Tomorrow, April 14, the 2018 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan election period will start. On the same day, the gun ban will commence, bringing with it—among other things—the cancellation of all permits to carry, mission orders, letters of instruction and other similar documents granting individuals the authority to carry and transport firearms out
of their homes and workplaces.
Those who take issue with the ban argue that it only leaves legitimate gun owners defenseless against lawless elements. Apart from the fact that having a gun doesn’t necessarily make a person safer, this argument misses the point of the gun ban entirely.
The election gun ban isn’t intended to combat criminality; any impact on crime levels is merely incidental to the reduction in the number of firearms in the wild. Rather, the gun ban is principally a means to ensure that the guns that are still around—courtesy of gun ban exemptions—are held by responsible individuals who, because they won’t be able to easily duck accountability for their actions, are not likely to abuse the firearms to coerce or intimidate voters, or otherwise affect the outcome of elections.
The Philippines has a long and checkered history of politicians using guns to sway the outcome of elections—especially local polls, which unfold away from the spotlight of the media and national attention. A gun need not be fired in order to have an effect; an unloaded pistol stuck in some goon’s pants can be intimidating enough to influence people who would have voted differently if they weren’t quaking in fear. That’s the reason why any two-bit politician who can manage it, invests his gold in some hardware and arms his goons. And no, existing gun laws don’t make that impossible at all.
Without a gun ban, the number of firearms out in the wild directly corresponds to the availability of officially issued permits to carry (PTCs). Under existing law, that number can be effectively kept low because technically only the chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP) can issue PTCs. With a single source of authority to bear firearms, it ought to follow that the identity of everyone with a gun would be a matter of record, and that any untoward incident involving abusive use of the weapon would be easily traceable back to the miscreant. Accountability, in other words, is clear.
But in reality, the PNP chief isn’t the only one who can authorize people to carry firearms. Under PNP Circular 2000-016 dated December 11, 2000 (as amended by PNP Circular 2002, 2002-A and 2004-A), a whopping 30 categories of persons are actually authorized to “issue mission orders/letter orders which may entitle the bearer thereof to carry his issued/licensed firearm and ammunition.” Thirty categories, covering at least 69 individuals and various subcategories, like “regional directors” and “commissioners.”
To say that this proliferation of sources of authority can result in tangled lines of accountability is an understatement. Under such circumstances, any goon with a gun can simply wave an official looking document around and thump his chest about some “secret mission” that no one would have the means to quickly validate. In the meantime, the firearm or deadly weapon will have achieved at least one of its desired effects: intimidation. And in the context of elections, intimidation is a most puissant tool.
While I have no doubt that none of these authorized individuals will be issuing PTCs and mission orders whimsically, the fact remains that with so many firearms being carried around, it is inevitable that some of them will eventually end up in the hands of people who have no business being armed.
By cancelling all current PTCs and mission orders, the gun ban for a very brief period drastically reduces the availability of these authorization documents, and so radically simplifies the lines of accountability. If only the Comelec can permit persons to carry firearms, then anyone who displays a firearm must be easily identifiable and must have some easy-to-verify official function that justifies possession of the firearm. This empowers ordinary citizens to stand up to gun-toting goons by giving them a clear path toward exacting accountability. And when the goons are stripped of the ability to carry guns around with impunity, then the elections stand a better chance of resisting the corrosive influence, not just of guns, but also of goons and gold.
So you see, the gun ban isn’t about leaving law abiding citizens defenseless. It is about making sure that ordinary voters—themselves law abiding—are protected from those who would use guns to scare, intimidate and coerce their way into elected office.