As con­sul­ta­tions con­tin­ue on Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion, an ad­vo­cate against gen­der-based vi­o­lence is call­ing on the State to en­sure safe­guards are in place to re­duce the po­ten­tial for harm, es­pe­cial­ly in do­mes­tic set­tings.

Gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence (CADV), Sab­ri­na Mowlah-Baksh, warned that the in­tro­duc­tion of leg­is­la­tion al­low­ing in­di­vid­u­als to use dead­ly force in self-de­fence could have dan­ger­ous im­pli­ca­tions if not care­ful­ly reg­u­lat­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly in house­holds where there is a his­to­ry or risk of abuse.

Her com­ments fol­low the mur­der of a Cou­va woman, who was re­port­ed­ly shot and killed by a male rel­a­tive.

“Firearm users’ li­cense pro­ce­dure, whether rigid or loose, may have lit­tle ef­fect on ac­cess to firearms, as our cur­rent record of gun vi­o­lence shows. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we have al­so read many re­ports of GBV per­pe­trat­ed by pre­cept­ed per­sons, for ex­am­ple, po­lice, army, and se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel. The is­sue re­lat­ed to firearm li­cences is the pre-eval­u­a­tion and mon­i­tor­ing of ap­pli­cants. This is al­ready a chal­lenge in a num­ber of ar­eas,” she said dur­ing an in­ter­view yes­ter­day with Guardian Me­dia.

She em­pha­sised that firearm ac­cess should be care­ful­ly scru­ti­nised.

“The prob­lem with gen­der-based vi­o­lence against women is big­ger than Firearm Users’ li­cens­ing. But the State has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to re­duce the pos­si­bil­i­ty of harm, not make it eas­i­er.”

Mowlah-Baksh al­so con­tend­ed that those in au­thor­i­ty must ad­dress so­cio-eco­nom­ic and oth­er con­di­tions that con­tribute to tox­ic and vi­o­lent be­hav­iours.

She not­ed that with na­tion­wide con­sul­ta­tions on the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion on­go­ing, mem­bers of CADV will con­sid­er at­tend­ing in per­son or pro­vid­ing writ­ten sub­mis­sions.

Mean­while, Adri­ana San­drine Isaac-Rat­tan, pres­i­dent of the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work (IWRN), urged for broad­er and more sus­tained ef­forts tar­get­ing men as a crit­i­cal part of the na­tion­al re­sponse to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. 

Isaac-Rat­tan, who did not ob­ject to ef­forts to make le­gal firearms more ac­ces­si­ble to wor­thy ap­pli­cants, stat­ed that the is­sue stemmed be­yond the ac­qui­si­tion of a weapon.

“The is­sue with re­gards to Gov­ern­ment eas­ing ac­cess to FULs, that is fine. How­ev­er, what we want to say more im­por­tant­ly and this is based on our work in the trench­es for more than ten years, when a man is des­tined to com­mit a crime against a close rel­a­tive, it does not mat­ter what the weapon is, he will find one. We just lost Can­dace Hon­ore, and a gun was not used; he used a sharp­ened weapon.”

In ad­di­tion to the pro­posed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion, the Gov­ern­ment led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has en­cour­aged law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to ap­ply for their firearm users’ li­cences (FULs).

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter, Sad­dam Ho­sein, re­gard­ing pro­vi­sions in the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to re­duce the pos­si­bil­i­ty of harm; how­ev­er, there was no re­sponse.