With one family in mourning and two more families at their loved ones' bedsides today, this Christmas was hardly one to celebrate.

This newspaper joins with community leaders in urging members of the public to come forward with any information which may help to solve these heinous crimes.

Only when the community drops the wall of silence that has surrounded recent murders will these senseless killings stop. While refusing to provide information may appear to protect family members or friends, the reality is that it often puts them in more danger from vigilantes.

It is difficult at this stage to speculate on what may have caused the holiday shootings.

But it is reasonable to suspect that they are connected, given their close proximity in the Camp Hill and Horseshoe Road, Southampton neighbourhood, and it is not impossible that they are also connected to other recent unsolved murders.

What is also likely is that they are gang-related. There can be no doubt that Bermuda, after years of denial that has only recently ended, must get to grips with the gang problem before more lives are lost.

The Mirrors programme launched earlier this year by the Government was a good start, and that effort now needs to be intensified, along with other reform programmes.

But it is surely obvious that greater deterrence, and greater emphasis on the safety of the general public is also needed.

At the risk of politicising this issue, it must be noted that the United Bermuda Party in the recent General Election campaign pushed for just this, only to have its ideas firmly rejected, distorted and ridiculed by the Progressive Labour Party.

Crime reduction requires a carrot and a stick, and the PLP's rejection of increased penalties and its apparent complacency about violent crime rates now looks rather foolish.

The time has now come for the Government to look seriously at increased penalties. This is not simply a question of deterrence, although that is a major part of it, but of public safety.

The time will come when drive-by shootings of the kind witnessed in the last four days will claim the life of an innocent bystander, if it has not happened already.

At the same time, crime reduction requires a more holistic approach. It was said in the election campaign, but it bears repeating, that people with good jobs and hope for the future are less likely to commit crimes than those with no hope and nothing to lose. Thus a growing economy in which all segments of society feel they have a stake will also be a safer society as well.

To that end, better and more rigorous education is essential, as is rigorous adherence to Immigration standards and CURE and human rights guidelines.

This is especially true for young males, both black and white, who tend to achieve less in school than their female counterparts. Because career and earnings success are closely related to educational attainment, setting young men without qualifications loose on the community is a recipe for disaster.

Nor can there be any doubt that parents must take greater responsibility. Over-indulgence and failing to set expectations does not give children respect for their parents or anyone else – just the opposite. And in the situations where gangs become surrogate families, this weekend's horrors are the result.