In Trinidad and To­ba­go, the most dif­fi­cult li­cence to ob­tain is the Firearm User's Li­cence (FUL) which has lit­er­al­ly been out­lawed even if one fits the present cri­te­ria. The ap­pli­ca­tion sits with the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion for years, and most times not grant­ed. Sim­ple and cour­te­ous ac­knowl­edge­ment of the re­ceipt of the ap­pli­ca­tion is not sent and makes one won­der if the ap­pli­ca­tion was ever re­ceived by the Firearms De­part­ment at all.

The crim­i­nals how­ev­er have guns, they re­al­ly don't care about the law, so we have "out­lawed guns and on­ly the out­laws have guns". They en­ter your home or shoot you in the street with im­puni­ty and they know you can­not pro­tect your­self and are at their mer­cy. Quite hon­est­ly the se­cu­ri­ty forces have failed the pop­u­lace. Busi­ness­men are frus­trat­ed with nu­mer­ous com­plaints about the process.

How­ev­er, I would like to fo­cus on the sport of com­pet­i­tive and Olympic shoot­ing for which a FUL is re­quired. There are shoot­ing clubs in Trinidad & To­ba­go equipped to train young­sters prop­er­ly in the art of safe­ly han­dling firearms and in marks­man­ship, mon­i­tored by trained coach­es. The Firearms Act should make pro­vi­sion to en­ter­tain teenage and oth­er ap­pli­cants and grant FUL for tar­get pur­pos­es un­der the su­per­vi­sion of an ap­proved firearms train­ing in­sti­tu­tion.

At Bis­ley, UK, on the ranges of the Na­tion­al Ri­fle As­so­ci­a­tion where I have been par­tic­i­pat­ing an­nu­al­ly for the last thir­ty-sev­en years, the best marks­men are usu­al­ly teenagers. The Olympic marks­men are all young peo­ple who start­ed in the sport as teens. It is well known that to be re­al­ly good in any sport one has to take it up at an ear­ly stage. Why not shoot­ing? In the past T&T has pro­duced ex­cel­lent in­ter­na­tion­al shoot­ers but that has waned sim­ply be­cause of the law and the un­usu­al­ly long wait for FULs. The sport is dy­ing.

It is time we take a tip from Ja­maica where ten years ago the then gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed that the over­worked po­lice should no longer have the bur­den of be­ing the re­spon­si­ble agent for the is­su­ing of firearms to the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion of the coun­try. This de­ci­sion was ar­rived at for a num­ber of rea­sons in­clud­ing:

1. The in­or­di­nate­ly long time it took for li­cens­es to be grant­ed. You could be wait­ing for two-three years to even com­mence the process.

2. The lack of firearm safe­ty and train­ing of­fered to prospec­tive firearm own­ers.

3. Fol­low up ac­tion with own­ers to en­sure they re­main cur­rent with their use and han­dling of their firearms.

4. The min­i­mum un­der­stand­ing of the laws and use of force as­so­ci­at­ed with car­ry­ing a firearm.

5. The cor­rup­tion in­volved in the grant­i­ng of li­cens­es. Ru­mours abound­ed of per­sons of ques­tion­able ref­er­ences pay­ing to get li­cens­es is­sued.

The Firearm Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty (FLA) came in­to be­ing. This is a civil­ian body led by an Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor with a board and staffing at all lev­els of the spec­trum of firearm own­er­ship. The on­ly thing that re­mains in the hands of the po­lice is clear­ance in re­spect of crim­i­nal his­to­ry.

The FLA fin­ger­prints you and prints are for­ward­ed to the po­lice. Once the all clear has been giv­en by the po­lice the process of own­er­ship com­mences. This process in­volves your at­tend­ing a course giv­en by an au­tho­rised FLA in­struc­tor.

This will in­volve com­plete use of the firearm to in­clude keep and car­ry, draw­ing and fir­ing un­der­stand­ing of your re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, etc.

Once you have passed this the FLA will com­plete the process. You will al­so be re­quired to have a se­cure safe at your premis­es. The FLA will in­spect your prop­er­ty.

The en­tire process should be com­plet­ed in three-six months max­i­mum and you will be retest­ed every three years which has to be car­ried out be­fore you can have your li­cense re­newed.

The new­ly-ap­point­ed Firearms Ap­peal Board (FAB) is cer­tain­ly a move in the right di­rec­tion but I note that ap­peals can on­ly be made af­ter two years and a new ap­pli­ca­tion made be­fore they can act.

I would, there­fore, en­cour­age the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to take a page from Ja­maica and form the Firearm Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad & To­ba­go.

Nor­ris Gomez

Pres­i­dent T&T Pis­tol & Ri­fle Fed­er­a­tion