Gunman kills atleast three people in Philippine town

Gunman kills at least three people in Philippine town UPDATED: Jan 4, 2013 08:26 GMT A gunman opened fire in a town near the Philippine capital on Friday, killing at least three people and wounding 10 others, police said. The attacker was subsequently killed in a gun battle with police officers who had tried to persuade him to surrender, said Plaridel Daprosa, an officer at the municipal police station in Kawit, the town where the shooting took place. Police are still investigating the motive for the attack, which happened Friday morning in a residential areaof Kawit, a town about 20 kilometers south of central Manila, Daprosa said. Before the shooting, Filipinos had already been debating whether their country, where gun crimes are frequent, needed stricter controls on firearms. The concerns had been prompted by the death of a seven-year-old girl, Stephanie Ella, who was shot in the head amid celebratory gunfire on New Year's Eve, according to CNN affiliate ABS-CBN. A four-year-old boy was also killed by a stray bullet on the same day, ABS-CBN reported. But it was Stephanie's death, which happened while she was watching fireworks with her father, that set off soul-searching about gun ownership in the Philippine news media. "This incident should not be allowed to become just another statistic," Vice President Jejomar Binay said in a statement Thursday about the girl's death. The Philippines already has enough laws governing the use of guns, he said, "but the problem has always been in the enforcement of the laws, especially those on loose firearms." The country's police firearms and explosives office says there were 1.2 million registered firearms inthe Philippines as of last year, ABS-CBN reported. Ontop of that, the office estimates there were roughly 600,000 unlicensed firearms in circulation nationwide. The Philippines has a population of about 104 million people.