USVI: Runners take a stand against gun violence in the V.I.

ST. THOMAS - Despite overcast skies, about 100 participants raced along the waterfront from the Coast Guard Marine Safety Detachment to Addelita Cancryn Junior High School as part of the Run to Stop Gun Violence on Sunday afternoon.

"When my son left to go out and get a job, he didn't come back home," said Celia Carroll, executive director of Mothers Against Guns, the event organizers. "Guns have become an epidemic in this nation."

It was exactly four years ago Sunday that 18-year-old University of the Virgin Islands student Jason Carroll was shot and killed in downtown Charlotte Amalie.

The Run to Stop Gun Violence was planned to raise awareness of gun violence, to fight illegal guns and to raise money for the Jason Carroll Memorial Scholarship Fund.

"We have a lot of people out there hurting," said Dona Bassue, mother of 24-year-old Dan'l Liburd, who was gunned down Sept. 17, 2002, in the Kirwan Terrace housing community. "If we can help in some way, it will be worthwhile."

Loved the headline.

It's high time that people all over the Caribbean fought back against crime and violence. Apart from the acts being just plain wrong, the islands are too small to accommodate such mayhem without serious disruptions of civil society. However, that problem is not guns but the thugs who use guns wrongly to oppress and commit crimes. To paraphrase what Broderick Crawford used to say at the end of every episode of Highway Patrol, it's not the gun that kills, it's the shooter.