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Festive, yes; firing, no

Aug 29,2015 - Last updated at Aug 29,2015

Tougher penalties are now being served to individuals found guilty of practising “festive firing”, a move that should have been made long ago to stem a custom that is annoying at its best and outright deadly at its worst.

Used mainly to celebrate weddings and graduations, festive firing has taken quite a toll on society over the past decades.

It has become part of the culture of many groups of people who consistently seem to forget that weapons kill and that there are other ways of showing happiness than the primitive firing of a gun.

Now that the judiciary has decided to take action to combat this phenomenon — by prosecuting perpetrators of such acts and issuing stiffer penalties to those found guilty of causing death or injury — one hopes the habit will die down.

The campaign against festive firing is based on Article 326 of the Penal Code, which makes those firing guns and causing fatalities guilty of manslaughter, rather than just misdemeanour.

By so doing, the punishment against people who fire guns that lead to death became 20 years in prison, and 10 if the firing results in injury.

The more lenient punishment before did not have the desired effect; hopefully the new measures will.

To its credit, the Ministry of Interior is joining the campaign, proposing new legislation aiming to regulate gun possession and use.

Important to achieving the desired result will be consistent follow-up and fair dispensation of punishment. No group or community should be absolved. Life is equally valuable.

Of course, citizens have to be made aware of the new policy. Officials and the media have to start an awareness campaign to ensure that nobody can claim ignorance of the new developments.

Most importantly, people need to understand that making it known in the loudest way possible, by shooting around with not a worry about the consequences, does not increase one’s happiness.

As seen so far in cases of loss of life, a moment’s happiness can turn into a lifetime of sorrow.

 

The time has finally come to put an end to such recklessness. Authorities are to be commended for doing it.

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