Melendez was actually quoting National Democratic Party at large candidate Mr. Myron Walwyn.

Walwyn is reported as further stating that crime will "cause our country to be less attractive to potential tourists, and reduce our confidence in ourselves as citizens."

Of course your neutral observer of politics considers Myron Walwyn’s views on BVI criminality as completely correct, notwithstanding Mr. Walwyn’s political inclinations and aspirations. Rising crime in the BVI is a scourge, and a pox on every house.

In that selfsame story, Opposition Leader Orlando Smith was described as calling for "stiff minimum sentences for firearm possession, and stiffer minimum mandatory sentences for offenders using guns to commit crimes,’’ The Opposition leader went further to insist that ‘’ anyone found trafficking in guns and ammunition must know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they will face a long time at Her Majesty’s Prison, and it will be mandatory.’’

Other politicians and political aspirants also made statements on crime in Melendez’s article, including Mr. Preston Stoutt, Honorable Vernon Malone, Mr. Lorie Rhymer, and Mr. Khoy Smith.

Melendez further gave evidence that the majority of BVI citizens and residents place rising crime at the top of their main concerns, and consider rising crime the number one issue facing the country today; so politicians, policy makers and members of the press, please take note.

Now, the Melendez news piece was obviously written after the senseless murder of K’nesia Brathwaite, a 20 year old former pupil of the Elmore Stoutt High School in Road Town, British Virgin Islands. K’nesia was killed on October 18, 2011, in neighbouring St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands. And it was for a tiny BVI community a terrible tragedy, but hopefully, also a wakeup call.

K’nesia’s shooting was a horrific killing, and brutal in the extreme. And had her toddler been nearby at the time, and not indoors, that child might have become a US murder statistic, as well. This was a double murder with the assailant apparently using an automatic type weapon: a double killing that adds to the alarming murder statistics in a United States Virgin islands that sees an increase in violent crime every year. Already, 2011 is ahead of the curve when compared to 2010, in terms of gun deaths in the USVI.

And as of October 2011, not only is a child left orphaned, but a promising life has been ended prematurely and unnecessarily, a common occurrence in the USA it seems. Not forgetting the enormous grief caused to her family, and loved ones, and the shock to the small country known as the British Virgin Antilles. Today, it appears that a certain degree and level of violence has come to be viewed as normal in these islands; a modus vivendi that accepts that the dreaded gunman will take the occasional life, even though this murder took place in a neighbouring and cousin geography.

Another thing is that the senseless murder of a precious daughter of the soil is a crossing of the Rubicon, and the Virgin Islands (British) is at last waking up to the fact that guns and a complementary gang culture across the channel, strait, and waterway, in the United States Virgin Islands is certainly neither needed nor wanted here. And being neighbours determines that extra efforts and exertions must be made by these British Virgin Islands, especially law enforcement, at ensuring that the pandemic of gun related death, which is just a ferry or boat ride across a normatively tranquil sea, is not imported on to these relatively peaceful but highly porous shores.

Today, more than at any other time, the USVI appears to be a very unsafe place indeed, and recently, even innocents have been caught in the hellish crossfire, including a man sitting quietly in his living room, and a child on vacation with her Puerto Rican parents. Not to mention the chilling crime statistics. The USVI is the most violent place in the United States with 66 homicides in 2010. Then with a population of 110,000, its per capita homicide rate is 60 per 100,000, compared with the US average of 5.2 per 100,000: 11 times the national average.

And increasingly, regular travelers from these shores to the USVI have observed an upsurge in anti social and even criminal behavior; instances such as BVI shoppers being tailed and followed around at shopping malls, by young black males, just waiting for a chance to pounce. Then there is the case of one prominent visitor who was verbally abused by an apparently frustrated man in a shop last weekend, and who today feels fortunate he got away with his life. BV Islanders are advised to be very careful when visiting the USVI, and should travel in groups, and please be weary of being alone in secluded areas, and extra cautious about exposing large amounts of cash.

Consequently, the culture of zero tolerance for gun possession in the BVI, a legacy of a wise British paradigm in law enforcement, should today be viewed as a great asset, a wonderful idea, and even a cherished ideal.

Not allowing a US culture of guns and gangs obtain a foothold in the territory should become a modus viewed as protecting life and limb, especially when considering the low incidence of gun deaths in the BVI currently. We certainly cannot afford USVI type gun death figures in the BVI.

One can only pray that the John P DeJong Government in the USVI gets it, that a United States jurisdiction that purports to be a tourist haven and pristine paradise must control guns and gang violence as its highest priority. If not, the USVI is certainly throwing out the baby with the bathwater, in not fighting aggressively this cold blooded menace in its streets and community.

And the possibility of this madness spilling over into the British Virgin Islands is very real indeed, considering the close geographical and social proximity between the two islands. A logic that dictates that natural synergies which exist between the two territories, links based on cultural, economic, and biological ties, may also have a negative component, especially in the area of crime and gun violence.

