In one week the local papers carried three news items about people using guns in disputes. In one of the stories, a group of armed men surrounded a mosque demanding to get hold of one of the worshippers because he was involved in a land dispute. In a second, the imam of a mosque in a small town used a gun to threaten one of the worshippers who insisted on leading the prayers himself. The third incident happened in Jeddah; it was a violent dispute over land. Seven armed men shot and injured workers at a construction site.
Reading those stories, I remembered what a relative told me a few months ago. He was in a major supermarket in Jeddah when a fight erupted between two young men and they pulled out guns, which created a panic among the families in the store.
The security men tried to control the situation though they were not carrying any arms themselves. “How can unarmed security guards face such a situation?” asked one of the people present at the supermarket.
The question really is how unarmed citizens can face the danger of running into a gun battle. Unreal as this possibility may seem, the facts tell us a different story. These things happen, and increasingly so in Saudi Arabia.
The ready resort to weapons to settle disputes raises a number of questions that need to be addressed expeditiously if we are to cure the cause rather than simply treat the symptoms of a creeping social sickness.
Has the use of guns in the Kingdom become a common practice? What is happening that makes people turn to the gun? On another level, why is the gun becoming an easy and handy weapon for people? In a society that has always prided itself on being peaceful, what do these cases indicate?
An alarming report was published this year stating that weapons are used in an estimated 10,000 shooting cases that take place in the Kingdom each year.
But before we jump the gun, as the saying goes, using and carrying unlicensed guns is against Saudi law; the government launched a campaign some time ago to track unlicensed weapon holders. The Interior Ministry announced it would impose a punishment of up to a 10-year jail sentence and a SR50, 000 fine on violators of the weapons law.
The law is there and there are efforts obviously to enforce it, but it seems that our law enforcement policies need to be strengthened. It is always easy to break the law here and there are some people who make a habit of ignoring any law, depending on the chances that they will never be caught. Breaking the law is a pattern now. This somehow reflects lack of awareness on the part of the people and it also reflects a need for putting extra efforts to enforce those laws.
An interesting yet disturbing statistic shows that most of the culprits in shooting incidents are unemployed youths aged 19 to 30.
The developing gun culture reflects a social problem. Fatma, a psychologist in a Jeddah hospital, said that frustration is the main reason for this kind of violence.
Violence takes different shapes, she says. It is either directed toward one’s family or against society. In the last few years though, this violence has become sharper and deadly. Again frustration is the main factor behind this development.
That unemployed youth want to vent their feelings by using weapons is quite alarming. Violence and frustration usually are always related but the degree of violence reflects serious problems. Youth frustration is partly explained if we consider the highly competitive atmosphere young people have to face to find a place in a university or in job markets. But that is not the only reason, Fatma says. The family structure has become very weak, and the role models offered sometimes fail to be effective; often families leave others to provide them.
Young men though are not the only culprits of gun-related violence. There are also many domestic abuse cases in which one person uses weapons to terrorize his family members and sometimes to hurt them.
An article published in the Arab News described the case of a former police officer-turned-drug addict who terrorized his relatives using a variety of weapons. He was reported several times to the police but he has not yet been arrested.
Usually in these cases culprits get away as the family intervenes and pardons them. Though there are laws against the use of weapons, law-enforcement forces are either loath to control the phenomenon or enforce the laws.
In some parts of the country using weapons is part of the traditional culture, especially for people living in the desert. The misuse of these weapons in those areas is expected, as they are easily accessible.
If this is the situation outside the big cities, there is a different kind of problem in urban areas. I mean the danger posed by the Hollywood “action” films.
Young men are avid watchers of action movies that are frequently packed with gun battle scenes. Many are the times when disputes are solved with violence — but as long as the “good guy” wins, we are expected to believe all is well.
Computer games have, as a major theme, armed street fights and frequently score on the number of dead bodies the “winner” can accumulate.
Can we really blame the movie industry or TV for this? How much effect do these violent scenes have on watchers’ minds? None, say the makers, claiming the scenes are pure fantasy: So are advertisements.
The manufacturers of all sorts of goods spend millions on advertising fantasies simply because they have an effect. Are the filmmakers asking us to believe that violent fantasy has no effect on social habits when fantasies-selling products do?
One view says that these movies’ influence in inspiring violence should not be overestimated, stressing on the personal readiness and state of mind of the person watching these movies. If that is true, we would have to assume people buy products because they are prone to, which almost negates the point of advertising it.
But to look around us, in England there is a law banning replica guns. There was also a move to make owners of replica guns apply for licenses. According to the BBC website, in 2003, the UK Home Office introduced a mandatory five-year minimum prison sentence for anyone caught in possession of an illegal firearm.
Countries like Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore have heavy restrictions on carrying firearms. As is the case in Saudi Arabia, there are laws banning the use of firearms, but there are limitations. It is simply not enough to enact a law banning the use of guns.
Of itself, a gun is not dangerous; only when it is in the hands of a person it has the potential to be so. We should examine the person and the culture that produces people who use a gun for anti-social purposes — the cause — rather than simply ban as ineffectually as we do — the symptom.
Guns are there all over the world — getting rid of all of them so that people who want them cannot get access to them is probably impractical. So unless we want Jeddah City to become Dodge City, cure the cause, not the symptom.
