The Minister of the Interior and current Vice President of the Republic, Izkia Siches, emphasized the call of the Government of President Gabriel Boric to open a dialogue to address the acts of violence recorded in the southern part of the country, rejecting the summons of the CAM to the people Mapuche about an uprising of arms against the State.
Within the framework of the Executive’s campaign that seeks to improve the control and possession of weapons, the state authority stated that “our Government’s invitation has been to dialogue and we have been well received by different communities that today are willing to work with the Government “.
“They have contacted our different local authorities and we believe that this is the way to go, as we have proposed today, fewer weapons is more security and our call to stop using them is transversal and that includes those armed groups that have called to use these roads,” he stressed.
“We make an invitation to lay down arms and build based on dialogue, and also to continue working together, but not let ourselves be intimidated or lose focus towards work that is collaborative and dialogue towards substantive solutions,” he added.
Along the same lines, the Secretary of State addressed the doubts generated by the Executive’s proposal to reduce access to weapons by the civilian population, arguing that “the work has different aspects in terms of weapons, one of them is the confrontation with organized crime, which has reinforcement in Customs, strengthening of institutional processes, improving control and the focus on illegal weapons”.
“But in addition to this, what the President has pointed out has been added: we have a large number of duly registered weapons circulating, but a significant percentage of them end up in the hands of criminals and an important part of the homicides that occur are with firearms. fire and we must reduce that circulation,” he emphasized.
In this sense, Minister Siches indicated that “yesterday we had the theft of two duly registered weapons, more than 100 ammunition in Cañete and Lo Barnechea. This shows us that despite the fact that some of these weapons are bought for security purposes end up in the hands of criminals”.
“It is there where we want to request the collaboration of citizens by handing over their weapons, precisely in the process that we have reinforced today, as also denounced. But in addition, we want to add the transversal call to the entire political world and to the citizens that we need to cut the circles of circulation of these weapons,” he added.
On the details of the bill that the Government will introduce, he concluded by explaining that “we are working to change the paradigm, so that the focus is not on the weapons that are circulating, but restrict their operation and that the weight of the proof be the priority, that it is in its restriction in a transversal way and there are only some particular exceptions that the maintenance of weapons is allowed “.
