Sign in an inner-city community, Kingston Jamaica. (Photo from Amnesty International)From Yahoo News/AP:
KINGSTON, Jamaica – Ships from Miami steam into Jamaica's main harbor loaded with TV sets and blue jeans. But some of the most popular U.S. imports never appear on the manifests: handguns, rifles and bullets that stoke one of the world's highest murder rates.
The volume is much less than the flow of U.S. guns into Mexico that end up in the hands of drug cartels — Jamaican authorities recover fewer than 1,000 firearms a year. But of those whose origin can be traced, 80 percent come from the U.S., Jamaican law enforcement officials have said in interviews with The Associated Press.
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My Comment: I visited Jamaica with my parents in 1971. I loved the place. Reggae music, happy people, great beaches. I visited Jamaica again in 1979 .... sigh .... a high crime rate, a socialist prime minister who was supportive of Castro, and an economic collapse as non-blacks fled the country. I vowed never to go back.
But times are starting to change. A friend of mine visited Jamaica last year, and she loved it (within the confines of the tourist spot that she was vacationing). But outside, everyone knows that Jamaica has one of the highest murder rates in the world. The stats for 2008 is 1,600 murders (recorded) out of a population of 2.8 million.
But will Jamaica ever recover to what it once was .... and will its culture of violence ever go away .... only time will tell.