The full story is that Turks and Caicos Islands has struggled against gun violence for years, so it passed much stricter gun laws in 2022. American tourists were violating this law by bringing guns and ammunition in their bags, but the courts in all of the previous cases recognized that prison was a harsh punishment for lapses like this, so they’d reduce the sentence to a fine. But it just kept happening, and perhaps in frustration, in February an appeals court ruled that the lower courts could not exercise that kind of discretion.

Given that those courts had been lowering the penalty to a fine, it seems unlikely that they’ll sentence people to long prison terms. (Any prison time does seem like an overreaction, but it also seems that the country got frustrated and wants to send a message about following its laws.)