Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro is stay­ing tight-lipped about who is ap­ply­ing for Firearm Users’ Li­cences (FULs), of­fer­ing no in­sight in­to whether more women have joined the line in re­cent months. He was equal­ly guard­ed when asked about the de­mo­graph­ic break­down of ap­pli­cants be­ing ap­proved.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, Gue­var­ro said he pre­ferred not to dis­close any da­ta on the age, sex or oc­cu­pa­tion­al back­ground of ap­pli­cants. But he in­sist­ed the process re­mains open to all who qual­i­fy un­der the law.

“Whilst I will ex­er­cise cau­tion and not dis­close de­mo­graph­ic da­ta on Firearm User’s Li­cence ap­pli­cants, I can as­sure you that the process re­mains open to all who meet the le­gal re­quire­ments,” he said. “I en­cour­age all qual­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als, in­clud­ing women, to ap­ply if they be­lieve they have le­git­i­mate grounds. The TTPS is com­mit­ted to a sys­tem that up­holds both pub­lic safe­ty and ac­cess to law­ful self-pro­tec­tion.”

Firearms con­sul­tant Paul Na­hous told Guardian Me­dia last month that he had ob­served a no­tice­able uptick in fe­male clients, most­ly in their 30s and 40s, seek­ing ad­vice on ap­pli­ca­tions, ap­peals and stalled files. While he es­ti­mat­ed a 20 to 30 per cent rise in in­ter­est among women since the new Gov­ern­ment took of­fice, he stressed that no na­tion­al da­ta had been made pub­lic.

Dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar urged law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to arm them­selves and promised to in­tro­duce stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion. Now in of­fice, she has dou­bled down on the mes­sage, vow­ing to set up pol­i­cy com­mit­tees to ex­am­ine the FUL process and ex­pand ac­cess to le­gal firearms.

Gue­var­ro, mean­while, said he re­mains fo­cused on pro­ce­dur­al re­form. In a re­cent state­ment, he con­firmed that he had com­plet­ed his first re­view of FUL files and re­turned them to the Firearms Per­mit Unit for dis­patch. He said fu­ture sub­mis­sions would be ad­dressed prompt­ly as part of his push for greater ef­fi­cien­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Un­der the re­vised pro­ce­dure, on­ly new ap­pli­ca­tions will be ac­cept­ed at the FPU. Sup­port­ing doc­u­ments must now be rout­ed through po­lice sta­tions, and ap­pli­cants are ad­vised to wait for di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion from their dis­trict of­fi­cers.

The com­mis­sion­er has al­so an­nounced plans to al­low off-du­ty front­line of­fi­cers to car­ry ser­vice weapons home, and has or­dered an au­dit of the TTPS ar­moury to de­ter­mine how many idle weapons can be de­ployed.