Samp­son Nan­ton

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds has de­fend­ed a clause in the Firearms (Amend­ment) Bill that sought to give the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty au­thor­i­ty to ex­tend firearm users li­cens­es, say­ing it was a “pure­ly in­no­cent” de­ci­sion.

The clause was re­moved af­ter In­de­pen­dent and Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors crit­i­cised it in the Sen­ate on Tues­day, deem­ing it an in­ter­fer­ence in the in­de­pen­dence of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

As a re­sult, the amend­ments had to re­turned to the House for ap­proval.

In rais­ing the mo­tion for ap­proval yes­ter­day, Hinds said the Gov­ern­ment had been mis­un­der­stood and the clause was re­lat­ed to chal­lenges they en­coun­tered dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“It was, in my view, wrong­ly felt that the mea­sure was in­tend­ed to al­low the min­is­ter to look in­to the op­er­a­tions of the Po­lice Ser­vice and to de­cide that a li­cense or li­cens­es in any par­tic­u­lar case or cas­es, should have been ex­tend­ed. That was clear­ly ex­plained as not be­ing the case,” he said.

He said the Gov­ern­ment re­alised dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic that there were cas­es where­by it had to ex­tend the va­lid­i­ty of li­cens­es, and that the clause in the bill was to en­sure it had the abil­i­ty to do so with firearm users’ li­cens­es as well.

“The mea­sure was pure­ly and in­no­cent­ly in­tend­ed to deal with that,” he said.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so re­moved a clause that would al­low pa­per-based firearm user li­cens­es to be con­vert­ed in­to elec­tron­ic cards.

Hinds said that mea­sure was to en­sure longevi­ty.

He ar­gued that in cas­es of ma­jor dis­as­ters, the elec­tron­ic form of doc­u­men­ta­tion would be more durable than the pa­per li­cens­es held by the coun­try’s 25,000 li­censed firearm users.

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion Oropouche East MP Roodal Mooni­lal said it was not rea­son­able Hinds to equate the ex­ten­sions of dri­vers’ per­mits with the ex­ten­sions of firearm li­cens­es.

“I want to in­di­cate to the min­is­ter that some­one can­not use a dri­ver’s per­mit to go and shoot and kill and mur­der. You can’t use the ID card to com­mit rob­bery. A firearm is a weapon. It can­not be equat­ed with ex­tend­ing the life of the in­spec­tion of your ve­hi­cle and so on,” he said, as he in­sist­ed no min­is­ter should be in­volved in the ex­ten­sion of a firearm li­cense.

He com­mend­ed the Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors for re­sist­ing the claus­es in the bill that led to the re­moval.

In wrap­ping up the mo­tion, Hinds said, “It was sim­ply a ques­tion of the Gov­ern­ment’s at­tempt to al­low as hap­pens now with so many oth­er pieces of leg­is­la­tion, the Par­lia­ment’s right to ex­tend the va­lid­i­ty of the pe­ri­od of the li­cens­es grant­ed by and ex­clu­sive­ly by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.”

The House agreed with the amend­ments to the bill.