The Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance is echo­ing the call of Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for per­son­al firearms to be made avail­able to Law En­force­ment Of­fi­cials.

In a me­dia re­lease NTA Po­lit­i­cal Leader Gary Grif­fith said aligns with the po­si­tion tak­en by him when he was Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, where al­most half of the FULs (Firearm User’s Li­cense) is­sued dur­ing his tenure were for past and present mem­bers of the Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices, con­sti­tut­ing just 3000 of the 15,000 per­son­nel in the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

He said in his first year alone, al­most 1000 FULs were is­sued to Law En­force­ment Of­fi­cials. How­ev­er, he said af­ter his de­par­ture, “ A vir­tu­al stop oc­curred, pos­si­bly in­flu­enced by po­lit­i­cal mo­tives, as both Row­ley and Hinds seem to have an agen­da against the is­suance of le­gal firearms.” Grif­fith said this “stance” con­tin­ues to pri­or­i­tize the well-be­ing of crim­i­nals over that of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

He said, the pub­lic should ques­tion why the Row­ley-led gov­ern­ment op­pos­es Law En­force­ment Of­fi­cials hav­ing firearms, es­pe­cial­ly since none were lost, stolen, or in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing his tenure.

“ Very soon, cit­i­zens will have to de­cide which po­si­tion they pre­fer—one that caters on­ly to elites and their as­so­ciates, or one that rec­og­nizes the im­por­tance of pro­vid­ing legal­ly is­sued firearms to those Law En­force­ment Of­fi­cials, as well as cit­i­zens who re­quest a firearm to pro­tect them­selves, their fam­i­lies and their as­sets.”

He said recog­nis­ing the dan­ger they and their fam­i­lies face and guid­ed by the prin­ci­ple that law en­force­ment of­fi­cers al­ready have the req­ui­site skills and train­ing for the use of firearms in their every­day du­ties, it is wrong to ask them to be left vul­ner­a­ble to crim­i­nals they in­ter­act with every day, as af­ter they leave work, they can be­come the tar­get of these same crim­i­nals at any sec­ond in the day or night.

“ The pub­lic and all mem­bers of the Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices should, how­ev­er, know that as soon as this Kei­th Row­ley-led gov­ern­ment is out of of­fice, the NTA Po­lit­i­cal Leader gives the as­sur­ance that the process will be re­sumed to en­sure that all Law En­force­ment Of­fi­cials will have the ca­pac­i­ty to have their own firearms.”