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Sunday, July 13, 2025

PM urges law-abiding citizens: Apply for your FULs

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64 days ago
20250510
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar addresses members of the media during Thursday’s post-Cabinet media briefing at the Red House, Port-of-Spain.

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar addresses members of the media during Thursday’s post-Cabinet media briefing at the Red House, Port-of-Spain.

ROGER JACOB

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar is en­cour­ag­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to ap­ply for their firearm users’ li­cences (FULs). She says her Gov­ern­ment has al­so al­ready be­gun to work on “Stand Your Ground” and an­ti-home in­va­sion laws.

While cam­paign­ing be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) had in­di­cat­ed that the coun­try’s ex­ist­ing self-de­fence laws were in­ad­e­quate and it would ad­dress them to give cit­i­zens more pro­tec­tion against the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

At Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, the Prime Min­is­ter said the laws gov­ern­ing FULs were be­ing as­sessed and en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to ap­ply to have and own le­gal firearms.

“We will be re­view­ing short­ly the firearm li­cence laws. Re­mem­ber, we’ve said we will con­sid­er giv­ing le­gal firearms to law-abid­ing cit­i­zens? But they will on­ly be giv­en to per­sons who want it,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“I see some peo­ple com­plain­ing and say­ing, ‘No, No, No!’,” she ob­served.

“If you don’t want it [a FUL], you know what to do. Do not ap­ply.”

The UNC made le­gal gun own­er­ship, ‘Stand Your Ground’ and an­ti-home in­va­sion laws a pil­lar of its elec­tion cam­paign strat­e­gy.

“Our pro­pos­al means putting in­to our laws the le­gal prin­ci­ple that al­lows a per­son to use force in self-de­fence with­out re­treat­ing. Right now, you can on­ly use rea­son­able force. But this prin­ci­ple, al­so cas­tle doc­trine, states that in­di­vid­u­als have the right to use force, in­clud­ing dead­ly force, to pro­tect them­selves against an in­trud­er in their homes. The law will pro­tect home­own­ers, busi­ness­peo­ple and oc­cu­piers when they use force, in­clud­ing dead­ly force, against any in­trud­er who un­law­ful­ly and forcibly en­ters their res­i­dence,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said dur­ing the cam­paign.

The UNC had promised that once in gov­ern­ment, it would cre­ate a home in­va­sion of­fence in law with a 25-year jail penal­ty.


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