You do not need to look far to see how deeply embedded the gun culture is in the Philippines.
A woman’s handbag, a businessman’s briefcase, or a taxi driver’s glove compartment are just a few of the many places you will find some of the close to four million guns in the country - both legal and illegal.
The death of Stephanie Nicole Ella, a seven-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet while watching fireworks on the eve of 2013, was one of the inspirations behind the story to be screened on tonight’s Dateline at 9.30pm on SBS ONE. The gunman, while yet to be caught, reportedly fired into the air to celebrate the New Year.
A public outcry over Stephanie’s death in part led the government to pass a new gun law in May 2013, which it promised would further restrict gun use, and prevent such incidents from happening.
Despite the new legislation, the 2014 New Year’s celebrations played out like a horrible repeat of the previous year.
“Their heroes are people with guns ... gang members, or criminals, and that only breeds more criminalisation.”
By dawn of January 1st, 28 people had been wounded by celebratory gunfire; a three-month-old baby, along with a two-year-old eventually died from their injuries.
When it comes to firearms, the Philippines stands in contrast to most places in Asia. Gun ownership is either banned or highly restricted in many countries, like Japan or South Korea, but the Philippines has a relatively liberal policy towards people owning guns.
Even the new law - while levying higher fees for possessing firearms, and imposing further restrictions on transporting weapons in public - sets no limits on how many guns someone can own.
Benigno Aquino III, the country’s president, reportedly owns 18 handguns. Louie Oppus, the superintendent of the police firearms department tells us he has 15 weapons, including rifles.
Legal ownership of guns is not the problem - when we visited Manila’s many shooting ranges, we saw responsible owners firing rounds in very controlled environments.
It is the roughly two million illegal and unregistered firearms that pro-gun groups say are committing 99.9 per cent of all crimes and are creating what anti-violence groups warn are the “spin-off effects” of a culture that “glamorises” guns.
Indeed, on the streets of Tondo, Manila’s most dangerous slum, many children run around firing toy guns.
Norman Cabrera of the anti-gun lobby says in places like these, where people are gunned down every day in real-life shootings, the young learn early on, that “power resides not with police or the law, but in those who hold firearms”.
“Their heroes are people with guns ... gang members, or criminals, and that only breeds more criminalisation.”
Cabrera says the situation is worse in the country’s south, where politicians, businessmen and other powerbrokers stockpile weapons for use by their private armies. The armies are used to carrying out the wishes of their bosses; legal or otherwise. And again, it’s these people with guns, says Cabrera, who become the role models for the young.
This entrenched gun culture has created an environment where the murder rate in the Philippines per capita is three times that of the United States. It has become a country where the frequency of armed robberies has made it a norm for malls, hotels or other business establishments, to employ armed guards.
Cabrera calls the situation a “shameful crisis”.
With the high rate of crime, he and other peace advocates have called on the government to enact a total ban on gun ownership, along with making the possession of illegal firearms a major crime punishable with a 20-year jail sentence.
The new law raised the maximum jail sentence for being found with illegal firearms from six to 12 years, but still allows arrested suspects to get out on bail. A 20-year sentence would prevent courts from granting bail.
But with the popularity that guns still hold in the Philippine culture, and with Aquino known to be against a total ban, such calls likely will not amount to much. The onus therefore lies heavily on police to make the streets safer.
But as we learned, the force is sometimes complicit in aiding the illegal trade in guns. In interviews with weapons dealers in Tondo, and gun makers in various parts of the Philippines, we heard how police often had a direct hand in buying or selling illicit arms.
Superintendent Oppus, while showing us the warehouse where authorities keep seized weapons, admits that in the past, firearms from here would disappear, and are believed to have been sold on the black market.
But in acknowledging the issues of corruption facing the force, the chief of the firearms division stresses police are trying to change. Within weeks of being installed in his post last September, Oppus says he fired “16 members” of his department.
He also says a concerted effort is being made to clean up “all departments” of the national police.
“It cannot change overnight, it will take time, but we are trying our best. We have agreed, and have admitted there were faults and we are trying to correct them."
"We need the cooperation of the public, and together we can make the difference.”
But whether change happens fast enough is another issue. In our time filming, we met several families who had recently lost loved ones from gun violence. They told us police were often unwilling or unable to help.
We also met many armed criminals, who told us authorities have such little respect and influence in their neighbourhoods, that the new gun laws would not amount to much.
Despite this “get-tough-law”, no one in public we spoke to believed there would be any fewer firearms on the streets, nor did they believe there would be fewer gun-related killings anytime soon.
