Pavi­t­ra Ramharack

For sev­er­al years, we have watched our crime rates es­ca­late. Each day our news­pa­per car­ried head­lines of mur­ders, rob­beries, as­saults and oth­er vi­o­lent crimes. The crim­i­nals did not dis­crim­i­nate. Per­sons were tar­get­ed re­gard­less of age, race, so­cial or fi­nan­cial sta­tus. We all lived and con­tin­ue to live with a sense of fear that we may one day be­come a vic­tim of crime.

It cer­tain­ly isn’t sur­pris­ing that many peo­ple now con­sid­er what can be done in an at­tempt to pro­tect them­selves and their homes. Fences and walls were built, cam­eras in­stalled, guard dogs ac­quired, but to many that was not enough.

The need for a firearm be­came im­por­tant to a grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple and the ap­pli­ca­tions for a Firearm User’s Li­cence (FUL) were prompt­ly com­plet­ed and lodged. At the be­gin­ning of this year, it was re­port­ed that there was a back­log of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25,000 ap­pli­ca­tions. I am cer­tain that has in­creased.

Dur­ing the elec­tion sea­son, our cur­rent Gov­ern­ment, in un­der­stand­ing the fear that had gripped the na­tion and per­sons’ de­sire to feel they can pro­tect them­selves and their homes, cam­paigned on sev­er­al points con­cern­ing crime, one be­ing eas­i­er ac­cess to FULs.

On Sat­ur­day (May 24), the T&T Guardian car­ried an ar­ti­cle with re­spect to women and FULs. Paul Na­hous, be­ing a firearms ex­pert, in an in­ter­view for the ar­ti­cle stat­ed that more women were reach­ing out to him for as­sis­tance, which gave the im­pres­sion that more women were in­ter­est­ed in se­cur­ing a li­cence. Just over a week ago, the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice al­so re­vealed there was an in­crease in the num­ber of ap­pli­ca­tions be­ing re­ceived. In light of this, per­haps it is time to con­sid­er amend­ments to the Firearms Act.

In May 2024, the then-at­tor­ney gen­er­al sug­gest­ed the over­haul­ing of the firearms laws in T&T. I un­der­stand this may not be a pop­u­lar sen­ti­ment at this time, yet, it is a prac­ti­cal one.

A valid FUL al­lows for a per­son to have the ben­e­fit of a con­cealed gun in a pub­lic place. The Firearms Act de­fines a pub­lic place as “any place which at the ma­te­r­i­al time the pub­lic has ac­cess.” This is a broad de­f­i­n­i­tion of pub­lic. It means, there­fore, that a per­son who has the ben­e­fit of a FUL can have a gun brought on their per­son in­to a school, a bar, a church, an of­fice space, hos­pi­tal, bank and the list con­tin­ues.

Last week, there was an in­ci­dent in To­ba­go where there ap­peared to be a ver­bal al­ter­ca­tion be­tween a woman and male stu­dent out­side a school. This al­ter­ca­tion re­sult­ed in the woman and an uniden­ti­fied man be­ing beat­en by stu­dents.

In Jan­u­ary this year, there was a vi­o­lent al­ter­ca­tion be­tween a teacher and stu­dent in Moru­ga. De­spite the male teacher seem­ing to be phys­i­cal­ly fit, he was eas­i­ly tack­led and tak­en down by a male stu­dent.

Imag­ine for just a mo­ment, a par­ent step­ping in­to a school com­pound or at the gates and hav­ing an al­ter­ca­tion with a stu­dent. Imag­ine fur­ther, the said par­ent has the ben­e­fit of an FUL and has his con­cealed weapon on his per­son. Imag­ine a teacher hav­ing the ben­e­fit of a con­cealed weapon.

We have all seen the videos of how eas­i­ly both par­ents and teach­ers were tak­en to the ground by stu­dents. Can you now imag­ine a teacher or a par­ent or a stu­dent reach­ing for that gun and a vi­o­lent al­ter­ca­tion turns in­to ei­ther mur­der or ar­gu­ments of self-de­fence?

Con­sid­er a more in­no­cent ap­proach; a par­ent seek­ing a meet­ing with a teacher due to com­plaints re­ceived by their child. Con­sid­er an ar­gu­ment be­tween the par­ent and teacher which es­ca­lates to a par­ent grab­bing their weapon in haste, on a school com­pound, with in­no­cent chil­dren look­ing on. To some, this may seem a lit­tle far-reach­ing, but I as­sure you there have been more than one heat­ed ex­change be­tween par­ents and teach­ers on school com­pounds.

Sec­tion 13B of the Firearms Act makes it an of­fence to have a firearm while you are drunk or un­der the in­flu­ence of dan­ger­ous drugs. Yet, the act does not pro­hib­it a per­son from en­ter­ing in­to a bar with a firearm.

While at the bar, it may be con­clud­ed, that some, not nec­es­sar­i­ly all, per­sons who have en­tered with a firearm will con­sume al­co­hol. If the act does not trust a drunk per­son or a per­son un­der the in­flu­ence of drugs to have im­me­di­ate pos­ses­sion of a firearm, why then, al­low a per­son to en­ter such an es­tab­lish­ment with a firearm.

Agree­ably, a firearm in the hands of some­one whose men­tal abil­i­ties are com­pro­mised due to al­co­hol or drugs can­not be trust­ed to make rea­son­able de­ci­sions in the use of a dead­ly weapon.

I have no dif­fi­cul­ty with per­sons be­liev­ing that be­ing in pos­ses­sion of a firearm would al­low them to bet­ter pro­tect them­selves. How­ev­er, if we are about to in­crease the num­ber of peo­ple walk­ing around with firearms, then, we should con­sid­er amend­ing the act.

The act should cre­ate cer­tain gun-free zones. While there are sev­er­al oth­er amend­ments that should be con­sid­ered, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the ap­pli­ca­tion and re­new­al process for FULs, one of the most cru­cial amend­ments at this time con­cerns our abil­i­ty to take a firearm in­to places where it sim­ply should not be al­lowed.

Pavi­t­ra Ramharack is head of cham­bers at Pavi­t­ra Ramharack At­tor­neys at Law and can be reached at ramharack_pavi­t­ra@out­look.com