Executions

What in blazes is going on? People are dropping like flies, shot dead by unknown attackers wielding guns.

Champion race-car driver Enzo Pastor and hotel and resort chain owner Richard King are just two of the prominent persons killed recently—on the same Thursday night, on either side of the archipelago (the former in a Quezon City street in Luzon, the latter in his office in Davao City in Mindanao). Two men going about routine activities in the course of an ordinary day when struck down: Pastor, 32, fresh from another circuit victory, driving a tow truck carrying a race car he was to use for the final leg of the Asian V8 Championship in July; King, 57, preparing to sit down to dinner with his employees. Both family men who excelled in their respective fields; both now being mourned by widows and children. Both cases, at this writing, with motive unknown.

Earlier last week, on Monday, radio reporter Nilo Baculo Sr. was gunned down in Calapan, Oriental Mindoro—his case adding to the ever-growing list of media persons killed under the Aquino administration. Reportedly working on a story involving the trade in illegal drugs when he was killed, Baculo, 67, applied in 2008 for a protection order but his petition was eventually denied by the Court of Appeals purportedly due to lack of evidence. “His killing is what happens when the court errs in its appreciation of evidence,” Baculo’s then lawyer, Harry Roque, wrote in a blog.

But there’s more: Ernesto Balolong, mayor of Urbiztondo, Pangasinan, was shot dead while in the thick of preparations for his son’s wedding and his own silver wedding anniversary. The mayor was inspecting the venue of the twin celebrations when fired upon by gunmen in a car. Wounded, he tried to get away but one of his assailants stepped out of the vehicle and shot him at close range; he was subsequently pronounced dead in a hospital.

And what about the “ordinary” people felled in the streets, male and female, whether in broad daylight or in the dark of night, the attacks fading from the news not too long after they were recorded on the police blotter? Mind-boggling are the number and variety. A businesswoman stepping out of her car and shot dead within sight of her sister. A barangay councilman gunned down, a colleague of his killed two scant days later. A court employee shot dead. Notoriously, five people mowed down seemingly at random by “thrill-killers” in Quezon City. A house painter drinking with friends and shot twice in the head by a man who casually walked up to him. A jobless woman, helping out at a friend’s sari-sari store, killed by gunfire.

Except for the case of the house painter out on the town with friends, here’s the frightening common element in the killings: The attackers showed up or escaped on motorcycles, executioners arriving and vanishing at top speed, trailed by smoke and gunpowder. But what must be done? Beyond the knee-jerk proposals to ban riding tandem on motorcycles or to repeal the helmet law to identify criminals, authorities need to acknowledge and pay more attention to the fact that there is a shocking lot of firearms floating around—and being put to terrible use. It’s not (mainly) the motorcycles; it’s the guns.

In 2013, the Philippine National Police confiscated 465 high-powered and 263 low-powered guns for being “loose” firearms. (It stands to reason, however, that a firearm’s power does not change its capacity to kill or maim when wielded by someone with such intent.) No official figure on the number of loose firearms is available. According to one estimate, there are as many as one million unregistered firearms nationwide, something that is not helped any by fluctuating enforcement of gun permit laws.

The diversity of the victims suggests that any Filipino, rich or poor, male or female, young or old, can be at the wrong end of a gun at any time and place. What are the authorities doing to assure the citizenry that the administration is not losing its grip on peace and order, that it’s on top of things, and that public safety remains top priority? It doesn’t say much for  daang  matuwid  if citizens try to go about their everyday lives constantly afraid of executioners coming from nowhere and  everywhere.