Raphael John-Lall

Ex­perts, firearms deal­ers and busi­ness lead­ers con­tin­ues to rage on, on whether firearms are a nec­es­sary tool that can pro­tect busi­ness peo­ple and the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion in the fight against crime.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist and so­cial re­searcher Dau­rius Figueira is not op­ti­mistic that the grant­i­ng of Firearm Users’ Li­cences (FUL) will bring re­lief to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty from the crime scourge that has af­fect­ed this com­mu­ni­ty for years.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar is en­cour­ag­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to ap­ply for their FULs and says her gov­ern­ment al­ready has be­gun to work on “stand your ground” and an­ti-home in­va­sion laws.

While cam­paign­ing be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) had in­di­cat­ed that the coun­try’s ex­ist­ing self-de­fence laws are in­ad­e­quate.

At last week’s post Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, the Prime Min­is­ter al­so re­vealed that the laws gov­ern­ing FULs are be­ing as­sessed.

Ac­cord­ing to a Guardian Me­dia re­port on Tues­day, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der ref­er­enced El Sal­vador, a coun­try that has moved from hav­ing a very high homi­cide rate to be­ing one of the world’s safest coun­tries.

The busi­ness and in­vest­ment web­site, the Cen­tral Amer­i­can Group (CAG), in an ar­ti­cle dat­ed Oc­to­ber 2024 stat­ed that El Sal­vador’s Min­is­ter of Econ­o­my, María Luisa Hayem, un­equiv­o­cal­ly af­firmed that the en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty cli­mate in El Sal­vador has played a piv­otal role in at­tract­ing new in­vest­ments, stim­u­lat­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, and fos­ter­ing con­fi­dence among lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors.

Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF), El Sal­vador’s Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) is ex­pect­ed to grow by 2.5 per­cent in 2025.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Figueira ex­plained why he thinks is­su­ing FULs is not a panacea to the prob­lem of crime and in­se­cu­ri­ty in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and wider coun­try.

“There is the cam­paign promise and now the re­al­i­ty of im­ple­men­ta­tion is para­mount. In T&T, we have no right to bear arms, you must ap­ply to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) for such per­mis­sion, and qual­i­fy for such per­mis­sion to be grant­ed. Will per­mis­sion to own a firearm be grant­ed if you can­not af­ford a firearm and the req­ui­site train­ing and main­te­nance de­mand­ed?”

He then asked when these firearms are is­sued, if they will be a match for the much more pow­er­ful weapons that crim­i­nals are us­ing on the streets.

“This then is an elit­ist process and not one for the mass­es. How can you match the fire­pow­er of a FUL against bad boys with long guns of two types AR-15s and AK-47s? The grave prob­lem we face is an il­lic­it gun trade that con­tin­ues to op­er­ate with im­puni­ty be­cause of the in­ad­e­qua­cy of a state se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus trapped in a time warp, fac­ing a third decade 21st cen­tu­ry threat. No amount of FULs shall solve this grave prob­lem. In fact, it shall ex­ac­er­bate it, for the les­son of oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions is that with an ex­pan­sion of the le­gal gun, sup­ply di­ver­sions from le­gal to il­lic­it mar­kets ex­plode push­ing a tsuna­mi of avail­able guns on the streets.”

Firearm re­lief

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ex­pert, Garvin Heer­ah took a dif­fer­ent ap­proach ar­gu­ing that busi­ness own­ers will be bet­ter able to pro­tect them­selves with their new­ly ac­quired firearms.

“The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty re­mains one of the coun­try’s most vi­tal pil­lars — pro­vid­ing em­ploy­ment, dri­ving in­no­va­tion, and fu­elling eco­nom­ic growth. How­ev­er, their sense of safe­ty and op­er­a­tional con­fi­dence can on­ly be re­stored through re­al, sus­tained re­sults. If the promis­es made trans­late in­to gen­uine ac­tion — par­tic­u­lar­ly the re­duc­tion in crime and em­pow­er­ment of le­git­i­mate se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures — then re­lief and re­newed in­vest­ment will fol­low,” he said.

He said the Prime Min­is­ter’s pledge to ex­pe­dite the is­suance of FULs, while en­sur­ing rig­or­ous vet­ting and due dili­gence, of­fers long-await­ed re­lief to many le­git­i­mate ap­pli­cants.

