Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 20) — The Philippine National Police-Civil Security Group (PNP-CSG) on Tuesday revealed that more than 8,000 firearms of elected officials have expired licenses.
CSG director Police Brig. Gen. Benjamin Silo Jr. said out of a total of 30,068 guns registered under the name of elected officials, 8,313 – or around 27% – have expired licenses.
He noted that their “safe estimate” is that around half of those with expired licenses are officials at the barangay level.
\”What we did in CSG, we provide extra special effort to encourage these people, elected officials to renew their expired licenses,\” Silo said in an interview, adding that they will also provide the Commission on Elections copies of their list.
The CSG chief stressed that government officials should serve as good examples to civilians in terms of firearms ownership.
“It’s more on encouraging them to comply with the provision of RA 10591… Sana maging modelo tayo, nang sa ganun masigurado natin na ang darating na BSKE (Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections) ay mapayapa, tahimik at maayos,” he said.
[Translation: I hope we can be a model so that we can make sure that the coming BSKE will be peaceful, quiet and orderly.]
Meanwhile, the CSG reported that around 19,000 out of a total of some 539,000 firearms that belong to police and military personnel have unrenewed licenses.
According to Silo, the PNP has officially communicated with the different heads of concerned institutions. The CSG has also provided them with a list of delinquent gun holders.
From Jan. 1 to May 26 this year, the PNP confiscated 11,417 loose firearms from 3,599 persons arrested for illegal possession of these items.
