraska, have pass shall-issue legislation, but insufficient data
was available to determine how the change has impacted crime rates.


Fact: More to the point, crime is significantly higher in states without right-to-carry laws (155):

Fact: States that disallow concealed carry have violent crime rates 11% higher than national
averages.(156)

Fact: Deaths and injuries from mass public shootings fall dramatically after right-to-carry concealed handgun laws
are enacted. Between 1977 and 1995 (157), the average death rate from mass shootings plummeted by up to 91% after such laws went into effect, and injuries dropped by over 80%. (158)