by Rod Hughes

Costa Ricans are literally up in arms over the crime wave that, finally, the government is taking steps to combat. Gun permit applications hit a record 8,551 last year, surpassing the 2001 record of 8,324 firearms registered, reported Central America’s leading English-language paper, The Tico Times. But police are quick to point out that this defensive stance has its pitfalls and often guns meant for home defense fall into criminal hands.

Armament Administration director William Hidalgo, whose agency grants the permits, holds the traditional Costa Rican point of view–he disapproves of the trend. “Unfortunately, people believe that going around armed will keep them safe, but actually, it’s just the opposite. Criminals can steal the weapon. (which often goes) into the black market to end up being used in another assault,” he told the newspaper. He owns no firearms.

He points out that a gun owner shoulders a great responsibility when he gets his weapon and “must continue practicing and training to the maximum. ” Jose Ojeda, owner of the CDC Shooting Range in San Jose’s western suburb, Pavas, agrees but has another view of the dangers to the owner. “Just by showing the gun and saying, ‘I’m armed and will shoot you,” the thieves will usually just run away. I hear from people every day who say they scared some thieves away…by firing some rounds into the air.”

Perhaps he needs some lessons in responsibility himself. Firing a weapon into the air in a densely populated urban area is irresponsible—whatever goes up must come down and stories about about injuries with stray bullets. He is also ignoring another fact: Crime in this country is far more violent than it was even 30 years ago. One cannot count on a burglar to be unarmed or unwilling to use his weapon. And a time-honored principal is that if you point a weapon at someone, you should be ready to use it.

Some decades ago in Escazu, another San Jose suburb, a North American confronted a would-be burglar armed with a knife. The home owner fired his .45 caliber Colt automatic several times near the burglar to frighten him but the lawbreaker continued advancing. Inevitably the pistol jammed and the homeowner was fatally stabbed. Only then did the wife loose the German Shepherd her husband had ordered her to keep leashed. The Shepherd was too much for the burglar who fled.

Another important factor is that an intruder has the advantage of surprise. If the gun is locked away for safety and even left unloaded one will not likely to have time to use it. Leaving it at the ready raises another danger, as a spate of accidental shootings of small children shooting playmates a few years ago proved. But even kept handy, or even carried in a holster, is not a sure defense, as anyone who has ever tried to shoot a firearm with the safety catch on can attest.

At this point, we owe it to the reader to point out that this reporter was raised with firearms in rural Oregon and owned a pistol there, a Ruger revolver, single-action to give that extra split-second to assure that gun would not be fired until the target was identified and the background would not rebound the bullet dangerously. Living here for 37 years, he has never owned a firearm.

But there are exceptions. Eddy Ryan, a former New Yorker and owner of Cista de Papito Hotel at Playa Cocles on the Caribbean, said business owners there raised funds for their own defense force. “You have basically undermanned, undertrained, underpaid, underorganized and unsupervised police…The bottom line is nobody was being served by waiting for police,” he told Tico Times reporter Nick Wilkinson. The solution was to hire six private guards to patrol, not only to protect themselves but tourists as well.

Another, better, approach is an unarmed neighborhood watch committee—if, unlike Ryan, one lives in an urban area. After several burglaries in the area, this reporter joined one shortly after the Ministry of Security organized the movement in 1997. A series of police lectures followed before the committee gained authorized status. Emphasized were that we were an early-warning force only and did not go out armed. If we saw a neighbor’s home being burglarized, we did not intervene but called the police, then the resident. We could confront a troublemaker but never alone. If a crime occurred in the street, our job was to keep people from contaminating the crime scene until OIJ, the judicial police and the only force trained in CSI (crime scene investigation) arrived.

One aspect of life in this country should be emphasized: Despite the record number of firearm purchases, one is more apt to be attacked by a swarm of Africanized bees than assaulted. Crime is more frequent, as is underscored by the armed assault on the home of a former director of the National Police School reported in a recent article on these pages. But this is a worldwide phenomenon Unfortunately, the increased use of drugs, once rare, has spread and has raised the violence level. Any news story about crime may make it sound as if violence is a cottage industry here. It definitely is not in Costa Rica.