Armscor Shooting Ranges, Inc.
News & Events
Knee-jerk response
by Dan Mariano
May 23, 2008
As part of our editorial policy, this paper prefers to leave the coverage of crime stories to the tabloids. However, the carnage at the Cabuyao, Laguna, branch of one of the country's biggest banks last Friday was such an outrage as to compel us to examine the issue of law and order–and how their breakdown affects the conduct of business.
The P12 million to P15 million that the armed robbers reportedly grabbed represented an amount much bigger than those ordinarily lost in most bank heists. While RCBC's insurers will take the immediate financial hit from the robbery, it is the entire banking system and the millions of Filipinos who do business with them that must ultimately bear the financial burden as bank insurance premiums shoot up. One of the facts of life in a capitalist economy coupled with a "soft" state is that the cost of doing business, whether in banking or public utilities, is invariably passed on to customers. That is the quantitative aspect of last Friday's gruesome bloodbath.
Qualitatively, no compensation would ever be enough for the loss of 10 human lives. The victims were engaged in what should have been routine work; they were in the process of trying to make a living when the armed robbers—posing as police officers, unsurprisingly enough—barged in and destroyed what hope the victims and their families had for a better life. News reports on the anguish that the victims' loved ones are going through have tugged at the hearts of millions who can only sympathize with them. That the lives of so many—and not just the fatalities'—have been shattered forever gives rise to righteous indignation.
The problem is that the Cabuyao bank massacre so stunned the nation that many of us could only react in knee-jerk fashion.
The anti-gun lobby, for one, has revived its call for a nationwide ban on firearms, with little thought to the fact that the resources of our law enforcement agencies are already strained as they try to the get to the bottom of last Friday's incident. Diverting police attention away from the Cabuyao case and toward the enforcement of a comprehensive gun ban would only allow the massacre's perpetrators to slip even farther through the authorities' dragnet.
Besides, as past bids to regulate gun ownership have shown, it is only the law-abiding citizens who go through the trouble of having their weapons licensed and forensically profiled and of securing permits to carry their firearms outside of their homes who do obey gun bans. Criminals, by definition, have no respect for laws and regulations; they are, in fact, emboldened by the knowledge that the government has done them the favor of disarming their prospective victims.
Then, there is the proposal from at least two senators to impose capital punishment once more. Fortunately, some of their colleagues have managed to keep their wits about them; they point out that no conclusive study has determined that the death penalty discourages the wayward, the confused and innately wicked from committing heinous crimes. Besides, capital punishment continues to be informally enforced in this country notwithstanding the official moratorium adopted by our catolica cerrada President.
Criminal suspects are routinely savaged—etymological root of the Filipino-Hispanic term salvaje or salbahe and further corrupted as "salvage"—in this country with nary an objection from politicians. In fact, one of the proponents of the restoration of capital punishment had himself been implicated in the summary execution of a dozen or so criminal suspects in 1995—which fact has evidently not barred his rise in the political firmament.
Notwithstanding the periodic "salvaging" of suspects, unspeakable crimes continue to be committed and far too often without anyone answering for them. And therein lies the root of the ongoing crime wave.
Criminality remains widespread in this country because crime continues to be a profitable enterprise. Criminals have been allowed to get away with offenses ranging from cell-phone snatching to the plunder of billions of pesos in state funds. The temptation to go beyond the bounds of the law has proved irresistible to the criminally inclined who see far too few offenders getting their just desserts.
Even those who are somehow detected, arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned still manage to enjoy the fruits of their felonious pursuits. The legal system is shot full of loopholes—manned as it is by crooks and incompetents, while our penal institutions can turn into vacation spots for inmates who have the money to buy their jailers' favor.
Given the amateurish disposition—and we're being kind here—of our law enforcement coupled with the vulnerability to graft of our prosecutorial, judicial and penal agencies little wonder then that the perpetrators of the Cabuyao massacre had the gall to take extreme measures.
They probably sensed they could get away with it—and they probably will. Talk about impunity.
The only sure way of defeating crime is the certainty of punishment. Countries that enjoy low crime rates are able to do so—not because they have gun bans or regularly execute criminals—but because their law enforcement and justice systems are professionally administered. The Swiss, for instance, have liberal gun laws and a long tradition of citizens' militias, but incidents of gun-toting hoodlums going on a rampage are hardly ever reported in Switzerland.
What the Swiss do have are no-nonsense police and magistrates who perform their duties according to the highest professional standards. Would that we have the same professionals in our country too.