JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The Prime Min­is­ter is again warn­ing that the stand your ground leg­is­la­tion must be eased in­to care­ful­ly, if at all.

He al­so said the cur­rent sys­tem used to grant Firearms Users’ Li­cences has to be re­viewed.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre yes­ter­day, Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the an­swer to in­creased crime was not to is­sue guns as oth­er coun­tries have demon­strat­ed that more guns are not the an­swer.

“We know what stand your ground is, we didn’t in­vent that. You are im­port­ing in­to us, in­to our com­mu­ni­ty, a la­bel which ex­ists out­side of T&T. And it was found to be re­quired in a so­ci­ety that was heav­i­ly mil­i­tarised and the out­come was more vi­o­lence. And in many in­stances, vi­o­lence in the most hor­ren­dous way, where the tru­ly in­no­cent was at the re­ceiv­ing end of a per­son who claim self-de­fence, stand your ground and sor­ry your dead,” Row­ley ex­plained.

He said the law can­not be a copy and paste but the cul­ture of the coun­try must be con­sid­ered.

Row­ley said the present sys­tem for is­su­ing guns has to be re­viewed and the Gov­ern­ment is do­ing that.

He ex­plained that it may see a change in leg­is­la­tion to al­low some­one more than the po­lice com­mis­sion­er grant­i­ng firearm users’ li­cences.

“There are a num­ber of things hap­pen­ing right now. The Cab­i­net and the Gov­ern­ment will take a de­ci­sion on one - how much we in­tend to mil­i­tarise the coun­try, two - how it is done and we re­al­ly should be try­ing to low­er the lev­el of vi­o­lence in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Row­ley said.

He added: “We need to bring down the lev­el of vi­o­lence in this coun­try and I don’t know any­where where it is brought down with more guns, it is usu­al­ly the oth­er way around. We in T&T need to be care­ful what we are swal­low­ing and be more rea­son­able in our ap­proach. The worst place to dis­cuss some­thing like this is in a po­lit­i­cal plat­form sea­son. Many peo­ple see it as a go to po­si­tion in pol­i­tics. But again, every­thing is pol­i­tics. Every­thing is pol­i­tics!”

Row­ley said while il­le­gal guns are the prob­lem and not le­gal ones, he, as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, was not sat­is­fied that the coun­try can prop­er­ly ac­count for all am­mu­ni­tion brought in­to the coun­try and that for him is “a big prob­lem.”