The stand-your-ground laws be­ing draft­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment are a cam­paign promise be­ing kept. They’re what the Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port­ers–par­tic­u­lar­ly in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty–told them they want­ed. One of the rea­sons vot­ers told the PNM gov­ern­ment to take a seat was that they felt they’d al­lowed the wheels to come off on se­cu­ri­ty.

I’m go­ing to talk about these soon-to-be-in­tro­duced laws an­oth­er time. Let’s talk about guns. At the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der sim­u­lat­ed as best as he could un­der the cir­cum­stances, a kick-down-the-door shock and awe home in­va­sion af­ter the de­fence­less home­own­er had gone to bed.

Alexan­der had the lights in the room turned off, and in the se­mi-dark­ness thumped the side of the podi­um, shout­ed the threats of the ban­dits and de­scribed their ac­tions–which in­clud­ed mur­der, rape, beat­ings, psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal tor­ture.

Alexan­der il­lus­trat­ed the ad­van­tages and dis­ad­van­tages of open­ing fire un­der those cir­cum­stances. With due def­er­ence to the min­is­ter’s po­lice train­ing and ex­pe­ri­ence, be­ing shocked awake from your slum­ber, grab­bing your gun and open­ing fire at a tar­get you can’t see is huge­ly risky. But so is not act­ing on the dan­ger quick­ly.

Home­own­ers could act in iden­ti­cal fash­ion and have dif­fer­ent out­comes–life or death. Shoot in the dark and elim­i­nate the ban­dit. Or kill your own child, that he/they had the fore­sight to use as a hu­man shield. Or shoot, miss, they re­turn fire and kill you. In all cas­es, you re­spond­ed by fir­ing.

Even if you’re armed, you have to make a risk as­sess­ment– of­ten in a split sec­ond–about en­gag­ing a home in­vad­er with gun­fire. Get­ting the risk as­sess­ment wrong can get you killed. What my brief ex­po­sure to firearms train­ing taught me (at Hos­tile En­vi­ron­ments Train­ing be­fore be­ing de­ployed to re­port from war zones) was that the most im­por­tant out­come in dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions is get­ting out alive.

How­ev­er, as Alexan­der’s ex­am­ple showed, that cal­cu­lus is com­pli­cat­ed by the pres­ence of spous­es and chil­dren. Armed in­vaders are good at sep­a­rat­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers and sub­ject­ing mom and/or dad to the psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ture of the un­known, or the un­seen but clear­ly heard.

Risk as­sess­ment sounds like a big, fan­cy, cor­po­rate-style thing. It is not. It is in­stant weigh­ing up of the risks as­so­ci­at­ed with open­ing fire. Hav­ing a gun may make you feel se­cure, but noth­ing pre­pares you for fir­ing at and prob­a­bly killing a hu­man be­ing in a sit­u­a­tion of height­ened stress; even if you’re ter­ri­fied of the oth­er hu­man killing you.

No re­sponse is fool­proof. As much as you can lose your life by choos­ing to open fire, you can al­so get killed by choos­ing not to en­gage when you have the means of do­ing so. There­fore, firearms is­suance is go­ing to have to be ac­com­pa­nied by sce­nario and sit­u­a­tion train­ing which in­creas­es your odds of the best out­come pos­si­ble … not get­ting killed. That could mean, in some cir­cum­stances, choos­ing not to shoot.

Home de­fence train­ing is go­ing to re­quire more than pro­fi­cien­cy at ac­cu­rate­ly hit­ting a sta­tion­ary tar­get on a range. Even for ad­vanced train­ing in­volv­ing mov­ing tar­gets, they don’t fire back. We run the risk of over­sim­pli­fy­ing the is­sue of guns, de­ter­rence and armed re­sponse when we sug­gest that sim­ply hav­ing a gun re­solves the prob­lem. Over­all, it like­ly could re­duce home in­va­sions. How­ev­er, in­di­vid­ual out­comes would be sit­u­a­tion­al and var­ied.

The Gov­ern­ment shouldn’t arm the pop­u­lace and not train them. In the same way that we can’t jump in a car and dri­ve with­out cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, we shouldn’t be able to get a gun with­out it. What are the reg­u­la­tions cur­rent­ly, and where do they need to get to for what is com­ing? How of­ten should you test on a range? Reg­u­lar main­te­nance is im­por­tant. Guns jam when fired af­ter not be­ing used for a long time.

As firearms num­bers in­crease, the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to have to have pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion on the re­quire­ments and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of gun own­er­ship. Stor­age and safe­ty would have to be im­por­tant ac­com­pa­ni­ments to own­er­ship. We in­crease the risk of in­ci­dents (do­mes­tic fights, chil­dren find­ing them and play­ing “pow pow”) with more guns in our pos­ses­sion. The gun by it­self isn’t a com­plete so­lu­tion.