More dangerous than the firecrackers that the Department of Health and the police warn against every New Year season are the guns fired into the air by irresponsible showoffs during the New Year’s Eve revelry. As of this writing there were 59 stray bullet incidents recorded by the Philippine National Police during the season. An 11-year-old girl was hit by a stray bullet in the head and was killed outside her home in Abra province. The PNP still does not know who fired the gun that killed her.
As late as two days after the new year, one more SOB still fired his gun into the air. The stray bullet crashed through the roof of a house in Quezon City where a birthday party was
being held. It was a miracle that no one was hurt. The PNP is clueless on all 59 cases.
But the PNP press releases emphasize that the number of stray bullet victims is less than those of last year, as if patting itself on the head. Likewise, the press releases of the DOH keep repeating that the number of those injured last New Year’s Eve is less than those in the previous one. The number of amputations have increased, however.
So what? One death or injury, whether from bullets or firecrackers, is still one too many. Why should anybody die or get hurt?
In the case of firecracker victims, at least the victims themselves share part of the blame. Why did they light the firecracker in spite of repeated warnings against the practice? The firecracker manufacturer and the seller share the rest of the blame. If the seller did not sell the firecracker, the victim could not have hurt himself with it. And if the manufacturer did not make any firecracker, the seller would not have anything to sell.
In the case of stray bullets, the victims are innocent bystanders. The bullets fell on them without warning. But those who fired the guns are not innocent at all. They know that what goes up inevitably comes down. The velocity of a bullet falling back to earth is as strong as that coming straight from a gun due to gravity.
Those who fired the guns know that the bullets they fired into the air may hit somebody when it falls back to earth. They don’t know who, but some unlucky and unsuspecting person may be hit and killed or injured. They know all that. But still they do the stupid practice and they deserve the most severe punishment even if they claim they did not mean to hurt anybody. Knowing that what you are going to do may kill or hurt somebody even if you don’t know that somebody, and still you go through with it, makes you just as guilty as someone who intentionally shoots somebody.
The trouble is the police are too lazy to find out who did. They put up all sorts of excuses and then forget about the victims. They simply become statistics in police records. The culprits go scot-free, free to do the same thing the following year.
Ballistic tests can readily determine from which gun the bullet came from. Is the police doing even just that?
The police say that the source can be determined if the gun is registered, but not if the bullet comes from a loose firearm. But does that not prod the police to try harder to register loose firearms? What is it doing toward that end?
During the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos, holders of unregistered guns and ammunition were told to drop them in drop boxes placed in strategic places or else…. If they were caught with the guns and/or ammunition, the penalty would be very severe.
That scared many holders of loose firearms and that ploy was successful. But the number of unlicensed guns again increased after that and the police did nothing; and they are still doing nothing about it.
This you can be sure: All that noise from the PNP and the DOH (and from the media) about indiscriminate firing of guns and exploding firecrackers on the New Year’s Eve and their tragic consequences will surely die down as the new year becomes older—until the next New Year’s Eve approaches, and the whole rigmarole will be repeated.
They talk again about banning all firecrackers. Authorities should not just talk about it; they should do it. That would need an amendment to the present law on pyrotechnics. So do it, have the law amended.
A Malacañang spokesperson said that would have to be studied. What is there to study? Is it not clear that firecrackers pose a danger to the public?
Malacañang is obviously thinking of the manufacturers and their workers who would lose their jobs. But they don’t have to lose their jobs or close down. They can continue to make pyrotechnics—those that soar into the sky and harmlessly explode up there in a kaleidoscope of colors, but not firecrackers. New Year’s Eve is so much more merrier and colorful with those fireworks. Local government units can have fireworks displays in the town plaza for their constituents. And the pyrotechnics factories will earn much more from them than from firecrackers.
The secret is to supervise and inspect the manufacturers now—not later, as the government always does, when it would already be too late. By the time the authorities inspect the factories, the firecrackers would already have been made. And once they are made, they have to be sold, otherwise the manufacturer would lose his investment. So they are sold, some by policemen themselves, on the sly.