EDITOR: Last weekend can be remembered as a weekend marked by murders. This of course doesn’t speak well of our beautiful country. In Matthew 24:12 it says, “And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.” So what we are hearing about is a fulfilment of biblical prophecy. It displays the state of mankind and the world in which we live.

It would seem that people no longer know how to solve differences without the gun or some form of weapon. In some cases the killings is a product of dysfunctional families where in most cases no father figure is present and so the boys grow up without proper guidance and lack of love and have low self esteem.

There are some cases where it is revenge. Not being able to forgive plays a major role in killing that is caused by revenge and even where there has been disputes and even hurt in the case of relationships. But if we forgive and try to resolve the many issues that we encounter we would see a reduction in murders.

We can not deny that there is a lack of love which would drive someone to take another person’s life. Sometimes we ask ourselves the question, ‘what heart does a person have to watch someone and kill them’? But we have to realise as the bible says that the “heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked.” Jeremiah 17: 9.

It is such a pity that even though hanging is still on the books and in our constitution, yet no one in reality gets hanged, because even though they might be sentenced to hang them would appeal right up to the Privy Council and have their sentence reduced.

I know it would be hard to take the guns off the street and from the hands of persons who have them. An amnesty is a good idea but not effective since lots of folks would still not surrender their guns. However, it would be nice to make an effort to offer amnesty and also do searching of homes and even vehicles for ammunition. This can be very challenging and become uncomfortable for many citizens, but targeted search can be done. Here is where the co-operation of citizens is needed. For this to become a reality citizens must have confidence in the police that their names would not be disclosed.

The most important things for us as a nation is to turn away from our wickedness and turn to God. By doing that we would see more love displayed since there would be more clean hearts. May God help us to have a peaceful nation where the murder rate would reduce and a respect for the lives of others. God bless SVG.

Kennard King