The U.S. has a gun problem, as its regularly occurring mass shootings and other gun violence clearly illustrate. But that problem is not solely confined to the domestic sphere. For decades, the Caribbean has been grappling with the illegal inflow of firearms from the United States. In a nutshell, the U.S. domestic gun problem is also fueling a regional illegal gun-trafficking problem.
What’s more, this gun-trafficking problem directly affects one of Washington’s closest European allies, France, through its Caribbean island territories, Martinique and Guadeloupe. As a result, Caribbean countries can and should seek to use France’s—and by extension the European Union’s—geographical presence in the region as leverage to get the U.S. to seriously address the issue. But first France must begin to address this issue not only as a security problem, but as a social and economic one domestically, and a political one regionally.
In April 2023, the Small Arms Survey and the Caribbean Community, or CARICOM, published an alarming report that found that “more than half of the homicides committed in the Caribbean region involve the use of a firearm.” It further concluded that “there is little doubt that the United States is a major source of illicit firearms in the Caribbean, and probably the largest source in some states and territories” there.