EDITORIAL - Getting away with murder

How easy it is to kill in this country. Not only journalists and left-leaning activists are murdered with impunity. In recent months, local government and barangay officials have also been shot dead in different parts of the country, sometimes with their relatives as collateral victims.

Last week, two private individuals were added to the continually growing list of fatalities. Cebu businessman Richard King was shot dead as he sat down to dinner in his restaurant. The gunman fled on a motorcycle.

On the same night in Quezon City, international race car driver Enzo Pastor was driving a truck towing his race car and had stopped for a red light at the intersection of Visayas and Congressional Extension Avenues when a man on a motorcycle pulled up and shot him.

The Philippine National Police should be tasked to improve the peace and order situation, but even cops are being targeted. Yesterday morning in Tanauan, Batangas, two men also on a motorcycle shot dead a police officer and wounded his wife as they were taking their four children to school.

The lawlessness is surely encouraged by the failure of the PNP to catch murderers. Impunity is evident particularly when it comes to violent attacks on media workers. Proposals have been made to discourage the use of motorcycles for crime, but there has been no action in this direction either from the PNP or its mother agency, the Department of the Interior and Local Government, or the Land Transportation Office and the Department of Transportation and Communications.

The PNP has focused its energies on tightening regulations for gun licensing, but anyone who intends to commit murder isn’t going to use a registered firearm. Authorities should instead focus on uncovering the sources of unlicensed guns that are proliferating all over the country. Considering recent developments, it wouldn’t be surprising to find out that law enforcers themselves are among the biggest sources of loose firearms.

With lawlessness spiraling out of control, President Aquino must read the PNP the riot act. It’s bad enough that the country is ranked among the top three worst countries in the world, after Iraq and Somalia, when it comes to impunity in murdering journalists. These days, people from all walks of life are also under threat, with young men even going on an indiscriminate shooting spree for thrills. They do this because they believe they can get away with it.