“For the busi­ness sec­tor, this sig­nals a po­ten­tial in­crease in the num­ber of en­tre­pre­neurs and busi­ness own­ers who may soon be law­ful­ly armed and bet­ter able to pro­tect them­selves, their em­ploy­ees, and as­sets. This move, if prop­er­ly man­aged, will serve as a con­fi­dence boost­er for those who op­er­ate in high-risk en­vi­ron­ments and have felt ne­glect­ed by slug­gish bu­reau­crat­ic process­es.”

Frearms deal­ers

CEO of 868 Tac­ti­cal Firearms and Ma­jor (Army Re­tired) Dirk Barnes said firearms alone will not pro­tect the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty or pop­u­la­tion in gen­er­al.

“Yes, peo­ple are go­ing to feel a sense of safe­ty when they get firearms…but the re­al­i­ty is that no one is safer as it does not re­duce crime when you have a firearm. A ban­dit is not go­ing to stop ply­ing his trade be­cause he thinks a per­son might have a firearm.”

He said there are costs as­so­ci­at­ed with us­ing a firearm which in­cludes train­ing and main­te­nance of the firearm.

“A box of am­mu­ni­tion with 50 rounds right now is $250 on av­er­age. You will not be­come a com­pe­tent user of a firearm with­out find­ing an in­struc­tor. So your train­ing cost could be be­tween $3,000 to $4,000 to get you at a lev­el of com­pe­tence.”

Cer­ti­fied weapons in­struc­tor Jer­ry Goodridge ar­gues the neg­a­tives out­weigh the pos­i­tives and he does not be­lieve that busi­ness own­ers hav­ing firearms will al­low them to be able to ef­fec­tive­ly pro­tect them­selves as the pop­u­la­tion is not “gun ori­ent­ed.”

Goodridge is al­so re­spon­si­ble for the de­vel­op­ment of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Use of Force Pol­i­cy.

“To arm a busi­ness pop­u­la­tion which does not have time to have lunch with their fam­i­ly, the ded­i­ca­tion to de­fend them­self means they need to spend a lot of time in train­ing. T&T’s busi­ness­men are not ready to ac­quire any firearms. Many of them have firearms but they are not com­fort­able and com­pe­tent to use them. We have to ed­u­cate the pub­lic.”

Firearms deal­er, Luke Hadeed, who is the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of AE Tac­ti­cal told the Busi­ness Guardian that cit­i­zen safe­ty is a col­lec­tive is­sue.

He was re­spond­ing to a ques­tion on if he thinks the ac­qui­si­tion of firearms will make the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty safer.

“I would not com­ment on that and say that per­sons would be bet­ter pro­tect­ed as at the end of the day a range of so­lu­tions are re­quired and the pub­lic needs to take in­ter­est in con­tribut­ing to the space in terms of us all try­ing to im­prove our well- be­ing. So it is a col­lec­tive ef­fort and there is no sil­ver bul­let or one tool.”

Busi­ness lead­ers

Pres­i­dent of the Gas­par­il­lo Cham­ber of Com­merce, Samuel George told the Busi­ness Guardian that busi­ness own­ers are “soft tar­gets” and that hav­ing firearms will help pro­tect their homes and busi­ness­es.

“At­ter all the pro­ce­dures are done for all the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and peo­ple who qual­i­fy, it should be done in a time­ly man­ner where they ac­quire ei­ther the FUL or Firearms Users Em­ploy­ee Cer­tifi­cate (FUEC). It should be time­ly and not some­thing in­def­i­nite. If we are al­lowed to get firearms or ac­quire firearms, re­mem­ber we have as­sets to pro­tect. At the end of the day, we are our own first re­spon­ders. The po­lice and army are there, yes but they on­ly come af­ter the fact. When an as­sailant comes to your busi­ness place or your home, there is noth­ing to pro­tect you or your fam­i­ly or as­sets.”

Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, Daphne Bartlett told the Busi­ness Guardian that busi­ness own­ers have been ask­ing for the li­censed firearms for a very long time.

“The crim­i­nals are armed with high pow­ered firearms and the busi­ness own­ers and home­own­ers are help­less when con­front­ed by these crim­i­nals. It was very top­i­cal on the cam­paign trail and most peo­ple think it is one law for some and an­oth­er for oth­ers. We need to pro­tect our­selves and our fam­i­lies and staff from the armed crim­i­nals.”

She qual­i­fied her state­ments by say­ing that firearms own­ers must be re­spon­si­ble.

“The down­side of own­ing a firearm is if it gets in­to the wrong hands. We have many mur­ders com­mit­ted with the use of a cut­lass, knife or oth­er ob­ject. We should en­sure that the laws are put in place to be fair to every­one.”