Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Firearms deal­er and range op­er­a­tor, Jethro John, of the In­ter­na­tion­al De­fen­sive Pis­tol As­so­ci­a­tion (ID­PA) Trinidad and To­ba­go, has de­scribed a re­cent high-lev­el stake­hold­er meet­ing with Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, Roger Alexan­der, on mat­ters re­lat­ed to the stand-your-ground law as a suc­cess.

It comes one week af­ter Alexan­der as­sured stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing those in the firearm in­dus­try, that they will be in­clud­ed in con­sul­ta­tions on the craft­ing of the leg­is­la­tion.

John, who co­or­di­nat­ed and chaired the near­ly three-hour-long ses­sion on Sun­day at the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that 25 peo­ple from across the in­dus­try par­tic­i­pat­ed in talks and shared their per­spec­tives on the pro­posed up­dates to the leg­is­la­tion cur­rent­ly un­der re­view.

"It was a his­toric day. Nev­er have we had in the last 20-25 years such an as­sem­bly with the deal­ers and range op­er­a­tors com­ing to­geth­er, and I think the stake­hold­ers were very ex­cit­ed to get on­board and have their say."

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie pre­vi­ous­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed that stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion will be laid in Par­lia­ment af­ter the up­com­ing mid-year bud­get re­view. He al­so in­di­cat­ed that the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty had been tasked with as­sem­bling a spe­cialised com­mit­tee to pro­vide him with de­tailed in­struc­tions for draft­ing the leg­is­la­tion.

John, who has long ad­vo­cat­ed for re­spon­si­ble firearm own­er­ship and pub­lic safe­ty, said the meet­ing was con­struc­tive and fo­cused heav­i­ly on prop­er ac­count­abil­i­ty as it was iden­ti­fied that there was a ne­glect by FUL hold­ers to in­vest in train­ing in the ab­sence of leg­is­la­tion.

"Unan­i­mous­ly, we saw it from the stand­point of the deal­ers and range op­er­a­tors are like the gate­way or the guardians to sup­port such leg­is­la­tion in terms of train­ing and weapon fa­mil­iar­iza­tion. We rec­og­nize that with this leg­is­la­tion, there will be an in­flux of firearms in the in­dus­try and train­ing be­ing the cor­ner­stone that will al­low con­tin­u­ous as­sess­ments and eval­u­a­tion."

John al­so flagged the im­por­tance of stan­dard­iz­ing the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and the re-cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process for FUL hold­ers as well as the need for ed­u­ca­tion­al work­shops as it re­lates to safe­ty, weapon fa­mil­iar­iza­tion, aware­ness and mind­set.

"There be spe­cial­ized train­ing cours­es as it re­lates to home in­va­sions and self-de­fence."

He as­sert­ed that Min­is­ter Alexan­der was re­cep­tive to the sug­ges­tions.

"He was very in­ter­ac­tive about the dis­cus­sion and made sug­ges­tions in ar­eas not on­ly con­nect­ed to firearm deal­ers and sport shoot­ing but in gen­er­al as it re­lates to the TTPS and dif­fer­ent ar­eas that would add lever­age to the leg­is­la­tion run­ning smooth­ly."

Guardian Me­dia reached out the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie for an up­date on the stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion spe­cial com­mit­tee. How­ev­er, there was no re­sponse by the time of the pub­li­ca­tion of this ar­ti­cle.