The Philippine National Police (PNP) recorded at least 700,000 expired gun licenses, 29 percent higher than last year’s 539,000.

In a press briefing, PNP spokesperson Col. Jean Fajardo said as of March 8, they have tallied 701,402 expired gun licenses.

She expects that amendments to the Comprehensive Firearms and Ammunition Regulation Act, which would allow civilians to own semi-automatic rifles, would encourage people to renew their licenses.

“We need to check in the database if the more or less 700,000 unrenewed firearms, if some of these will be registered, some of them could be used for crimes,” Fajardo said.

“The good thing about this is that once people are encouraged and convinced to renew their gun licenses and for those who intend to own and possess these types of firearms, they will be recorded in the data system and once a gun owner commits a crime, they can be easily traced,”

Fajardo said there were fewer gun violence incidents in 2023 at 4,956 compared to the 5,172 incidents in 2022.

She added that 808 gun-related incidents have been recorded in 2024 so far.

“The nature of the majority of the incidents are shooting incidents, alarm and scandal, grave threats,” Fajardo said.

Fajardo said that 3,792 gun-related cases were filed in the courts and of this number, 3,774 have been referred to the prosecutors while 1,136 are under investigation. Jaspearl Tan/DMS