Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs Kirk Humphrey has suggested that bad parenting and the erosion of family values are at the core of the recent spike in gun crime.And he has suggested that is where the focus of national conversation on the issue should begin.“I feel that the first thing that we have to do in this country now is to have a serious conversation around crime and violence, but recognising at its core it’s a question of values, and why it is that this country has lost its values, and who is responsible fundamentally and essentially for restoring those values” he said at the Barbados Labour Party’s Christ Church East branch meeting on Sunday.“Why is it that we are not having a conversation with families and communities about these things? …. Why [do] mothers feel that they are doing themselves and their children a favour when they hide their guns, when they hide the people who are running from the police? …. [These are] the same mothers who would cry for their children when they are either dead in the road or the ones being charged for . . . someone else’s child being dead in the road.”
