There will be no stopping for Police Regional Office (PRO) 6 to intensify its crackdown on owners of unlicensed firearms in Western Visayas.

From house-to-house visitation through Oplan “Katok,” Chief Supt. Agrimero Cruz, Jr., PRO6 director, said that they would shift to search and seizure operations. 

To date, PRO6 received 69 firearms with unrenewed registration. The gun owners already signify no interest to keep these firearms. 

During the Oplan “Katok,” 87 other firearms were also turned over by their owners to PRO-6 Firearms and Explosives Unit for safekeeping while waiting for their application for renewal.

“Nagpapasalamat po tayo sa mga may ari ng baril na ito sa paggawa ng tamang hakbang sa pakipagtulungan sa ating kampanya laban sa loose firearms,” Cruz said.

As of August last year, PRO-6 reported that 33,067 firearms with expired licenses abound the region.

Almost 20,000 registered owners of these firearms were already visited of the middle of this month, while about 3,000 have already renewed their licenses.

The Oplan “Katok” also revealed that 1,338 of the registered licensees cannot be located on their addresses while 2,870 have changed addresses.

The task force also discovered that 671 of the formerly registered firearms were sold; however, the transfer of ownership was not consummated.

Likewise, the task force reported that 23 registered owners denied to have owned a gun, 32 were fictitious names, 150 have surrendered their firearms, 837 declared lost their firearms, while 37 said their firearms were confiscated.

To date, 2,683 gun licensees were already renewed and 1,838 were already submitted for renewal.

Cruz is also optimistic that campaign will deliver good results after 7,118 gun owners have signified their intention to apply for renewal the soonest they have the budget.*