The Colombian Ministry of Defense, through Decree 2633, has extended for one more year, between January 1 and December 31, 2022, the prohibition on carrying weapons in the country, arguing that “Colombia is a Social State of Law founded on respect for human dignity and on the prevalence of the general interest, which establishes as one of its essential purposes, guaranteeing the effectiveness of the principles, rights and duties of citizens”.
However, the perception of reality in terms of security on the part of citizens is contrary to the statistics, and they see in said decree a measure opposed to it, with which the Government intends to hide that a very high percentage of homicides with fire weapons are carried out with weapons that come from the illegal market (91%), a trade that is growing due to the legal and criminal loopholes that affect police action.
GREATER INSECURITY
The slowness on the part of the state in the reform of justice, the congestion in the resolution of processes, the bureaucracy and the procedures, has generated an increase in the need -by part of the population- to request the possession or carrying of a legal weapon, but due to the obstacles imposed by the successive restrictions, they do not leave any other way than doing it illegally in order to protect and defend themselves, which results in the rise of the black market and an increase in insecurity.
On the other hand, while it is true that the government is targeting rural areas that are the focus of violence due to the boom in crops for the production of narcotics and their sale, it is also a fact that insecurity is on the rise in the main populations (capital and intermediate) of the country despite the implementation of security plans by Mayors and Governors, but which by themselves are insufficient to guarantee the levels of coexistence and citizen security that the population currently demands Colombian and which are expected to increase with the application of the new Human Security policy.
With information from infodefensa