I was awakened by a phone call shortly after 4 a.m. recently by my next-door neighbor.\u00a0 She phoned after she was awakened by shuffling feet outside one of her bedroom windows.\u00a0 She said she carefully peeped through a window and saw four men looking into one of her bedrooms.\u00a0 Her first reaction was to call police and then let the robbers know that her family members were wide awake.<\/p>\n
She said that the potential robbers left shortly thereafter, but not before firing a gun shot in the air.\u00a0 My neighbor\u2019s house is just 25 feet from my bedroom window.\u00a0 Hearing the sound of a gunshot at 4 o\u2019clock in the morning always spells trouble.<\/p>\n
No one was physically hurt in this incident, but this sort of behavior does leave a sour taste in your mouth.\u00a0 It leaves you with a sense of uneasiness and despite the robbery never actually taking place, one of the men still felt the need to discharge his weapon.\u00a0 What are we to do?<\/p>\n
Just recently, a young man was shot and killed in an attempted armed robbery at a grocery store.\u00a0 But this has not sounded off the alarm to other robbers who seem to be very hard at work at their craft and continue to cause havoc in our society.\u00a0 They know that most Bahamians are unarmed and in fear of them and that the robber who was recently killed was just the luck of the draw.\u00a0 Robbers almost always win.<\/p>\n
Police never came to my neighbor\u2019s rescue even though the police station is a stone\u2019s throw away.\u00a0 I trust that this is just a onetime occurrence.\u00a0 I ask again Bahamians, what are we to do?\u00a0 Some government ministers have smartly armed themselves with handguns for their protection.\u00a0 They know that we are dealing with a new breed of criminal as stated by Commissioner of Police Ellison Greenslade last year.\u00a0 What do we do at 4 a.m. when these ruffians break into our homes and demand cash and take our valuables with a loaded pistol pointed at our skull?<\/p>\n
According to Greenslade, armed robberies have increased by 18 percent in the country compared to last year\u2019s figures.\u00a0 Armed robbers are extremely brazen these days and they seem even more determined during this yuletide season to haul in unearned Christmas money.\u00a0 Some of them are carrying out their nefarious activities in broad daylight and sometimes they don\u2019t even conceal their identity.\u00a0 There is no question that they have deadly intent.<\/p>\n
Until we get this area of crime under control, I will be an advocate for Bahamians having all the means to properly protect themselves and their families even if it means bearing arms.\u00a0 A cutlass and a baseball bat will not suffice.\u00a0 Rapid strike and Urban Renewal 2.0 have not quelled the thirst for robbers with guns to act.<\/p>\n
Law-abiding citizens need means to better protect themselves.\u00a0 Armed robbers continue to win these lopsided encounters against the good citizens of our country and unfortunately they seem to be accelerating their efforts.<\/p>\n
By: Dehavilland Moss<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Until we get this area of crime under control, I will be an advocate for Bahamians having all the means to properly protect themselves and their families even if it means bearing arms. A cutlass and a baseball bat will not suffice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[31,237,163],"class_list":["post-29186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions","tag-crime","tag-guns","tag-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}