DILG urges stricter gun laws following AdZU shooting incident
Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla asked Congress to enact stricter legislation to penalize gun owners as police investigate Tuesday's shooting incident in Ateneo de Zamboanga University.
In a press conference on Aug. 19, Remulla asserted that gun ownership has to go hand-in-hand with responsibility.
"Gun ownership is a privilege accorded to those who need to protect themselves. But that privilege carries with it not only the responsibility of ownership, but the responsibility of safekeeping. One cannot exist without the other," Remulla said.
"I call upon Congress to enact laws that will penalize gun owners for the non-safekeeping of their weapons," he continued.
The Secretary recalled that in the two recent shooting incidents in schools—June 22 in San Jose National High School, Tacloban, and Aug. 18 in AdZU, Zamboanga—the guns used were government-issued firearms entrusted to qualified personnel.
"Ngunit sa parehong bagay ay hindi inalagaan 'yung mga baril," Remulla said.
In the morning of Aug. 18, a Grade 9 student was driven to school in a car where his father left a gun bag. Alighting from the vehicle, the student supposedly took the guns then went on to fatally shoot one student and himself. One other student was injured but is now stable.
According to Remulla, the father's statement that he had left his guns in his car was "highly improbable" as uniformed police are trained to always carry their firearms with them.
"I call upon Congress to review the laws of loose firearms," Remulla said, adding 98% of gun crimes are committed with loose firearms. Per the Secretary, there are approximately 2.78 million firearms in the Philippines; 2 million owned by private individuals and 780,000 by law enforcement.
"The Robin Padilla law, which extinguished culpability and made it a bailable offense, has led to a surge of crime precisely because loose firearms is a bailable offense," Remulla said.
Officially Republic Act No. 8294, the law Remulla referred to is the amended act that, among others, reduces certain penalties in connection with illegal possession of firearms and ammunition. It was authored by the late Sen. Ramon Revilla Sr. while Sen. Robin Padilla was in jail for the same offense, and retroactively affected the legal outcome of his case, thus earning its nickname.
"I call upon Congress...to make laws that make [gun crimes with loose firearms], once again, non-bailable; that make it, once again, preventable," Remulla said.
