SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

There are over 34,000 pend­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for firearm user’s li­cens­es (FULs) be­fore the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds has said.

He made the dis­clo­sure while speak­ing in the Sen­ate in the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day, as the de­bate on the Firearms Amend­ment Bill (2022) was wrap­ping up.

“There are over 34,000 ap­pli­ca­tions for firearms in front of the Po­lice Ser­vice and that is in ad­di­tion to the li­cens­es which ex­ist, which are on the books in Trinidad and To­ba­go in the re­gion of 25,000,” Hinds said.

Hinds was re­spond­ing to sub­mis­sions by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira on the num­ber of FULs grant­ed in some oth­er coun­tries.

Hinds said while there are about 25,000 ac­tive li­cens­es, vari­a­tions grant­ed over the last sev­er­al years to FUL hold­ers mean the num­ber of legal­ly is­sued firearms was much high­er.

“Those are li­cens­es, but I can tell you with the re­cent mad­ness with re­spect to vari­a­tions, where some peo­ple have 40 weapons, 30 weapons, 36, 14, you just call any num­ber, you are talk­ing about thou­sands of le­gal firearms, so when I hear what about the or­di­nary man, I could talk a lot about or­di­nary men and women,” Hinds said.

As he con­tin­ued to wrap up the de­bate on why the Prison Com­mis­sion­er should be grant­ed au­thor­i­ty to al­low prison of­fi­cers to keep and car­ry their State-is­sued firearms, Hinds turned to jabs made against him by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors ear­li­er in the day.

Sev­er­al months ago, Hinds was ac­cused of send­ing mes­sages to for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, ask­ing Grif­fith to check on FUL ap­pli­ca­tions for mem­bers of his se­cu­ri­ty de­tail.

The al­le­ga­tions were made against Hinds dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing by Op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.

At that time, Hinds de­nied send­ing any mes­sages to Grif­fith of that na­ture.

How­ev­er, on Wednes­day morn­ing, he had a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

“I asked the then-Com­mis­sion­er to look in­to those ap­pli­ca­tions which were al­ready made, I did that,” Hinds said.

He said he knew at the time that the dis­cre­tion to grant or refuse to grant a FUL lay sole­ly with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

Re­call­ing be­ing ques­tioned by Mooni­lal dur­ing the JSC, Hinds said, “The mes­sage he (Mooni­lal) read to us in the com­mit­tee now hav­ing his phone, sug­gest­ed to me that it was a mes­sage I sent to a for­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and who like a wimp, an un­trust­wor­thy wimp, would share that with him.”

In a re­lease yes­ter­day from Grif­fith’s Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA), the par­ty’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary Tim Teemal said Hinds’ state­ments high­light the Gov­ern­ment’s over­reach and in­ter­fer­ence.

The re­lease said af­ter the CoP mer­it list fi­as­co with the for­mer head of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, Bliss Seep­er­sad, and two years of “con­stant at­tacks” on Grif­fith’s char­ac­ter, “cit­i­zens are forced to con­clude that the rea­son for the ‘Get Gary’ cam­paign was to have the fi­nal po­lit­i­cal say in who gets and keeps le­gal firearms.”