At last, a mea­sure of ra­tio­nal­i­ty and bal­ance has been brought in­to the state­ments of Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters ad­vo­cat­ing for the pas­sage in­to law of the in­tend­ed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion.

The pro­posed bill is “not a li­cence to kill,” nor an in­ten­tion to arm the pop­u­la­tion in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly. 

“This is not a killing field. This is about pro­tect­ing your home, your prop­er­ty, not en­cour­ag­ing vi­o­lence,” was the warn­ing brought in the dis­cus­sion by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der, dur­ing a fo­rum in Oropouche at which the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion was ex­plained and analysed ear­li­er this week.

The pro­posed law was in­tro­duced dur­ing the Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paign, with the typ­i­cal ex­ag­ger­a­tion and de­sire to in­flu­ence vot­ers to sup­port the par­ty by then-op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. She ad­vised, in a most flam­boy­ant and care­free man­ner, that the law will al­low home­own­ers to “emp­ty the mat­ic” on the crim­i­nal el­e­ment try­ing to in­vade their homes.

Since en­ter­ing Gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er, in­stead of a more mea­sured ap­proach to in­form cit­i­zens of how the in­tend­ed leg­is­la­tion will work and its ben­e­fits in sup­port­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice with its an­ti-crime mea­sures, some min­is­ters have been urg­ing li­censed gun hold­ers to “shoot first and ex­plain your­self af­ter.”

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge even ad­vised that a cit­i­zen could “shoot in the back some­one run­ning away with a firearm in hand.”

Yes, cit­i­zens have been plagued by crim­i­nals and their very hideous crimes go­ing on for more than 20 years; but sure­ly, such an ap­proach is ill-ad­vis­able at best.

In­deed, the bait­ing of cit­i­zens with FULs to in­sti­gate a type of Wild West shoot­ing and killing spree, en­cour­aged by Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, is tan­ta­mount to spurring cit­i­zens to take the law in­to their hands.

“It’s not an eye for an eye, it does not open the flood­gates for you to kill any­one who walks in­to your yard,” Min­is­ter Alexan­der warned this week, as he took a far more mea­sured ap­proach to bring­ing the cur­rent dis­course sur­round­ing the leg­is­la­tion back to firmer ground­ing. 

“While we all have an in­stinct to pro­tect our fam­i­lies, we must al­so con­tain our rage or we will be no bet­ter than the ban­dits,” Alexan­der, a re­tired se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer, added.

It’s sure­ly ad­vice that is need­ed and a wel­come change to the pre­vi­ous ad­vo­ca­cy of the con­sul­ta­tions.

For one thing, if firearm-hold­ing home­own­ers/oc­cu­piers take “bas­ket” from the high­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble state­ments of some min­is­ters, the said in­di­vid­u­als will not be in a po­si­tion to as­sist them if and when they are tak­en be­fore a court for in­dis­crim­i­nate shoot­ings, even mur­der.

Adding an­oth­er mea­sure of re­al­i­ty to the con­ver­sa­tion at the meet­ing in Oropouche, well-known at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen warned cit­i­zens that the leg­is­la­tion, when passed, will not give cit­i­zens the right to draw their weapons “with­out con­se­quences.”

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who set the tone for the kinds of state­ments now be­ing made, must now take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and in­struct her min­is­ters dif­fer­ent­ly from her “emp­ty the mat­ic” state­ments on the cam­paign trail.

A Gov­ern­ment in of­fice has to be re­spon­si­ble. Maybe Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­ready stepped in af­ter oth­er min­is­ters seemed to have fol­lowed her cav­a­lier cam­paign state­ments, hence this far more re­spon­si­ble tone by Min­is­ter Alexan­der.

Apart from this new di­rec­tion, one ad­di­tion­al ap­proach need­ed is for the con­sul­ta­tions to cov­er a far wider area than at present, so cit­i­zens are ful­ly in the loop by the time the process is com­plet­ed.