Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Le­gal firearms may be rel­a­tive­ly af­ford­able in T&T, but the process for ob­tain­ing a Firearms User’s Li­cence (FUL) is bogged down by out­dat­ed laws and an ar­cha­ic, pa­per-based sys­tem that re­quires ur­gent re­form, says at­tor­ney Nyree Al­fon­so.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the Firearms Train­ing In­sti­tute in Ch­agua­nas, where she is the di­rec­tor, Al­fon­so said the ap­pli­ca­tion process re­mains en­tire­ly man­u­al, with forms still pur­chased from the Gov­ern­ment Print­ery. This, she ar­gued, is con­tribut­ing to sig­nif­i­cant de­lays, with a back­log of over 35,000 ap­pli­ca­tions.

“The sys­tem must be digi­tised and the pro­ce­dur­al steps mod­ernised to meet the cur­rent needs of so­ci­ety,” she said.

“If you re­ceive no an­swer—which un­for­tu­nate­ly has been the re­al­i­ty for over a decade—peo­ple end up clog­ging the courts with ap­pli­ca­tions com­plain­ing about un­due de­lay.”

Al­fon­so not­ed that ap­proval or re­jec­tion rests sole­ly on the dis­cre­tion of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

“If he or she says no, then no is no—un­less you ac­cess the court or the Firearms Ap­peals Board,” she ex­plained. “With a to­tal pa­per-based sys­tem, it’s easy for some­one to say they can’t find this, they lost that, or it went to the wrong sta­tion.”

She sug­gest­ed that some in­di­vid­u­als, not on the ap­pli­cant side, may be ben­e­fit­ing from the in­ef­fi­cien­cies. She al­so point­ed out that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice unit tasked with pro­cess­ing li­cences is se­vere­ly un­der-re­sourced.

“If you have 35,000 ap­pli­ca­tions and on­ly nine or ten peo­ple in the unit, the math­e­mat­ics don’t work out,” she said.

Al­fon­so added that the stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion be­ing pro­poseed by Gov­ern­ment would in­flu­ence de­mand for firearms. Prices for le­gal firearms cur­rent­ly range from $7,500 to $40,000, she said.

She stressed that FUL hold­ers must train reg­u­lar­ly and en­sure their weapons and am­mu­ni­tion re­main func­tion­al, ad­vo­cat­ing for manda­to­ry an­nu­al train­ing to be in­clud­ed in any fu­ture amend­ments to the Firearms Act.

How­ev­er, Al­fon­so said there is a short­age of firearms for train­ing due to a pre­vi­ous ban on arms and am­mu­ni­tion im­ports from the Unit­ed States.

“The last gov­ern­ment went to the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment and asked them to ban ex­ports to T&T on the ba­sis that le­gal firearms were be­ing di­vert­ed to crim­i­nals,” she said. “The prob­lem has al­ways been the in­flux of il­le­gal firearms. Ban­ning le­gal deal­ers from im­port­ing from the US makes no sense.”

Sourc­ing weapons and am­mu­ni­tion from oth­er coun­tries, she said, in­creas­es costs and com­pli­cates sup­ply. She al­so un­der­scored that firearm own­er­ship is not for every­one.

“Own­ing a firearm is a big re­spon­si­bil­i­ty—a heavy re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Am I com­fort­able with a firearm around my fam­i­ly? I have young chil­dren,” she said.