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{
    "id": 594493,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/594493/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 90,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ogolla",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1264,
        "legal_name": "Gideon Ochanda Ogolla",
        "slug": "gideon-ochanda-ogolla"
    },
    "content": "at the moment is that we have more licensed guns being used to commit crimes than even the unlicensed ones that we are talking about. Sometimes, you compare crime in the north and Nairobi where you want to say that people are civilised and stuff like that. It is not comparable. The guns that are held in the north are making the place much more secure than Nairobi, or any other big cities in the country. That is because of this idea that virtually everybody has a gun. So, even if you have a gun, it does not make sense. At the end of the day, people are secure based on that kind of arrangement. In the rest of the country, many licensed guns are used to commit crimes. Sometimes, we have guns in the right hands, but at the wrong times; or the right guns in the wrong hands. So, our Government, particularly in terms of our security arrangement, really needs to pull up its socks. This is not good. The world is moving to the direction where crime is getting much more sophisticated. We are still talking about how to check for a gun in a car boot. We are way back. The element of cyber crime, for example, is too much and we cannot compare it with any other. For purposes of handling guns, we really need to do much more if nothing is happening at the moment. There is movement of guns or small arms across our porous borders. Such guns end up in centres like Nairobi. The main problem here is not in terms of surveillance, but corruption. People are carrying guns in a bus from Garissa to Nairobi undetected. Sometimes they are detected, but they bribe their way through. We need to look at exactly what happens in terms of corruption. It is because of corruption that we have our security or police officers netted. The other day, police officers were netted in Kericho and Nakuru at night. Those are people who are supposed to be on duty turning to be criminals. At that moment, they are officially on duty with licensed guns and they end up robbing people. If we had a proper way of checking the movement of those guns, and if our Officer Commanding Station (OCSs), for example, would operate like bank managers in terms of taking care of their vault arrangement in the banks, much would be achieved by checking exactly where guns are at each particular time. If you are an OCS in Nakuru and your guns are being used in Kericho when you had released them officially at 6.00 O’clock to go to a road-block somewhere before Njoro, that indicates that a lot of things are not very right. The other thing which I think is important for us to look at, is the whole issue of doubts. We license or allow some people to carry guns - and this has been mentioned - who, in real sense, should not be having guns. The best way would be to check in terms of how they handle the guns. If that happened, some of the instances that we are hearing about will not be there. I want to acknowledge what Hon. Pukose has talked about; that there was a lot of noise about the insecurity situation in the country. It is a good recognition that now there is quite a bit of calmness. That calmness indicates that the noises that were there were not really in vain. They were useful. When we were insecure as a country, those noises were very useful to us. I want to believe that something had happened. We really need to make sure that this happens throughout. It cannot be temporary. Issues of security do not need to be temporary, the way we look at them in this country. With that, thank you, Hon. Deputy Speaker."
}