KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Op­po­si­tion is not op­posed to sup­port­ing stand-Your-Ground leg­is­la­tion, but on­ly if it is what cit­i­zens want.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les re­vealed that she was open to col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Gov­ern­ment to pass this piece of leg­is­la­tion, pend­ing pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion.

The self-de­fence law al­lows any­one who feels se­ri­ous­ly threat­ened to fight back with force, in­clud­ing dead­ly force, with­out hav­ing to run away or re­treat to their home, car or even out­side first.

In the past, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley urged his sup­port­ers against sup­port­ing such a law, warn­ing it was dan­ger­ous and would on­ly ben­e­fit those who would gain from plac­ing firearms in the hands of cit­i­zens.

He al­so re­ferred to it as “copy­cat leg­is­la­tion.”

Tak­ing a dif­fer­ent stance from her pre­de­ces­sor Row­ley, who was res­olute­ly against arm­ing cit­i­zens as an an­swer to the coun­try’s crime is­sue, Beck­les said if the gen­er­al con­sen­sus was that cit­i­zens would feel safer with this law, then she was open to sup­port­ing it. 

She made the claim dur­ing her first me­dia con­fer­ence as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion yes­ter­day.

Beck­les said, “Yes, al­ways will­ing to ad­dress the is­sue of con­sul­ta­tion, and as I made it clear, if you bring good leg­is­la­tion, we will be will­ing to col­lab­o­rate and sup­port.

“One of the rea­sons why this was raised is be­cause a lot of peo­ple feel un­safe in their homes, so we can­not de­ny the fact that that is in the pub­lic do­main … You can’t just main­tain a po­si­tion if you have over­whelm­ing sup­port, but I be­lieve the is­sue of ed­u­ca­tion on this mat­ter is ab­solute­ly crit­i­cal.

“Peo­ple have to be con­scious of it be­cause there are times when these things can work against you. In oth­er words, you can de­vel­op a whole cul­ture where peo­ple be­lieve that you’re in the Wild Wild West and every­body should have a gun.”

Beck­les, how­ev­er, cau­tioned the Gov­ern­ment about im­ple­ment­ing the stand-your-ground law us­ing Flori­da’s mod­el.

Ac­cord­ing to Beck­les, Flori­da had a high homi­cide rate, and she ques­tioned how ap­plic­a­ble this mod­el was to T&T.

Beck­les said, “Ac­cord­ing to a study con­duct­ed by Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, the in­tro­duc­tion in 2005 of the stand-your-ground mod­el leg­is­la­tion laws in Flori­da has been linked to a 24 per cent in­crease in homi­cides and a 31 per cent rise in homi­cides in­volv­ing firearms, with the largest pro­por­tion­al in­crease oc­cur­ring in the 20–34 age group.

At this point in time, Flori­da ranks 22nd in the Unit­ed States for gun homi­cide and gun as­sault rates. On av­er­age, 3,038 die and 6,358 are in­jured by gun vi­o­lence in Flori­da each year. So that, us­ing the Flori­da mod­el, which is what this Gov­ern­ment is us­ing, we would want to rec­om­mend some con­sul­ta­tions with the pub­lic be­fore this par­tic­u­lar piece of leg­is­la­tion is im­ple­ment­ed.”

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi al­so ques­tioned the pa­ra­me­ters of the stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion, ques­tion­ing how the Gov­ern­ment planned to de­fine “ground” and if it ex­tend­ed out­side one’s home.

Al-Rawi said, “On one hand you’re say­ing to the pub­lic, ‘Emp­ty the mat­ic. Emp­ty the clip. Stand your ground’. We as an op­po­si­tion must look at all of the pa­ra­me­ters and ask, What is your ground? Where are you go­ing to de­fend? Who are you de­fend­ing? Is it in a pub­lic space? In your car? It is an ecosys­tem that this law must be looked at. We are very ea­ger to see what is com­ing. We stand for what is right in terms of the sen­ti­ment of so­ci­ety, but it must be ap­plied pro­por­tion­ate­ly.”

At­tempts to con­tact Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter and Min­istry in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath said Beck­les has been silent on mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty for ten years.

Padarath said the pop­u­la­tion has spent ten years with an in­ef­fec­tive gov­ern­ment. “It has reached a stage where the Op­po­si­tion Leader can­not sep­a­rate her­self from that be­cause she was a se­nior Cab­i­net min­is­ter in the Kei­th Row­ley gov­ern­ment, and not once did she pub­licly in­di­cate that she had any is­sue with any planned pol­i­cy or lack there­of of that ad­min­is­tra­tion in terms of deal­ing with crime.

“So, the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion’s si­lence over the last ten years in terms of treat­ing and deal­ing with the is­sue of crime re­al­ly is an in­dict­ment of her lead­er­ship, and there­fore for her to take the po­si­tion now, I think she un­der­stands the pulse of the pop­u­la­tion af­ter the lick­ing that they got in the last gen­er­al elec­tion, crime be­ing one of those is­sues that was fore­most in the minds of the pop­u­la­tion.”