This is an awesome power which gang leaders have. When we older people were growing up, we believed that it was God the Father who had the power of life and death. That is so no more. God the Father only has the power of life. Death now belongs to the streets.

Next week Wednesday, February 9, marks the 36thanniversary of the founding of the United Black Association for Development (UBAD), and I mention this because in our days we were considered the ?bad boys? of Belize. We had very strong beliefs. But I believe that more of us UBAD were willing to die for our beliefs than were willing to kill for them. There is a difference there. For some people, it is easier to die than to kill.

I have never killed anyone. Working where I have worked all these years, there have been a couple occasions when I thought that people were forcing me to consider homicide as a form of self-defence. Praise the Lord, however, I survived these crises without killing or being killed.

Killing a human being amounts to destroying a life which is created by God Almighty. In a sense, a murderer is equating himself to God. For the majority of us, especially from the older generations, the thought of killing someone is abhorrent. It is frightening. And no matter how many murders you read about in the newspapers, hear about on the radio, or see reported on the television, the act of murder is never routine.

Most murders in Belize today are being committed by young men for the first time in their lives. The murder is the ultimate trauma for the victim, but it is also a long enduring trauma for most perpetrators. There are a few young men in Belize who have become multiple murderers. The more you murder, the easier it becomes. And you must know this, in the brutal streets of the Southside, those young men who are known by their neighbourhoods to have become skilled and conscienceless murderers, are viewed with awe by their ?hoods. They become icons, whether you like to think so or not. But in this essay, we are considering, rather, those first time murderers who end up themselves trauma victims because of the mortal sin they have committed.

I am saying to you, dear readers, that the circumstances which drive a young man to murder another young Belizean are terrible and powerful, because, for most of us human beings, murder is a formidable proposition, and it has nightmarish after effects.

The reason why murder is so frightening is because life is so divine. Almost all human life is the product of man making love with woman. As a result of love making, life is conceived within the womb of a mother, and that life takes months and months to grow.

Nowadays, scientists make life in test tubes, but for all the generations of human beings all over planet earth for as long as we have existed before this modern era, there was only one way to make life, and that was through making love. And there was nothing scientific about it. In fact, it was completely outside the control and power of human beings. God chose to touch you in His own time and in His own way when you were blessed with new life.

Many of these young men who violate the works of God, are intoxicated with alcohol and/or narcotics. Policemen will tell you that when some murderers begin to sober up in custody, they begin to cry and shake with the realization of the horror of their deed. In most cases, these young men were being pushed by their circumstances and their neighbourhoods and their associates to behave in a ?manly? way. To reach the point of deviltry, most had to take some kind of stimulant or normalcy altering chemical.

I am not an expert on the topic, but most of you readers know less on the subject than I do. So, I am sharing some thoughts.

In the old days, there was the rope as a form of deterrent to homicidal behaviour, and, also important, there were very few guns. There appears to be nothing we can do about the guns, because we cannot control the totality of our borders, for instance. In the case of the rope, it is a matter of foreigners from slaveowning societies intimidating us against the use of the rope, threatening us with various forms of punishment if we use the same rope to discipline ourselves which they used to discipline us.

Before Friday, January 14, Belize was already in crisis. We have watched our children murdering each other, and it appears we are helpless to prevent them from doing so. How can death have become more powerful than life, and love? I am afraid. I truly am.