Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Two stake­hold­ers in the lo­cal firearms in­dus­try agree with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the process of ob­tain­ing a Firearms User’s Li­cence (FUL) of­ten de­pends on the dis­cre­tion of in­di­vid­ual po­lice of­fi­cers, even when ap­pli­cants meet all the list­ed cri­te­ria.

They be­lieve ad­di­tion­al mea­sures and safe­guards are need­ed to en­sure that every ap­pli­cant is treat­ed fair­ly and as­sessed based on the mer­it of their need for an FUL.

Dur­ing her ap­pear­ance at the UNC’s Mon­day Night meet­ing at the Pe­nal Sec­ondary School, Per­sad-Bisses­sar lament­ed that there have been oc­ca­sions where some ap­pli­cants for firearms were re­ject­ed based on a sin­gle of­fi­cer’s opin­ion or rea­son­ing.

She stat­ed that such a process was un­fair and vowed to in­tro­duce leg­is­la­tion to change the pro­ce­dure.

“Too many times, cit­i­zens have all the doc­u­men­ta­tion to qual­i­fy and are re­fused a firearm be­cause of the opin­ion or ir­ra­tional­i­ty of some ar­bi­trary po­lice of­fi­cer. We will re­move the ar­bi­trari­ness of the process and bring the leg­is­la­tion so you can de­fend your­self as law-abid­ing cit­i­zens,” the PM stat­ed.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, firearms ex­pert Paul Na­hous not­ed that FULs are is­sued sole­ly at the dis­cre­tion of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. How­ev­er, he lament­ed that past ad­min­is­tra­tions and com­mis­sion­ers have of­ten re­ject­ed ap­pli­ca­tions with­out pro­vid­ing any clear jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Na­hous—who pro­vides con­sul­ta­tions for FUL ap­pli­cants through his com­pa­ny, Blue Line Acad­e­my, in­clud­ing le­gal ad­vice and ap­peals for those who were de­nied—said he has worked with sev­er­al clients who com­plained about the slow process and the lack of trans­paren­cy around their re­jec­tions.

He not­ed that such is­sues of­ten raise con­cerns about whether some of­fi­cers can make fair and un­bi­ased rec­om­men­da­tions for FUL ap­provals.

“I have sev­er­al clients whom I rep­re­sent be­fore the Firearm Ap­peals Board who are in such a po­si­tion where they were du­ly rec­om­mend­ed by the ap­pro­pri­ate in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cer, and for­mer com­mis­sion­ers still de­nied them,” Na­hous said.

“It does hap­pen where there are bi­as­es among some in­ves­ti­ga­tors, and it af­fects the ap­pli­ca­tion. This is why the ap­peal board process ex­ists—so that the ap­pli­cant can chal­lenge a de­ci­sion if they be­lieve the Com­mis­sion­er has erred.”

The prob­lem, he said, “lies in the fact that if there is a per­son­al is­sue be­tween an in­ves­ti­ga­tor and an ap­pli­cant, the in­ves­ti­ga­tor could very well in­tro­duce their own bi­as­es, even though they should not”.

Last Thurs­day, a po­lice me­dia re­lease re­port­ed that Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro re­ceived all pend­ing firearm ap­pli­ca­tion files that con­tained valid sup­port­ing doc­u­ments for ap­proval. These files were then re­turned to the Po­lice Firearms Per­mit Unit (FPU) for is­suance.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, this was part of the com­mis­sion­er’s ef­forts to cre­ate a more stream­lined firearm li­cens­ing process while re­mov­ing bot­tle­necks.

Na­hous said Gue­var­ro’s com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing fair­ness and trans­paren­cy in the process was en­cour­ag­ing and ex­pressed op­ti­mism that his di­rect su­per­vi­sion would im­prove the pace of the process.

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke with the own­er of Cen­tre­fire Ad­vanced Se­cu­ri­ty So­lu­tions (CASS), Jethro John, who said that his com­pa­ny was cur­rent­ly part of dis­cus­sions to rec­om­mend pro­ce­dures to the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty aimed at es­tab­lish­ing a more uni­form process for FUL is­suance.

“We are sug­gest­ing that some stan­dard­i­s­a­tion should take place for the ap­pli­ca­tion process, where­by there’s a check­list to en­sure the ap­pli­cant meets cri­te­ria A, B, C, D, and E—and it should not be left to the dis­cre­tion of the po­lice.”