Shooting victim Richard Gaglio yesterday claimed the joint parliamentary select committee on violent crime was being censored.

The 63-year-old shooting victim said he had been denied a chance to speak in the weeks since the committee first sat.

Mr Gaglio, who was left for dead in his home in Smith’s after a poker game last year, said he attended the past three meetings in hopes of speaking.

He also sent e-mails to organisers seeking to give his opinion on the Island’s spiralling gun crime, but has yet to hear any reply, he said.

“No one e-mailed me back to tell me if I can speak so I am beginning to wonder if this thing is being censored,” he told The Royal Gazette yesterday.

Mr Gaglio said he cornered Progressive Labour Party backbencher Randy Horton yesterday to raise his concerns, and was assured the meetings were not restricted. He was told he would get a chance to speak between now and next week and is now waiting for confirmation, he said.

Mr Gaglio, a retired mechanic and house renovator, was clearing up from a poker game along with a friend in the early hours of September 6 last year.

Other players had left with their winnings when two robbers struck, shooting him in the chest at almost point-blank range and making off with less than $140 cash.

In the initial stages Mr Gaglio showed no brain activity and doctors feared the worst, but miraculously he came out of his coma and recovered.

Yesterday he admitted being angry with how Government and the courts were dealing with spiralling gun crime and added: “This Island is going to hell in a greased basket.

“I am going to have my say, even if it’s on the TV with the media because it has been a year [since the shooting] and police haven’t called me back.

“I want them to live a day in my shoes and live what I have lived through and take a bullet in the chest, then they would go out and rewrite the Constitution the next day.”

As a white man, he said he was labelled a “racist” or a “bigot” when having his say, but added: “If I was Rolfe Commissiong I would be called a hero.

“I am sure by now they get the message, but I am going to have to be very careful about what I say because I am going to make [some] Cabinet members uncomfortable because I am white.”

He said criminals shouldn’t be allowed so much power over people’s lives and if given a chance to speak at the meeting he would advocate for harsher penalties for repeat offenders.

Mr Horton said he was sorry to hear of Mr Gaglio’s frustrations, but said the committee would try to get to everyone who signed up to present.

“We intend for him to come but he will just have to wait. There are several people like him that have indicated they want to talk and we are lining them up to come and speak with us.”

According to the PLP MP, race played no role whatsoever in who was given the chance to speak.

He said: “We have had black people and white people and we have had people who are interested in Bermuda and improving the quality of life for people in Bermuda and that is what the committee is all about.”

As of yesterday, there had been 12 black and four white speakers to address the joint parliamentary select committee on violent crime and gun violence.