As she nears her goal of 1,000 sig­na­tures in sup­port of her on­line pe­ti­tion to le­galise pep­per spray, for­mer Sen­a­tor Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith said she will be seek­ing a meet­ing with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Faris Al Rawi on the mat­ter. She is call­ing for an amend­ment Sec­tion 2 of the Firearms Act of 1971 Chap­ter 16:01.

"In that sec­tion in the Firearms Act a pro­hib­it­ed weapon is clas­si­fied as an ar­tillery au­to­mat­ic firearm any grenade bomb or any mis­siles and any weapon of what­ev­er de­scrip­tion or de­sign which is adapt­ed for the dis­charge of any nox­ious liq­uid gas or oth­er sub­stances.

"The AG should con­sid­er amend­ing Sec­tion C to en­sure that pep­per spray is not il­le­gal to car­ry," she said.

In re­cent times there has been an in­crease in se­ri­ous crimes against women and young girls.

Last week, Al Rawi said he has been ex­am­in­ing the sug­gest­ed use of pep­per spray as a de­fence mech­a­nism for cit­i­zens but said he al­so had to con­sid­er what could hap­pen if it falls in­to the hands of crim­i­nals.

Dy­er-Grif­fith said:"Pep­per spray for them is a down­grade to the guns that are all read­i­ly avail­able to them and while it is some­thing to still be con­sid­ered I think le­gal­is­ing pep­per spray will al­low a le­gal non-lethal way for women, es­pe­cial­ly to pro­tect them­selves."