THE government has failed to take any solid measures to prevent killings of citizens, while high government functionaries, legislators and their kith and kin enjoy foolproof security.

Targeted killings can be prevented if we deweaponise the country. I will quote an example of John Howard, an ex-prime minister of Australia, who rid the country of weapons by imposing the law in 1996 to control guns.

In fact, he adopted a plan to buy back guns. To make this plan work, there had to be a federally-financed scheme to buy back guns, Ultimately, the cost of the buyback was met by a special one-off tax imposed on all Australians.

This required new legislation and was widely accepted across the political spectrum. Almost 700,000 guns were bought back and destroyed, the equivalent of 40 million guns in the United States.

In the 18 years before the 1996 reforms, Australia suffered 13 gun massacres each with more than four victims causing a total of 102 deaths. There has not been a single massacre in that category since 1996.

This also helped in causing suicide cases to drop from 37pc to nearly 3pc. The bottom line is that easy access to guns causes bloodshed.

Safir A. Siddiqui

Karachi