There are no easy solutions for parents with minor children when there is a gun in the house.  The vice minister of Seguridad, Jorge Chavarría Guzmán, is the latest to encourage citizens to disarm.

"Prevention is vital and we cannot let ourselves be carried away by fear," he said. Everyone wants a secure house, and it is necessary to begin in the home.  This security we can maintain without firearms, and if we decide to have them the responsibility is to secure them adequately."

His comments were cited by the Ministerio de Gobernación, Policía y Seguridad Pública as it announced that 14 families have surrendered weapons to get them out of their homes. There was a ceremony Thursday in which President Laura Chinchilla participated in the destruction of handguns.

Left unsaid is the quandary of parents. A weapon that is locked up and secure is not very useful when criminals break into the home, something that is happening more frequently here. Yet the same weapon, if placed in a drawer loaded, is a magnet for youngsters. A teen girl critically injured herself with her father's weapon last week in a suicide attempt over her love life.

And the problem is not just with children. Two police officers on duty shot themselves in the last two weeks. Both died. One was believed accidental. One was believed to be suicide. Both shootings happened in the police stations.

Sunday a private guard manipulating his .22-caliber pistol accidentally shot a child. Another child suffered a wound in the foot from a stray shot during a gang shootout last week.

Meanwhile, the Dirección General de Armamento is available at 2229-1486 for anyone who wishes to surrender a weapon.

Regardless of the country's gun laws, crooks have no trouble getting weapons. Fuerza Pública officers confiscated a homemade pistol Thursday in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí. Four young men were in the vehicle in which the zip gun was found. It was a .22-caliber device made of pipe and a heavy rubber band. Officers said they suspect that the four men were robbers who were targeting commercial establishments in the province of Heredia. Homemade shotguns and other types of homemade weapons are discovered periodically.

There is a litany of persons stopped with illegal weapons. In the countryside, the weapon may be an old shotgun or .22-caliber rifle used for hunting.  But there are many confiscations of weapons from persons who appear to have a criminal use for the firearm. Seldom are there reports of convictions.

Even when someone murders an individual with a weapon, the murderer is penalized far more than for the act of carrying an illegal weapon.  One example is a man with the last names of  Grajal Núñez. He killed a schoolboy, Jonathan Viquez Madrigal, in Limón Nov. 30, 2008, during a robbery. Last week he got 20 years in prison for the murder but just six months for carrying an illegal weapons.

Others who might get a similar sentence for carrying an illegal weapon will not see prison. Under Costa Rican criminal law persons with a clean record can receive conditional release for sentences up to three years in prison.

Grajal, by the way, probably will be out in six or seven years on the murder conviction due to the way the Costa Rican prison system generously calculates time served.

Shark-finning campaign
launched by three groups


Three organizations have launched a campaign against shark finning by Costa Rican-based boats.

The cruel practice of “shark finning” is threatening Costa Rica’s eco-friendly image, said Ethical Traveler, one of the organizations. Shark finning is the act of chopping the fins off of live sharks and dumping the then-helpless sharks back into the sea to drown. The fins are exported to Asia where they are used in an expensive delicacy: shark fin soup—or as journalist John Platt calls it, “Extinction in a Bowl.”

A 2007 study published by Science magazine showed a 90-percent decline in global shark populations in recent decades.

A study commissioned for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species found fishermen responsible for the death of over 200 million sharks each year.

"Sharks are a majestic and critical part of the ocean ecosystem," said Jeff Greenwald, executive director of Ethical Traveler. "Killing them for their fins is more than just barbarous and wasteful — it’s illegal under Costa Rican law. This crime must be stopped."

EthicalTraveler.org has partnered with nonprofit groups MissionBlue.org and Costa Rica’s Pretoma.org to stop shark finning in the Central American nation. In April, Pretoma founder Randall Arauz received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Award for his work to pass a Costa Rican law requiring that sharks be “landed” with their fins attached — a major victory for the sharks. But the work is not finished, said Ethical Traveler.

Arauz is also launching a campaign to discourage Costa Ricans from eating shark meat, which is often concealed behind different names — such as cazón, bolillo, and bolillón — and consumed unknowingly.

Thanks to the growing middle class in China, appetite for shark fin soup is as insatiable as ever, Ethical Traveler notes.  According to Arauz, shark fins sell for more than 100 times the price of shark meat. Arauz notes that “Taiwanese finning ships are now docking at Costa Rica’s private facilities under cover of darkness, in order to escape the reach of the country’s anti-finning law.”

Travelers and environmentalists are pressuring the Costa Rican government to step-up enforcement of existing laws against landing fish at private docks, and to discourage the consumption of shark meat. More information on the campaign is available HERE.

Ethical Travel is an organization that encourages tourists to visit only those countries that protect human rights and the environment. Ethical Traveler is a project of the Earth Island Institute, based in San Francisco, California. Specifically, the organizations ask that:

• Costa Rica's customs laws be strictly obeyed, even in privately owned docks;

• Shark meat be properly labeled, so that consumers are not misled;

• Directed shark fisheries be banned, and shark quotas established;

• Marine protected areas be created in coastal waters that serve as critical habitats for sharks, and in oceanic migratory corridors between Parque Nacional Isla Cocos and Galapagos Islands National Park in Ecuador).

Mission Blue is an organization encouraging public support for a global network of marine protected areas.