• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
Driven by the tragic deaths of students in two campus shootings within 57 days, Negros Occidental Third District Rep. Javier Miguel Benitez filed key legislative action on Wednesday, Aug. 19 to enforce unprecedented accountability on unregistered firearms.
Benitez filed the Final Firearms Amnesty and Loose Firearms Accountability Act of 2026, a measure establishing a strict non-bailable legal framework for severe gun offenses while giving owners of unregistered firearms a final 120-day window to regularize their weapons.
According to Philippine National Police (PNP) data, loose firearms account for 98 percent of gun-related crimes in the country, with an estimated 1.7 million illicit guns in circulation.
In Tacloban City, two students aged 14 and 15 opened fire inside San Jose National High School in Tacloban City, killing three classmates and wounding 20 others.
On Aug. 18, a Grade 9 student walked into the Ateneo de Zamboanga University junior high school with a pistol and rifle, killed a schoolmate, and took his own life.
In both tragedies, the weapons originated from adults – a police officer’s service pistol and a security agency’s registered revolver in Tacloban, and a Bureau of Customs-issued firearm in Zamboanga.
Under current laws, the strongest charge available against negligent firearm keepers was malversation.
“Our schools should be the safest rooms in the Republic. In 57 days, two of them became crime scenes,” Benitez emphasized.
“In Tacloban, the guns that killed three children came from the adults around them, and the strongest charge we could file against the firearm keeper was malversation. That is not justice. This bill fixes the law that failed those families,” he added.
The initiative aligns with calls from Department of the Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla, who urged lawmakers to close legal loopholes, increase accountability for negligent owners, and render major loose firearm offenses non-bailable.
“To the more than one million licensed and responsible gun owners of this country, you are not the problem. To everyone holding a loose firearm, this is your last open door. Walk through it, because after 120 days, the gate locks and enforcement begins in full,” Benitez said.
He also noted that the government has declared at least 13 firearms amnesties since 1980, and that all of them failed because forgiveness was never paired with finality and consequence.
The bill reserves the non-bailable penalty for conduct carrying reclusion perpetua, the only threshold the Constitution allows, Benitez said. | GPB
