An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley last night de­scribed the Op­po­si­tion’s Stand Your Ground cam­paign as a copy-cat po­lit­i­cal tool to fu­el the in­ter­ests of cer­tain per­sons who had much to gain from plac­ing firearms in the hands of the pop­u­la­tion.

He al­so re­vealed that mil­lions of rounds of am­mu­ni­tion are un­ac­count­ed for and al­so claimed that a for­mer top of­fice hold­er is be­fore the courts every week, fight­ing to pre­vent cer­tain in­for­ma­tion from be­com­ing pub­lic.

Row­ley made the claims as he re­spond­ed to a ques­tion from St Joseph res­i­dent Keron Ray­mond dur­ing Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter at the La Joya Com­plex last night.

Ray­mond asked how Stand Your Ground could ad­dress the is­sue of home in­va­sions, to which Row­ley replied that it was “copy-cat­ting of the worst kind of what was hap­pen­ing in Amer­i­ca.” He said no lo­cal gov­ern­ment body could pass such a law, adding that Stand Your Ground pro­vid­ed li­censed firearm users a clear­ance to act with­out pro­por­tion­al­i­ty.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the cam­paign is be­ing used a po­lit­i­cal mag­net and it could not be a na­tion­al pol­i­cy that every­one be giv­en a gun to de­fend them­selves if threat­ened.

“I am not say­ing that we could not look at a law, re­vise it, re­view it,” he said.

Row­ley said firearm ap­pli­ca­tions are con­sid­ered on mer­it as it is not the aim to mil­i­ta­rize the so­ci­ety. He al­leged that a hand­ful of peo­ple in the po­lice ser­vice found it lu­cra­tive to ex­ploit the sys­tem as it cost $40,000 for a Firearm User’s Li­cense, with an ad­di­tion­al of $15,000 for a li­censed firearm deal­er.

He said just a few years ago, the num­ber of li­censed firearms im­port­ed in­to the coun­try was be­tween 5,000 and 8,000 but this fig­ure jumped to 58,000 in just one year.

“Mul­ti­ply that by $40,000 and ask your­self who was get­ting that mon­ey? And ask your­self how many po­lice of­fi­cers are now be­fore the court for the cor­rup­tion of the firearms de­part­ment in the po­lice ser­vice?”

Row­ley added: “Ask your­self why the last Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is busy in the court house every Mon­day morn­ing ask­ing the court not to let the Prime Min­is­ter or any­body tell the coun­try what the gov­ern­ment knows about what went on in the po­lice ser­vice?"