PHILIPPINES: Filipino gunsmiths emerge from backyard shops to become legal arms makers

Record ID: 376751

  • Title: PHILIPPINES: Filipino gunsmiths emerge from backyard shops to become legal arms makers
  • Date: 29th July 2012
  • Summary: MANILA, PHILIPPINES (JULY 26, 2012) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF GUNLESS SOCIETY FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, NANDY PACHECO, READING NEWS ITEM ON GUN CRIME FROM NEWSPAPER
  • Embargoed: 13th August 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Philippines
  • Country: Philippines
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Business,Industry
  • Reuters ID: LVA2B96V6ZVEGO1NUPE6K1O7R7S6
  • Story Text: Elmer Genzon's trained eye can distinguish between a good gun and a dud. He sits at the end of an assembly line, making sure the handguns coming out from a factory in the central Philippines are fit for export.
    Inside his quality control booth, he inspects dozens of pistols and revolvers assembled manually by an army of about 350 gunsmiths, mostly coming from a town known for its backyard gun workshops.
    Genzon grew up in Danao, on the coast of Cebu province, where generations of gunsmiths have lived on producing "paltik," a custom-made gun assembled from scrap metals and angle bars, and sold to illegal dealers.
    The 33-year-old said his father and grandfather were gun-makers.
    "When we were children, we were already surrounded with guns. It was the world of our fathers. We grew up making guns. And as we went on to have children, we ended up doing it for a living," Genzon said.
    As continuous police raids on unlicensed gun-manufacturing operations in Cebu shut down many of Danao's workshops, a company called Shooters Arms Manufacturing saw an opportunity and hired them.
    The factory exports guns to the United States, Australia, and Europe, where demand for good quality but affordable small arms fuels a small but steadily growing industry in the Philippines.
    Joffrey Landero, another Danao native, sits at the assembly line in Shooters, meticulously filing pistol frames. He says he is grateful to have a job at the factory, where they enjoy health and social benefits, and the environment is more secure compared to back in Danao.
    "I'm no longer scared, because we're now doing this legally. Back at home, we were always hiding," the 25-year-old Landero said.
    Factory owner Romulo de Leon III, a second-generation gun dealer, was among the first to recognise the superior skills of backyard gunsmiths when he went from importing firearms to making and exporting them.
    "Number one reason -- there are skilled gun makers in Danao, and I would like to help legalize them. I heard stories about them, way before -- that they are really good. No need to train them," de Leon told Reuters in one of his weekend trips to his factory.
    The strategy paid off. His partly automated factory is now producing about 20,000 guns a year, with up to 85 percent sold abroad, making him the second largest gun-manufacturer in the country.
    With cheap labour and Filipino ingenuity, de Leon wants to expand into new markets in Eastern Europe and South America.
    With more foreign markets in their gunsights, legal manufacturers hope President Benigno Aquino, a gun enthusiast who shoots competitively, will help liberalise gun laws.
    Not surprisingly, gun sellers want to expand the industry, worth about 2.5 billion pesos ($59.37 million). Export receipts grew fourfold to $23.4 million between 2000-11.
    But while firearms distributors are seeking for legislation that will loosen laws to boost domestic sales, the anti-gun lobby is rallying for stricter controls.
    High demand for guns in restive areas of the country and a ban on the sale and carrying of firearms during elections have allowed illegal backyards to continue their operation.
    The national police said there could be an estimated 350,000 to 400,000 unregistered guns in the country, most of them in the hands of civilians. Ninety-nine percent of 9,218 gun-related crimes last year involved unlicensed weapons.
    The Gunless Society, a lobby group founded by retired professional Nandy Pacheco, advocates a law that will jail civilians who carry guns in public and impose stiffer penalties for possession.
    Pacheco says instances like the recent shooting in Colorado, which killed 12 people, are an alarming reminder of the consequences of liberal gun laws.
    "There are many good things we can imitate about America, like candor, punctuality, these are good virtues, but why in heaven's name do we have to imitate the bad ones -- gun culture, violence?" he said.
    He also dismissed the argument of needing guns for self defence.
    "We do not want this argument of self defence being used, because if there are no guns - so there's no nothing to be, there's no use to defend yourself, there's no need to have a gun to defend yourself," he said.
    Though the Gunless Society does not oppose the use of guns by military, police, and target shooting enthusiasts, he is against the manufacturing of guns and calls firearms dealers "merchants of death."
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