Jensen La Vende

De­spite hav­ing a gun amnesty as part of the State of Emer­gency reg­u­la­tions, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds says it was nev­er Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.

Speak­ing on a ra­dio pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Hinds said gun amnesties have not worked in the past.

“First of all, let me tell you that the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion as stat­ed has not been one for at­tempts at amnesty. We be­lieve that our law en­force­ment agen­cies have the law, the con­sti­tu­tion, the man­pow­er, the re­sources with in­tel­li­gence to go and find the guns.”

He added that there was an amnesty at some point be­tween 1986 to 1991 dur­ing the rul­ing of the NAR, but that failed.

Hinds said the Gov­ern­ment is aware that the gun is a tool of the trade of crim­i­nals so giv­ing it up is not some­thing they are will­ing to do.

“So, we for var­i­ous rea­sons, did not favour no amnesty. And that re­mains the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion. In the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions how­ev­er from 1970 to 1990 to 2011, that pro­vi­sion about amnesty is there, but it re­quires an or­der on the part of the Min­is­ter (of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty) to give ef­fect to it and we have made it clear we have not giv­en it such ef­fect and we don’t pro­pose to at the mo­ment.”

Hinds’ com­ments came days af­ter the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice said the gun amnesty was not in ef­fect.

The in­for­ma­tion came in re­sponse to a threat of le­gal chal­lenges to the reg­u­la­tion. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Sec­re­tari­at’s Cham­bers di­rec­tor Solange De Souza high­light­ed that the reg­u­la­tion has no cur­rent ef­fect.

The reg­u­la­tion be­came ef­fec­tive on De­cem­ber 30 af­ter the State of Emer­gency was de­clared. Nu­mer­ous at­tempts for clar­i­ty from po­lice were un­suc­cess­ful with them say­ing their le­gal team was ad­dress­ing it.

De Souza’s re­sponse on Jan­u­ary 7 was the first con­firmed po­si­tion on the is­sue.

Sec­tion 11 of the reg­u­la­tion states: “No per­son who sur­ren­ders any firearm, am­mu­ni­tion or ex­plo­sive dur­ing any pe­ri­od that is pre­scribed, and oth­er­wise in ac­cor­dance with an Or­der to sur­ren­der, shall be pros­e­cut­ed un­der the Firearms Act or reg­u­la­tion for il­le­gal­ly pur­chas­ing, ac­quir­ing or pos­sess­ing such firearm, am­mu­ni­tion or ex­plo­sive pri­or to the time of such sur­ren­der or at that time.”

At­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen, in a pre-ac­tion let­ter to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, said the reg­u­la­tion was con­tra­ven­ing the pow­ers of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

Hinds said the is­sue of a gun amnesty is a very com­plex one as the amnesty grants par­don for pos­sess­ing the weapon where­as crimes com­mit­ted us­ing the weapon may not be con­sid­ered par­don­able.

He added that the Gov­ern­ment is fo­cused on ad­dress­ing the porous bor­ders and not pur­su­ing any amnesty.