But here in Jamaica, there is no such debate. Law enforcement officials, politicians and even gangsters on the street agree: It’s the abundance of guns, typically from the United States, that makes the country so deadly. And while the argument over gun control plays on a continual loop in the United States, Jamaicans say they are dying because of it — at a rate that is nine times the global average.

“Many people in the U.S. see gun control as a purely domestic issue,” said Anthony Clayton, the lead author of Jamaica’s 2014 National Security Policy. But America’s “long-suffering neighbors, whose citizens are being murdered by U.S. weapons, have a very different perspective.”

Firearms play such a central role in Jamaican murders that the authorities keep a list of the nation’s 30 deadliest guns, based on ballistic matches. To keep track of them, they are given names, like Ghost or Ambrogio.

Some, like Briana, are so poorly documented that the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has nothing more than a piece of paper with the name and details of the original buyer, according to confidential documents reviewed by The New York Times.

Purchased in 1991 by a farmer in Greenville, N.C., the Browning vanished from the public record for nearly 24 years — until it suddenly started wreaking havoc in Jamaica. For three years, its ballistic fingerprint connected it to shootings, mystifying law enforcement. Finally, after a firefight with the police, it was recovered last year and its bloody run came to an end.

The authorities traced the serial number back to the handgun’s original owner. But that did not explain how the weapon wound up in Jamaica decades later. Or how the authorities could prevent the next Briana from arriving.

The mystery is no accident. By law, licensed gun merchants in the United States are not required to do much more than record retail sales, and usually don’t have to report them to the authorities. After that, if a gun is stolen, lost or handed to someone else, paperwork is only sometimes required.