Registration of firearms
By Aurelio Pedroso
This verb is really something, because putting your name on a list can be considered an act of registration. But in Spanish it also means to search, to look into or for something. If the meaning is the latter, then thieves, the police and even jealous wives could be implicated.
And because in Cuba surprises abound, the Ministry of the Interior, specifically the Revolutionary National Police (PNR), has just released a singular warning that all who have firearms in their possession without the appropriate license should register them “with an exceptional character and one time only” at police stations located in all 169 municipalities of the island.
The news, published in the local media, has been very much like those shots fired by Pancho Villa in a closed room, and let the gun fall where it may, that a bullet flew out of its barrel and woe the one who was hit by it.
The informational “bullet” has gone beyond the national boundaries in calling the attention of analysts who have delved into it with very different criteria and points of view.
Thus, I have read that the authorities are concerned of the necessary control in these times of crisis, that crime is on the rise, and even that it is a trick (a very silly one) for recovering pistols, revolvers, shotguns, and even half a dozen of harquebuses in perfect operating order for exercising the lethal undoing.
The issue of firearms in Cuba is a delicate one; so much so that not even those Chinese firecrackers that we bought for Christmas when we were kids are allowed. Bringing to Havana from San Juan de los Remedios one of those thousands of rockets that illuminate carnival nights and trying to fire it up the Havana sky is an extremely daring act.
As far as I know, sometimes weapons have been lost from some Army unit or the Ministry of Interior and then appearing later and not by magic. Because it’s not the same to have an old Russian car stolen from your garage than an AK-47 (also Russian) from a military unit. As part of this mental exercise it would be convenient to find out the impossible: how many crimes have been committed with firearms, how many by the military (who are allowed to carry them), and how many by civilians.
Cuban apprentice hoodlums used to rent guns for a vendetta in the 70s and the 80s. I haven’t the slightest idea if they do it these days. Who to ask and then what to answer? As in dominoes, I’ll pass.
I think it’s naive to think — and almost to write — that somebody would declare a stolen weapon or of “unknown origin,” as occasionally the media call it when reporting a robbery in a warehouse or government facility. Besides, the announcement by the police specifies that with the gun, the holder should present “the document certifying its origin.”
There is a period of two months for presenting the firearm to the police. Sixty days to think it over. If after that period we wake up one morning reading another warning, this time for registering daggers, table knives, forks and dessert spoons, then we will have to think that something funny is going on.
After all, and this is only my opinion, it is about tightening, even more, the control over so powerful a means for taking justice or injustice into your own hands. Words and facts that in the end are more important and more relevant than a .22 caliber Smith & Wesson inherited from my great grandfather and treasured as a family heirloom.
Aurelio Pedroso is a Cuban journalist and member of the Progreso Semanal/Weekly bureau in Cuba.
