Gun Dealers Blast Firearm Licensing System  

The Government of Belize’s Firearm Control Board is tonight coming under heavy criticism from gun dealers. These dealers are saying that since the board was established back in 2024 there has not been proper communication with members of the public on the changes implemented when acquiring a gun license. According to Abner Murillo, the Owner of Lock N’ Loaded, upstanding citizens like farmers and business owners are being frustrated in their attempt to gain the necessary documentation to acquire a license. Murillo says, the good is paying for the bad. He contends that the statistics paint a picture of unfair treatment.

 

Abner Murillo, Owner, Lock N’ Loaded

“Every other day we are having farmers come here that are extremely frustrated, people that are planting crops, people farming, people loosing livestock, because the changes that they brought to the firearm licensing process is extremely tedious and they are not communicating things. They went for example form requiring one ID, the policy states one ID, and we have people from Red Bank, Mennonites, they don’t have cell phones, they don’t have vehicles, they travel seven eight hours and they being turned back because they don’t have a second ID. So, stuff like that they are making it complicated and making it a bit more complicated and every time they are making changes without notifying the public. We have one of the highest crime rate in the Caribbean yet none of these are being carried out by licensed firearm holders. The streets have a lot of guns. Every week you are finding two to three rifles, AKs, high powered weapons on the streets to commit crime, yet the license firearm holders, there is about twenty-four to their thousand licensed firearm holders in the country and just based on my research and what we discussed earlier there is about three to five incidents with licensed weapons a year. That is not a one percent incident rate, that is not a point zero one percent incident rate. It is not a point zero, zero one percent incident rate. It is a point zero, zero, zero, one percent incident rate, with license firearm holders. There is a classroom and the license firearm holders are doing their homework, coming to class on time. They are the good students in the class and then you have the bad guys in the class, the ones brining the illegal guns, because it is so easy to get an illegal gun. You go anywhere in Belize and get an illegal . you go to the border and you can get an illegal gun. The bad guys are walking away free no homework and the good guys, they are saying that there is crime in the country and you all are getting detention and getting extra homework and the bad guys, hand up a thing and you can walk away.”