BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Prime Minister Mia Mottley encourages regional governments to ensure citizens see the benefit of using firearms for protection, not destruction.
On Thursday, during the closing ceremony for Exercise Tradewinds 2024 (EXTW24), Mottley said the exercise has “elevated the extent to which ordinary people now understood that guns could be used in the circumstances to commit a crime or to protect region’s borders from criminal activities.”
She added that as an environment of rising homicides by gun violence per capita continues in countries across the region, there is a need for more opportunities for young people to join organizations such as cadets, the Boy Scouts, and other service clubs.
The Prime Minister emphasized that expanding service organizations was necessary to expose young people to the importance of service and teach them how to handle weapons.
“The Barbados Defence Force has been supportive in continuing to expand its Cadet Programme and its Sea Cadet Programme…. As physical circumstances allow us, I would like us to ensure that every boy and girl, as they become teenagers in this country, are exposed to this service organization.
“A time will come where it will not only be the men and women in uniform who will be called into service, but it will be the people of this nation who must stand up to the call, more likely than not, especially in circumstances of small island states, whose capacity to survive can be terminated within a few hours…,”
The Prime Minister maintained that EXTW24 had “elevated the extent to which ordinary people now understood that guns could be used in the circumstances to commit a crime or to protect region’s borders from criminal activities.”
“A gun is a tool that kills. It doesn’t walk, and even with AI, it doesn’t yet talk. Therefore, it comes back to the essential integrity of the individuals in our society to determine how to treat weapons with respect.
“I want to commend the exercise because I saw you open up to people of this nation on the weekend, and I saw families come and bring their children. We will not be able to obliterate guns from the earth because, regrettably, it is here. But like with everything else we do with our children, it is to teach them to respect how they use weapons,”. Mottley underlined.
The Prime Minister added that the exercise, held over the last two weeks, was “the evidence of what calling on each other looks like, and what it feels like” as regional forces prepared themselves for any eventuality.
Exercise Tradewinds 2024 was held in Barbados from May 4 to 16.
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