Rubio: US Needs to Do More to Combat Illegal Gun Exports to Caribbean

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has had an eventful first couple of months in the job. Between Ukraine, Europe, Canada, Greenland, and everything else in the world, he’s been a busy guy.

Recently, though, he went to Jamaica.

No, not a vacation. He was actually there for work–must be nice–and while there, he actually talked about a lot of things. One of those? Guns, apparently.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a rare visit to the Caribbean this week, vowing to be an ally to the region in the “global war on gangs”.

He also acknowledged that more must be done to stem the flow of firearms from US ports.

The vast majority of gun crimes in the Caribbean are committed with weapons bought in the US. The Compass reported last year that at least 75% of firearms offences on the islands could be linked directly to American gun sales.

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A key element of the talks was the partnership between the US and Jamaica to fight organised crime networks.

This is something that has significant downstream effects for Cayman. As the Compass reported in detail last year, the majority of firearms used in crimes on the island come from the US via Jamaica, often arriving in clandestine overnight drug shipments.

Both Holness and Rubio talked up their joint commitment to make inroads in fighting this, saying transnational criminal enterprises require transnational crime fighting.

Rubio made a significant concession here, acknowledging something that many in the Caribbean have known for some time.

“Many of the guns and the weapons that are being used by gangs to commit acts of violence here in Jamaica are purchased in the United States and then shipped here and we want to commit to doing more to stopping that flow,” he said.

Now, I’m a little bothered by Rubio’s choice of wording here. Yes, these guns might have originated in the United States, but were they purchased illegally for export, or were they stolen guns later acquired via the black market, or something else? The report talking about the link even acknowledges they don’t know, so I’m not thrilled about pretending the sales themselves were really part of the issue.

That said, exports without State Department approval are illegal, and it’s probably the one thing regulating gun sales that I’m not going to get up in arms about. I get the reasoning behind it, and it’s a national security issue.

Frankly, this is the kind of thing the ATF should be doing instead of claiming credit for local police departments’ arrests and framing military personnel.

This is the kind of thing the ATF should be focusing on. They should be looking at organizations trying to illegally ship firearms outside of the country and those acquiring and selling them on the domestic black market. They should be looking for stolen guns, many of which will probably end up in the Caribbean. Instead, they’re sitting on their butts doing absolutely nothing except harassing law-abiding gun dealers and citizens.

They can’t be abolished soon enough for me.

Rubio isn’t wrong about needing to crack down on the illegal exports. Americans who have had their guns stolen would rather have them back instead of going on a vacation many of them will never really be able to justify taking.

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