Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Se­cu­ri­ty and firearms ex­perts warned that there could be se­ri­ous le­gal reper­cus­sions for own­ers of le­gal fire­marms if they are not care­ful in their re­sponse to crim­i­nal at­tacks.

In the space of three days, there have been two in­ci­dents where Firearm Users Li­cense (FUL) hold­ers de­fend­ed by­standers from armed at­tack­ers.

On Thurs­day night, two ban­dits who tried to rob the NP gas sta­tion near the Mar­itime Round­about, Barataria, were con­front­ed by a li­censed gun own­er. One of the ban­dits shot at the man, who re­turned fire, hit­ting both men.

They were tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) where they were ward­ed un­der po­lice guard.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors found 11 spent 9 mm shells at the scene.

Ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, a se­cu­ri­ty guard at a bar on the South­ern Main Road, Curepe, tried to break up a fight be­tween two men in the park­ing lot of the busi­ness­place.

One of the pa­trons re­port­ed­ly pulled out a knife. The guard told the man to drop the weapon but he con­tin­ued charg­ing to­wards the pa­tron.

The guard pulled out his li­censed pis­tol and shot the man.

Pres­i­dent of the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) Deryck Richard­son said while pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers had a right to de­fend them­selves and those around them, they should avoid us­ing ex­ces­sive force in sub­du­ing threats.

He said FUL hold­ers, in­clud­ing se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, should be aware of the threats they face be­fore con­fronting crim­i­nals.

“You must start by as­sess­ing the en­tire sce­nario, call­ing on the per­son to stop or de­sist and if they don’t obey, they have a split-sec­ond de­ci­sion to make,” he said.

“There’s a use of force con­tin­u­um which an FUL hold­er has to be mind­ful of. It’s not just be­cause you have a weapon and you see some­thing, you pull out your gun and get in­volved.”

Richard­son said there were al­so con­cerns about sit­u­a­tions where hold­ers of pri­vate­ly is­sued FULs used their li­censed guns to work as armed se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers.

He warned that this was not the best prac­tice as firearms is­sued to a pri­vate cit­i­zen should on­ly be used to pro­tect them­selves if they felt their life was threat­ened di­rect­ly.

For this rea­son, se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers should use the firearms pro­vid­ed by the com­pa­ny they work for which is in­sured with a Firearms User End Cer­tifi­cate (FUEC).

“The FUL is re­al­ly for your pro­tec­tion, or if you’re in a sit­u­a­tion where you can pro­tect some­one there are pro­vi­sions for that but it must be proven that you had no oth­er choice, but there are cer­tain li­a­bil­i­ties in­volved in that.

“You’re not sup­posed to be us­ing your per­son­al firearm to car­ry out a com­mer­cial act,” Richard­son said.

Firearms sub­ject mat­ter ex­pert and con­sul­tant Paul Na­hous agreed that it was not best prac­tice for se­cu­ri­ty guards to use their per­son­al weapons on the job.

He said while FUL hold­ers are en­ti­tled to de­fend them­selves, it was not part of their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to con­front crim­i­nals un­less their lives are in im­me­di­ate dan­ger.

“It is some­thing they need to be very cau­tious of be­cause it’s some­thing that can ac­tu­al­ly get you in a lot of le­gal trou­ble if you mis­judge a sit­u­a­tion.

“That’s why it’s im­por­tant to learn the law prop­er­ly and have ad­e­quate train­ing. It’s al­so im­por­tant to keep a cool head in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions,” Na­hous said.

“Firearms are a de­ter­rent to crime in that mat­ter, but the more peo­ple that have le­gal firearms and are trained to use them re­spon­si­bly, the bet­ter.”

Na­hous fur­ther clar­i­fied that se­cu­ri­ty guards us­ing pri­vate­ly li­censed guns on the job face some chal­lenges.

“If it’s an FUEC that firearm from the com­pa­ny is used for the pur­pose of du­ty or a job, it is cov­ered by in­sur­ance and oth­er forms of le­gal pro­tec­tion, but if you have a pri­vate­ly-is­sued firearm, you still have all the rights in law to de­fend your­self, to pro­tect peo­ple and prop­er­ty, how­ev­er on­ly in the ca­pac­i­ty as a pri­vate cit­i­zen,” he said.