La­belling the gov­ern­ment “di­a­bol­i­cal,” Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les claims plans are un­der­way to strip the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice of the pow­er to is­sue Firearm User’s Li­cences (FUL) and hand it to a new firearms com­mis­sion.

The for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter al­leged that the move is be­ing dis­guised un­der the stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion. Speak­ing at the PNM’s third na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion in Point Fortin on Thurs­day, Gon­za­les said he was in­formed of the pro­pos­al dur­ing dis­cus­sions on the Home In­va­sion (Self-De­fence and De­fence of Prop­er­ty) Bill, 2025. The Bill gives law­ful oc­cu­pants of a dwelling the right to use de­fen­sive force, in­clud­ing dead­ly force, against in­trud­ers.

“I was in­formed that part of the Gov­ern­ment’s agen­da in this stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion is to bring ad­di­tion­al leg­is­la­tion to re­move the pow­ers of the po­lice com­mis­sion­er from is­su­ing firearms in Trinidad & To­ba­go.”

Gon­za­les said he re­peat­ed­ly warned his cau­cus not to be dis­tract­ed by the bill. He point­ed to gov­ern­ment spokesper­sons sug­gest­ing that home­own­ers could shoot flee­ing in­trud­ers and re­called one quot­ing a for­mer judge who said, “It is bet­ter for you to be judged by 12 per­sons than to be car­ried by six.”

“And then you hear the Prime Min­is­ter say, ‘Blow them up in­to pieces, kill them vi­o­lent­ly,’ and then you hear a gov­ern­ment spokesper­son say­ing that we are go­ing to es­tab­lish gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties. You have to un­der­stand where they are go­ing with this sin­gu­lar bill, stand-your-ground. It is part of the pack­age of what the gov­ern­ment in­tends to do in Trinidad & To­ba­go.”

He read from a me­dia re­port in which Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ar­gued for re­forms to en­sure FUL ap­pli­cants were fair­ly as­sessed on mer­it. At a UNC Mon­day Night Fo­rum in Pe­nal, she lament­ed that some ap­pli­cants were re­ject­ed based on a sin­gle po­lice of­fi­cer’s opin­ion, call­ing the process un­fair and vow­ing to in­tro­duce leg­is­la­tion to change it.

“Our in­for­ma­tion is that they in­tend to bring leg­is­la­tion to re­move the dis­cre­tion of the po­lice com­mis­sion­er, in­tro­duce a com­mis­sion that is go­ing to be chaired by a board ap­point­ed by the gov­ern­ment of per­sons they can con­trol, so they can de­cide who gets a firearm and who does not get a firearm in Trinidad and To­ba­go. This is where they are go­ing with that.”

He cau­tioned the pub­lic to close­ly scru­ti­nise the ap­point­ments made to this board.

“So we will be very, very fool­hardy to fo­cus this dis­cus­sion on stand-your-ground. The gov­ern­ment is di­a­bol­i­cal, and they have a well-or­ches­trat­ed plan to in­tro­duce their agen­da in Trinidad and To­ba­go, an agen­da that is go­ing to dis­rupt our so­cial fab­ric.”

Gon­za­les al­so read from a Ja­maica Glean­er ed­i­to­r­i­al, quot­ing Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness’ Unit­ed Na­tions ad­dress, in which Hol­ness out­lined a 51 per cent re­duc­tion in crime with­out stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion. He cred­it­ed Ja­maica’s progress to tack­ling so­cial is­sues, prison re­form, po­lice cor­rup­tion, and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al im­prove­ments.

“Tonight, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment con­tin­ues to tell the gov­ern­ment that you can­not bring stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion as the panacea to solv­ing the crime prob­lem that you have been vot­ed in­to gov­ern­ment to solve.”

He urged the Gov­ern­ment to ta­ble a leg­isla­tive agen­da that ad­dress­es the so­cial con­di­tions that fu­el crime, say­ing the Op­po­si­tion would work with them on such mea­sures. He ac­cused the ad­min­is­tra­tion of pur­su­ing leg­is­la­tion to em­pow­er fi­nanciers poised to prof­it “hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars” from firearm sales, desta­bil­is­ing T&T’s so­cial fab­ric.

PNM Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader San­jiv Bood­hu dis­missed the pro­posed bill as a “cat in a bag”, warn­ing it did noth­ing to fix de­lays in Firearm User’s Li­cence (FUL) ap­provals or grant cit­i­zens re­al ac­cess to weapons. Speak­ing at a con­sul­ta­tion in Point Fortin, he said telling peo­ple to “load up the mat­ic” was mean­ing­less when most did not own firearms. PNM Youth Of­fi­cer Ka­reem Mar­celle ar­gued the bill lacked an im­mu­ni­ty hear­ing, ex­pos­ing home­own­ers to mur­der charges, while Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates said it was not a li­cence to kill and of­fered no rem­e­dy to crime.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, who said he had not heard Gon­za­les’ state­ments and re­quest­ed the de­tails, which were sent. There was no re­sponse up to press time. Calls to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro went unan­swered.