Ultimately, with a global digital culture, every murder and USVI crime statistic can be gleaned at the click of a mouse by millions of potential travelers to her shores. The USVI will be on to a good start when its leaders determine that US gun laws are inadequate for that society; and that the territory is certainly losing the fight against gun crime and illegal guns, and is on the wrong end, or short end, of the proverbial stick with regard to gun related violence.

It appears that the National Rifle Association has succeeded in putting the blinders on a US population that does not appear to view gun violence on its soil as a nefarious and totally destructive phenomenon, as the rest of the civilized world sees it.

The US’ love for guns is a paradigm fostered by a frontier history, a self sufficient and individualist culture, a powerful gun lobby, and a US constitution that guarantees this absurd right to bear arms.

Something to do with the idea that a well armed citizenry and militia is a guarantee of the freedom and rights of the individual. This 2011, the wording and intent of a powerful document written in the late 1700s appears, on this issue and aspect in any case, clearly outdated.

Absurdly, and in recent times, the right to bear arms has been actually strengthened by a United States Supreme Court that appears to be well calibrated towards supporting an increasing zeal for this tool of death, add unwillingness by the Political and Social Left of Center, the only groups capable of constraining this madness, to be seen as anti-gun.

Sadly, it appears the US is not the only country in the West with gun tragedy as signature to the easy availability of guns. On July 22, 2011, in the quiet European country of Norway, a 32 year old Norwegian man, Anders Brevik, went on a rampage of death armed with an automatic weapon.

This madman simply walked around Utoetya Island not far from downtown Oslo, where he had already detonated a bomb, shooting children and teenagers with an automatic weapon, and with impunity. When his rendition of death was over nearly 90 lay dead and many more injured, some terribly.

The idea that people kill and not guns is a specious and ludicrous one. Andre Brevik could not have gone on such a spree had he been unable to access a gun through a total ban on firearms backed up by strong stop and search rules. It is the easy availability of guns, for example in the USA, that has converted inner cities of that Great Nation into warzones, and that is fuelling a gang culture which threatens the very fabric of black and Latino inner city communities.

The sad part of this whole gun culture paradigm is that as usual it inordinately affects those most unlikely to be able to protect themselves, such as the poor who cannot afford to live in gated communities, unarmed and defenseless civilians, and ethnic minorities. Many black men foolishly view guns as a great equalizer. But it is certainly not. And the prisons and graves are filled with young black men, even women, who may view the possession of a firearm as hip.

The fact is that the gun culture possesses a trajectory that goes through the heart of black community.

Ultimately, the firearm, when in the hands of black men, the nozzle of these guns is primarily pointed in the face of their own black communities, with a bullet that follows a trajectory that goes straight through the heart of their own fellow black brothers and sisters in West Indian and African American society. Talk about self defeating? That is exactly what the easy access to guns in the USA has caused in black community, and today many a black parent is in grief owing to this ludicrous madness. It is difficult to imagine, comprehend, or understand the level of hostility and animosity towards their fellow human beings by a substantial subset of black male youth.

The social and economic links between the USVI and the BVI are too close to ignore a criminal subset that can occasionally affect BVI nationals, as the K’nesia Brathwaite case clearly portrays. And the answer to tackling this cheapening of life across the waters, and preventing it from crossing over to these more peaceable shores is to do the very opposite here.

These Virgin Islands must institute the most draconian anti gun legislation, with the stiffest penalties for gun possession and use, and this is no longer an option.

Gun licenses should only be granted with the most intrusive and thorough of regimes, if at all. This is the only realistic response to the threat from across the sea. Intelligence sharing between the USVI and the BVI police forces and other law enforcement agencies should become a modus given the highest level of priority. Customs and police should be extra vigilant when on their patrols and given greater stop and search powers. The rigor required in fighting this menace cannot be overestimated.

The USA possesses a gun culture that is blind to the horrific consequences of a ratio of one firearm for every member of its population: there are hundreds of millions of guns in the USA, and too many of these weapons find their way on to these Caribbean shores.

And since no amount reasoning, bloodshed, or grief, can end this North American love affair with an instrument of death, it behooves communities with an opposite mindset such as British West Indian societies, and others, such as Canada and all Western European nations, to recognize the madness, and consequently continue to adopt an opposite type of thinking that is clearly wiser than this US rendition of death. A type of thinking that ensures that a US culture of guns obtains no foothold on their own soil, not now, or ever.

The tragedy for the USVI is that it harbours a boil of violence and death that if not lanced will poison the rest of that community. It is a sad paradox indeed that in one of the loveliest places on the planet, one that should offer opportunities to its inhabitants in terms of enjoying a better and higher quality of life, through a robust tourism industry and related commercial activity, that it cannot control a cancer that will ultimately destroy a veritable Eden, turning it into a Paradise Lost.