Two In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors yes­ter­day urged Gov­ern­ment to al­low peo­ple to buy pep­per spray with­out per­mits and re­move bu­reau­crat­ic mea­sures to ac­quire it.

The opin­ions came from In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors Evans Welch and De­oroop Teemul dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate on the Firearms Act amend­ment to fa­cil­i­tate pep­per spray use.

The bill was passed with a vote of 22 for, no ob­jec­tions and two ab­sten­tions.

Call­ing for a bet­ter mod­el, Welch said, “The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al needs to wheel and come again.”

Welch, a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor re­called in­ci­dents where women were at­tacked and cit­ed re­cent cas­es up to An­drea Bharatt.

“Some­thing needs to be done here and now. It’s not enough that ar­rests are made. Even when jus­tice is done it doesn’t re­store life or re­pair psy­cho­log­i­cal dam­age,” Welch added.

Since at­tacks oc­cur away from law en­force­ment eyes, he said pep­per spray may of­fer an op­por­tu­ni­ty for a vic­tim to re­tal­i­ate, jump out of a car or run. He said it does no per­ma­nent dam­age, but has a dra­mat­ic tem­po­rary ef­fect.

But he said women may find bu­reau­crat­ic re­quire­ments to get it too dif­fi­cult.

Call­ing for it to be lib­er­al­ized and to have cer­tain tox­i­c­i­ty lev­els, Welch said peo­ple 16 years and over should be al­lowed to buy it with­out a per­mit from the po­lice, that it should be trans­ferrable to oth­ers and that some should be pro­hib­it­ed from hav­ing it.

Of­fences should be cre­at­ed for spray mis­use and it should have its own law, “The Pep­per Spray Lib­er­al­i­sa­tion Act.”

Sen­a­tor Teemul said he echoed Welch’s views on oner­ous con­di­tions to get the spray. He said the spray ap­peared eas­i­er for po­lice to ac­quire. He ex­pressed con­cern about pos­si­ble hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions in the use of the spray by po­lice re­gard­ing po­lit­i­cal or work­ers’ ral­lies. He said con­sul­ta­tions weren’t held with hu­man rights groups.

Teemul urged guid­ance for po­lice to use it so the state may avoid the risk of com­pen­sa­tion for those claim­ing pep­per spray was im­prop­er­ly used on them. —Gail Alexan­der