Two crit­i­cal and very rel­e­vant de­tails in the judg­ment of the Ap­peal Court in­volv­ing the re­fusal of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to im­me­di­ate­ly grant a firearms user’s li­cence to Towfeek Ali and his Firearms Train­ing In­sti­tute Lim­it­ed are “the gen­er­al state of gun vi­o­lence” and what the CoP said is a de­fi­cien­cy “in the in­ter­nal process­es (to hand out the FULs) filled with al­le­ga­tions of cor­rupt deal­ings.”

What the three judges of the Ap­peal Court must have con­sid­ered are the dai­ly re­ports of mul­ti­ple fa­tal shoot­ings, in many in­stances with re­port­ed­ly il­le­gal­ly ac­quired firearms. So too are the in­stances when killing weapons have been li­censed, but are in the hands of crim­i­nals.

The crit­i­cal point is that the wide­spread pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns in the coun­try, le­gal and il­le­gal, and the fact that they are be­ing used in this siege on in­no­cent peo­ple, and so too by the crim­i­nals in their gang war­fare, must be coun­tered. Guardian Me­dia, though, is ful­ly aware of the op­pos­ing ar­gu­ment that cit­i­zens and res­i­dents should be en­ti­tled to have weapons to de­fend them­selves and their prop­er­ty against crim­i­nals.

It’s a point made by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in her call for stand your ground leg­is­la­tion. “Light them up; emp­ty the whole clip,” said the Op­po­si­tion Leader on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form last year.

She al­so asked cit­i­zens want­i­ng FULs to “hold strain” for when her par­ty gets in­to pow­er to in­tro­duce leg­is­la­tion to “fight back against vi­cious crim­i­nals.” For his part, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley cal­cu­lat­ed that hand­ing out guns for cit­i­zens to fight back “puts one group against what they be­lieve is an­oth­er group … it has no place in T&T.” He fur­ther warned that to hand out weapons so eas­i­ly would be to “mil­i­tarise the coun­try.”

Un­doubt­ed­ly, there is mer­it in both con­sid­er­a­tions, even though the Op­po­si­tion Leader chose to make her counter in a cav­a­lier man­ner on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form with­out due care for the con­se­quences; she be­ing ful­ly aware that a Prime Min­is­ter can­not act in such a free­hand­ed man­ner. What is cer­tain is that in­creased num­bers of guns in the hands of mem­bers of the pop­u­la­tion can be a dan­ger­ous thing.

More so, if cor­rup­tion is in­volved in the ac­qui­si­tion of the FULs. Gun deal­er Towfeek Ali and his Firearms Train­ing In­sti­tute are plan­ning to, as is their right, take the mat­ter to the British Privy Coun­cil for a fi­nal judg­ment.

While there is al­ways the need for a de­ci­sion by a fi­nal court, it’s once again an in­dict­ment on the in­de­pen­dence of the ju­di­cial sys­tem here that such a ma­jor de­ci­sion is not made by the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, which has been cre­at­ed by our gov­ern­ments and peo­ple and has shown it­self to be very ca­pa­ble and rel­e­vant.

The pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns has cre­at­ed and nour­ished a gun cul­ture. Young men in their com­mu­ni­ties make a prac­tice of fir­ing off their weapons in cel­e­bra­tion of their pow­er and to send mes­sages to the au­thor­i­ties that they are not afraid of of­fi­cial­dom.

Now that the Ap­peal Court has ruled in sup­port of the po­si­tion of the CoP, she must get to the sources of the en­try of il­le­gal firearms com­ing in­to the coun­try and cor­rup­tion in the hand­ing out of FULs.