Charles Kong Soo

Eight-five per cent of the mur­ders in T&T are gun-re­lat­ed, ac­cord­ing to fig­ures from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

There were 420 mur­ders in 2015, 403 mur­ders in 2014, 407 mur­ders in 2013, 379 mur­ders in 2012, and 352 mur­ders in 2011 out of a pop­u­la­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple. The de­tec­tion rate for mur­der was 13.6 per cent for 2015, a de­crease from 16.1 per cent in 2014, ac­cord­ing to records from the TTPS.

And de­spite the seizure of 691 firearms in 2015, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of il­le­gal guns con­tin­ues to fu­el the drug trade, gang wars and killings in this coun­try.

Two mem­bers of the Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices were killed on Tues­day–29-year-old Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice Con­sta­ble Ja­son Cyril John was shot while head­ing to his Five Rivers, Arou­ca, home, and De­fence Force Cor­po­ral Jer­ry Lea­cock was shot and killed by four men who en­tered his Ja­cob Hill, Waller­field, home.

On Thurs­day, Sgt Ri­car­do Mor­ris, who works at the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion, was shot mul­ti­ple times in Sea Lots with a high-pow­ered AR-15 ri­fle.Mean­while, se­cu­ri­ty forces were placed on a height­ened state of alert­ness on Tues­day fol­low­ing al­leged threats to at­tack malls by Isis this week­end.

Ac­cord­ing to se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts, guns and am­mu­ni­tion smug­gled from the South West­ern penin­su­la is not a re­cent phe­nom­e­non.T&T's porous bor­ders cou­pled with the eco­nom­ic cri­sis in neigh­bour­ing Venezuela fur­ther ex­ac­er­bate the sit­u­a­tion for arms and drug smug­gling.

The fear is that with the grave short­age of food and oth­er sup­plies in Venezuela one could ex­pect guns be­ing ex­changed for food and sup­plies on a larg­er scale. When the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the penin­su­la a week ago, peo­ple in the area were tight-lipped about smug­gling. Crit­ics said the US$50 mil­lion in food that Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro will buy from T&T was like­ly to last on­ly a few weeks among a pop­u­la­tion of 30 mil­lion peo­ple, and that des­per­a­tion could step in and fur­ther fu­el the gun trade.

Sev­er­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts, for­mer ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC) Garvin Heer­ah, Flori­da In­ter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty Prof An­tho­ny Main­got, firearms weapon spe­cial­ist Paul-Daniel Na­hous and Pres­i­dent of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Hunters' As­so­ci­a­tions for Con­ser­va­tion of T&T (Chactt), Bud­die Miller, are con­cerned that with the cur­rent eco­nom­ic, po­lit­i­cal and so­cial tur­moil in Venezuela, the food for guns trade be­tween T&T and the main­land may es­ca­late and por­tions of the Guardia Na­cional's stock­pile of high-pow­ered Chi­nese AK-47s, Russ­ian AK-103 as­sault ri­fles and Dra­gunov sniper ri­fles can reach T&T's crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

Heer­ah not­ed, how­ev­er, that guns were not on­ly com­ing from Venezuela and Latin Amer­i­ca but al­so North Amer­i­ca.

In an email com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Sun­day Guardian on Thurs­day, Caribbean and South Amer­i­can se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Prof Main­got, who is based at Flori­da In­ter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty in Mi­a­mi, USA, said the for­mer Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez regime dis­trib­uted tens of thou­sands of Chi­nese AK-47 as­sault ri­fles to their par­ti­sans "and much of this was now for sale by the Guardia Na­cional which had been thor­ough­ly cor­rupt­ed."

He said as far back as 1972, "I did a study on the T&T-Venezuela re­la­tions in the Orinoco area and I was con­vinced that smug­gling was a ma­jor and his­tor­i­cal part of their lifestyle.

"It was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore scotch gave way to mar­i­jua­na then to co­caine.

"In the drug trade, guns are a ma­jor part of the ex­change for the sim­ple rea­son that they can­not be coun­ter­feit­ed."

Main­got said al­though most of the large-scale co­caine traf­fick­ing was now done by small planes and lux­u­ry yachts, there is still much guns-for-co­caine trade oc­cur­ring in the ar­eas of Ce­dros and Ica­cos and the is­lands of the Bo­cas.

He said the Gulf of Paria had be­come one big drugs/guns mart.

'Sol­diers sell­ing their­weapons for mon­ey'

Cer­ti­fied po­lice sniper and firearms weapon spe­cial­ist Paul-Daniel Na­hous, mean­while, said what was oc­cur­ring in Venezuela is sim­i­lar to what hap­pened to the for­mer So­vi­et Union when it dis­solved and for­mer states such as Ukraine broke away in 1991.

Some of the for­mer So­vi­et Union weapons were sold off legal­ly, but many slipped through the cracks and on­to the black mar­ket. Some mil­i­tary com­man­ders sold off en­tire mil­i­tary in­stal­la­tions and poor­ly paid sol­diers "lost" their weapons sell­ing them al­so.

In 2006 Venezuela bought 100,000 Russ­ian AK-103 ri­fles, 5,000 Dra­gunov sniper ri­fles and the man­u­fac­tur­ing li­cence and equip­ment for do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion.Na­hous said Chavez, a for­mer para­troop­er, chose the AK-103 as­sault ri­fle which fires the heav­ier 7.62x39 cal­i­bre am­mu­ni­tion with a range of 500 me­tres be­cause of its stop­ping pow­er.

The Dra­gunov sniper ri­fle us­es 7.62x54 am­mu­ni­tion, is ex­treme­ly re­li­able in all con­di­tions, from snow to heat and sand in the Mid­dle East­ern desert and de­signed for heavy use.The max­i­mum range of the Dra­gunov semi­au­to­mat­ic ri­fle with an op­ti­cal sight is 1,300 me­tres.He said the scary part was get­ting a ful­ly au­to­mat­ic ri­fle for a few loaves of bread and some packs of toi­let pa­per.

Na­hous said the dan­ger that these ri­fles posed was that the gangs here would know how to op­er­ate them, as the me­chan­ics were sim­i­lar to the Kalash­nikov ri­fle vari­ants in the coun­try. He said the am­mu­ni­tion for the AK-103 was avail­able and al­so the same as that of the AK-47s flood­ing the gang ar­eas in T&T.

Na­hous said the AK-103 can fire in sin­gle shot or ful­ly au­to­mat­ic, it was over-ef­fec­tive in pen­e­tra­tion, ca­pa­ble of punch­ing through build­ings, ve­hi­cles and body ar­mour.

Miller: Every type of weapon go­ing in­to­Ce­dros and Ica­cos from Venezuela

Miller, who is part of the hunters' group, said guns have al­ways been com­ing in­to the coun­try from the South West­ern penin­su­la. He said il­le­gal hunters were main­ly in­ter­est­ed in the car­tridges and shot­guns from Venezuela, as li­censed hunters were on­ly legal­ly al­lowed 100 shot­gun car­tridges per year.

If a hunter was shoot­ing ducks in the swamp, he