With its laid-back way of life and the easy charm which is an intrinsic part of our cultural DNA, Bermuda has never been a community much associated with violence-prone sociopaths. On the contrary, Bermudians have a well-earned reputation for graciousness, hospitality and friendliness. Indeed, during his very first visit to the Island almost 150 years ago Mark Twain emphasised it was “our friends the Bermudians” who, even more than the Island’s natural amenities and unparalleled beauty, made vacationing here genuinely special.

Bermuda’s people remain among the Island’s most marketable assets. With Bermuda now competing in increasingly crowded fields as an international business and tourism destination, it is the warmth, vibrancy and legendary generosity of locals which continue to provide the Island with a unique and much- envied edge.

An extended period of gun violence in recent years was a bloody but temporary aberration, a perhaps unavoidable corollary to the Island’s rapid economic contraction in the post-2008 period and the associated social and cultural ills which immediately came to the fore.

Dozens were killed or injured during this concentrated epidemic of brutality.

These were, of course, horrific crimes, most carried out with cold-blooded ruthlessness, an absolute disregard for human life and an undisguised contempt for the suffering inflicted on victims’ families. Additionally, this string of murders and drive-by shootings caused grievous collateral damage to the Island’s international standing. “Bermuda is VIOLENT — guns/murders/gang warfare — BEWARE” was the title of one of many similar threads to be found at online travel discussion boards. Far less conspicuously, but just as detrimental to our well-being, were private conversations taking place in international business circles. Bermuda was routinely denounced as a crime-plagued hellhole by competing jurisdictions, its long-retired 16th and 17th century notoriety as an “Isle of Devils” or “Monarchy of Fear” among superstitious mariners in the Age of Discovery revived for equally skittish corporate chieftains and investors in this Age of Globalised Commerce.

Until this week the more overt manifestations of the so-called “Gangsta Culture” had all but disappeared from our cultural radar screen and police call sheets. Instances of gunplay were optimistically being viewed as things of the past. Overly optimistically, it turns outs.

The Remembrance Day shootings in Devonshire and the West End wounded four people and profoundly shook the Island’s relatively new-found calm and sense of equilibrium. And more gunfire yesterday stretched already taut nerves even further.

A small number of gunmen were responsible for the overwhelming majority of crimes which terrorised and traumatised Bermuda just a few years ago. Many have been successfully prosecuted and are now serving long prison sentences. The underground arsenal of weapons which once circulated freely among members of this hard-core element has largely been tracked down and confiscated.

Still, as this week’s shootings underscored in the most dramatic manner imaginable, guns, gunmen and gunplay are never going to be entirely eliminated from the modern Bermudian social context. And the sad reality is that even the most trivial or pathetic grievances will, on occasion, still lead to lethal consequences.

Too many negative aspects of our culture — from glamorised depictions of violence in the media to the prevalence of widespread alcohol and drug abuse among young Bermudians — dovetail with poor economic and social conditions to fuel a destructive cycle of violence which can never be entirely broken. But it’s one which can continue to be minimised, and not just through stepped-up police work.

Those most alienated from the mainstream of Bermudian society, those for whom the still largely taboo subjects of poverty, class, inequality and racial and cultural identity are daily realities, not just abstract topics in social studies text books, are those most prone to violent behaviour. And their numbers have increased ever since the Island’s fiscal crisis made rapid downward mobility the new socio-economic trajectory for too many Bermudians.

Long overdue steps have been taken in recent years to improve educational, career and cultural opportunities for the most disadvantaged in our community, to ensure the most socially marginalised believe they can ultimately find worthwhile places in a genuinely inclusive Bermudian community.

But more work remains to be done, more enlightened, creative and imaginative measures and initiatives have to be vigorously and diligently pursued. Only when we have ensured our young people have been provided with all of the necessary means for them to fully embrace life will we stop ruing a regretfully high incidence of sudden and violent death among them.