Kevon Felmine

As the Gov­ern­ment bat­tles un­bri­dled gun vi­o­lence, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er Gary Grif­fith says guns don't kill peo­ple, peo­ple kill peo­ple.On Fri­day, Olympic blade run­ner Os­car Pis­to­rius ap­peared be­fore the court in South Africa charged with the mur­der of his 29-year-old girl­friend Ree­va Steenkamp who had been shot four times with Pis­to­rius' li­censed gun.

In South Africa where lev­els of crime are ex­treme­ly high, many pri­vate cit­i­zens have li­censed guns. But the in­ci­dent has raised ques­tions about the need for hav­ing guns in homes, and the pos­si­ble dan­gers.In T&T last week, In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion Chair­man Ken Gor­don, 83, re­port­ed to the po­lice on Car­ni­val Mon­day that he had lost his loaded pis­tol in Wood­brook. A school­boy lat­er found it and hand­ed it over to the po­lice.

Grif­fith sup­ports cit­i­zens' rights to bear arms if they be­lieve guns will pro­tect them, their fam­i­ly or their busi­ness from crim­i­nal el­e­ments and done in ac­cor­dance with the law.Towfeek Ali, head of the Firearm Train­ing In­sti­tute at Ch­agua­nas, said most peo­ple just want a gun for a sense of se­cu­ri­ty and hope to nev­er have to use it.

"Peo­ple tend to want to pro­tect them­selves, fam­i­lies and busi­ness­es," he said. "Hav­ing a firearm gives a sense of se­cu­ri­ty in that you have a chance to pro­tect your­self against the crim­i­nal el­e­ments out there."When the T&T Guardian spoke to li­censed firearm users, most were un­will­ing to dis­cuss the use or pur­pose of the gun.A Pe­nal busi­ness­man who owns a gun said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty was un­der siege and the po­lice could of­fer no pro­tec­tion.

"We have too many armed rob­beries in this area," he said. "Peo­ple are so fed up of re­port­ing it be­cause noth­ing is done. My first du­ty is to pro­tect my fam­i­ly and my­self and this is why I feel the need to car­ry a gun."He ad­mit­ted that some of his friends who car­ried li­censed weapons could eas­i­ly pur­chase the cer­tifi­cate of com­pe­tence which was need­ed to re­new the li­cence.

"There is an ar­gu­ment that guns should not be giv­en to bona fide peo­ple," he said, "but the out­laws have guns and guns are avail­able on every street, around every cor­ner. So they have to con­trol the il­le­gal guns and am­mu­ni­tion in this coun­try."The peo­ple who have guns should get prop­er train­ing so that the weapons do not end up in the hands of crim­i­nals," he added.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams said for se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons he could not re­veal how many ap­pli­ca­tions were await­ing ap­proval and how many peo­ple pos­sessed li­cences. How­ev­er, he said per­mits were be­ing is­sued to im­port firearms and am­mu­ni­tion, and that was an as­set to li­censed gun­deal­ers.Li­censed gun­smith and cer­ti­fied gun train­er Bar­ry Kow­lessar, who runs the Hol­low Point gun shop in Mara­bel­la, said on­ly a few peo­ple were is­sued li­cences each year.

"I know of on­ly two peo­ple who got li­cences," he said. Ali, a gun­smith, firearms in­struc­tor and firearms deal­er, said the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple who came to train at his John Street in­door shoot­ing range in Mon­trose were busi­ness peo­ple, hunters and se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers. Ali's is the on­ly in­door range apart from the var­i­ous ri­fle clubs around the coun­try.

He said af­ter ob­tain­ing a pro­vi­sion­al li­cence, train­ing could take, on av­er­age, five days, but users must con­tin­ue to prac­tise at the range to be able to han­dle a weapon ef­fec­tive­ly. Most learn­ers train with pis­tols and re­volvers, while se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers and hunters learn to use shot­guns.He said it was a lengthy process to ob­tain a pro­vi­sion­al or full li­cence but get­ting a gun there­after was rel­a­tive­ly cheap: A re­volver costs about $7,500 and a shot­gun $8,000, de­pend­ing on the brand. A box of am­mu­ni­tion can start at $200.

He main­tained that on­ly li­cence-hold­ers could pur­chase his sup­plies sold on­ly ac­cord­ing to con­di­tions out­lined by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

Safe­guards on­li­censed guns

The act­ing CoP sought to al­lay fears about gun safe­ty, vow­ing to up­hold strin­gent stan­dards in is­su­ing firearm users' li­cences.He al­so promised ze­ro tol­er­ance for peo­ple who abused their li­cences, say­ing the Firearm Act was ad­just­ed in 2004 to deal with neg­li­gence.Grif­fith felt the cur­rent reg­u­la­tions did not go far enough and stressed there must be prop­er checks and bal­ances to en­sure that those who have guns were men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly fit to han­dle them.

He warned: "There is a se­ri­ous short­fall in that peo­ple who ac­quire gun li­cences are not sub­ject­ed to manda­to­ry psy­cho­log­i­cal test­ing on a reg­u­lar ba­sis and there is no manda­to­ry train­ing for the use of a firearm."Grif­fith said those who were grant­ed pro­vi­sion­al li­cences (PL) and firearm users' li­cences (FUL) should un­der­go an­nu­al train­ing to pre­vent neg­li­gent dis­charge, as well as psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion to test if they were men­tal­ly fit to car­ry weapons.

"For peo­ple with FUL, psy­cho­log­i­cal test­ing has to be done year­ly, be­cause lat­er on, cer­tain el­e­ments may have changed in their lifestyle, emo­tion­al­ly, fi­nan­cial­ly or do­mes­tic sit­u­a­tions. Even in law en­force­ment, we need to look at the po­lice of­fi­cers who car­ry guns and psy­cho­log­i­cal test­ing and per­son weapons test­ing should be manda­to­ry," he added.

As Grif­fith ex­plained, both cir­cum­stances, whether Pis­to­rius had mur­dered or ac­ci­den­tal­ly killed his girl­friend, were a prime ex­am­ple of why gun users should have manda­to­ry train­ing.He said tests should al­so be giv­en to se­cu­ri­ty guards, as a large num­ber of the li­cences is­sued are for pre­cept­ed of­fi­cers in pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms.

A for­mer army cap­tain, Grif­fith ex­plained, "In the De­fence Force, an­nu­al test­ing or per­son­al weapons train­ing is manda­to­ry to pre­vent neg­li­gent dis­charge which is a ba­sic se­cu­ri­ty mea­sure to make sure you don't fire off a shot that you did not want to."Neg­li­gent dis­charge is based on a lack of train­ing. You have to be able to load and un­load your weapon, and point in the cor­rect di­rec­tion and this is a manda­to­ry train­ing that can pre­vent some­one from com­mit­ting a neg­li­gent dis­charge.

Bar­ry Kow­lessar said there were many fa­cil­i­ties for train­ing, in­clud­ing the Firearm Train­ing In­sti­tute, South Trinidad Ri­fle As­so­ci­a­tion and the Trinidad Ri­fle As­so­ci­a­tion so users had no ex­cuse for not train­ing.Ali al­so em­pha­sised the need for safe­ty."Be­ing able to de­fend your­self de­pends on your train­ing. It must be con­stant and you must have a prop­er mind­set and be pre­pared at all times."

The Pe­nal busi­ness­man said he trained once each month. But for­mer pres­i­dent of the Pe­nal/Debe Cham­ber of In­dus­try Lin­coln Rag­birs­ingh said, "The ma­jor­i­ty of those who get FULs do the train­ing once in their life and they pay to get a cer­tifi­cate of com­pe­tence when they want to re­new."Rag­birs­ingh added that the shoot­ing ranges pro­vid­ed op­por­tu­ni­ty for am­ple train­ing but on­ly a hand­ful of busi­ness peo­ple made use of them.

"If a cit­i­zen wants a firearm we need to beef up the sys­tem. It should not just be a mat­ter of fill­ing out a form–they need to learn the weapon," he said.

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How hard is it to get a gun legal­ly?Get­ting a gun li­cence is not that easy. Chair­man of the Firearms Ap­peal Board Is­rael Khan, SC, says there are over 500 ap­peals be­fore the board.How­ev­er, Khan said he was un­aware how many were le­git­i­mate claims, as the board is yet to meet.

The board was on­ly ap­point­ed on Oc­to­ber 18 last year, un­der the Firearms (Amend­ment) Act of 2011, to ar­bi­trate on de­ci­sions by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice not to is­sue li­cences to ap­pli­cants.The com­mis­sion­er of po­lice can al­so re­voke a per­mit if he is sat­is­fied that the hold­er is of in­tem­per­ate habits or un­sound mind, or oth­er­wise un­fit to be en­trust­ed with a gun.Any­one ag­griev­ed by such a de­ci­sion can ap­peal to the board–which has not met since 2008.

Khan said it would meet in the next two weeks to be­gin re­view­ing the claims.Grif­fith agreed it was hard to get a le­gal firearm be­cause of red tape, and said many peo­ple com­plained to him about it."Most of them have not got­ten a re­sponse from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice why they have not got­ten a li­cence. Some peo­ple have heard that the ser­vice lost their ap­pli­ca­tion while oth­ers take two to three years be­fore they can ob­tain a li­cence.

"The bu­reau­crat­ic red tape is too much. You can't have peo­ple on file for four to five years–and even though they fi­nal­ly got it, what if some­thing had hap­pened to them dur­ing those years? Then the bu­reau­crat­ic tape would have been re­spon­si­ble for that. We need to get the sys­tem done prop­er­ly.

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The process

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice Web site, any com­pa­ny, busi­ness group or in­di­vid­ual 25 or over can ap­ply for a firearm user's li­cence.First you must get a pro­vi­sion­al li­cence that au­tho­ris­es you to fire a gun at a spe­cif­ic shoot­ing range for train­ing pur­pos­es.Ap­pli­cants must get a cer­tifi­cate of char­ac­ter from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice not less than three months be­fore the ap­pli­ca­tion date.

The pro­vi­sion­al li­cence ex­pires af­ter two months but ap­pli­cants can ap­ply for an­oth­er.Ali said pro­vi­sion­al li­cence-hold­ers must train and take an ex­am for a cer­tifi­cate of com­pe­tence. They then go back to the CoP who de­ter­mines whether to grant a full li­cence.The per­mit states what types of gun the hold­er is per­mit­ted to ac­quire and how much am­mu­ni­tion he can pur­chase.

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What the law says

The Firearms Act says some­one may pur­chase, ac­quire or have in his pos­ses­sion a firearm or am­mu­ni­tion on­ly if he has a li­cence for them.Of­fences and penal­ties un­der the law in­clude:

�2Sell­ing or giv­ing a gun or am­mu­ni­tion to some­one who does not have a li­cence: $50,000 fine or im­pris­on­ment for five years.

�2Shoot­ing in or near a pub­lic place ex­cept in self-de­fence: $10,000 fine .

�2Us­ing a gun while com­mit­ting a crime: ten years' im­pris­on­ment.

�2Hav­ing a gun while drunk or un­der the in­flu­ence of drugs: $20,000 fine and two years' im­pris­on­ment.

�2Any­one con­vict­ed un­der the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act, may be re­fused a firearm li­cence for five years from the date of con­vic­tion.

Firearms deal­er and train­er Towfeek Ali.