DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

As Trinidad and To­ba­go edges clos­er to adopt­ing stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion, de­bate is in­ten­si­fy­ing over how the law will be en­forced and whether race, polic­ing cul­ture, and ac­cess to firearms will shape its im­pact.

The Home In­va­sion (Self-De­fence and De­fence of Prop­er­ty) Bill, 2025, now heads to the Sen­ate, the fi­nal hur­dle be­fore pres­i­den­tial procla­ma­tion. The Gov­ern­ment will need at least three Op­po­si­tion or In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to se­cure the re­quired three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty: 19 votes in a cham­ber com­pris­ing 16 gov­ern­ment, six op­po­si­tion, and nine in­de­pen­dent mem­bers.

Short­ly be­fore mid­night Wednes­day, de­bate on the leg­is­la­tion con­clud­ed and was put to a vote af­ter a di­vi­sion was called by Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert.

The vote end­ed with 23 in favour, in­clud­ing the 21 Gov­ern­ment MPs in the House and the two elect­ed mem­bers of the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty. The ten Op­po­si­tion MPs vot­ed against the Bill.

Its pas­sage in the Low­er House has al­ready re­opened na­tion­al anx­i­eties not on­ly around vi­o­lent crime, but al­so around who will be pro­tect­ed, who could be harmed, and how much force cit­i­zens should be legal­ly al­lowed to use.

The Bill in­tro­duces a stand­alone of­fence of home in­va­sion and ex­pands the le­gal rights of oc­cu­pants to de­fend them­selves and their prop­er­ty, in­clud­ing un­der a “no du­ty to re­treat” pro­vi­sion. Penal­ties start at 20 years’ im­pris­on­ment and a $500,000 fine, ris­ing to 25 years and $750,000 for ag­gra­vat­ed cas­es linked to gangs or vul­ner­a­ble vic­tims.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad dis­missed claims that the leg­is­la­tion could tar­get any par­tic­u­lar racial group, fears am­pli­fied by com­par­isons to con­tro­ver­sial US cas­es.

“That is com­plete­ly un­found­ed, and it’s very un­for­tu­nate that some­times politi­cians do not both­er at all to look at the ev­i­dence, and they com­ment in a way that tries to put down, you know, some­thing which ac­tu­al­ly has the po­ten­tial for a lot of ben­e­fit in the coun­try,” he said.

“When you look at court cas­es, whether you dis­ag­gre­gate those find­ings and you look at mur­ders alone, or rob­beries alone, or oth­er kinds of of­fences, you see a wide cross-sec­tion of peo­ple in the pris­ons, a wide cross-sec­tion of per­sons of dif­fer­ent de­mo­graph­ics be­ing pros­e­cut­ed. So I do not at all think that a bill like this is go­ing to re­sult in tar­get­ing a par­tic­u­lar de­mo­graph­ic or a par­tic­u­lar eth­nic­i­ty.”

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said the racial di­men­sion can­not be ig­nored, but warned against draw­ing par­al­lels with the Unit­ed States.

“We can’t get away from the fact that there is a race di­men­sion that we have to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion at all times. And we can­not sim­ply close our eyes to that. But I will not com­pare what is hap­pen­ing in the US with what is hap­pen­ing in Trinidad.”

Yet con­cerns stretch be­yond race. The Bill’s re­al-world ef­fec­tive­ness hinges on whether or­di­nary cit­i­zens can law­ful­ly ob­tain firearms, an area where for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said the sys­tem is fail­ing.

“For this home in­va­sion bill to be ef­fec­tive and for it to have max­i­mum pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, we have to get out of this out­dat­ed sys­tem that has gone on for decades in this coun­try by po­lice com­mis­sion­ers and by the State, based on the laws that make it vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble for a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen to get a firearm.”

Firearms train­er and at­tor­ney Nyree Al­fon­so al­so sup­ports re­form of the firearm li­cens­ing process, re­ject­ing the idea that any one racial group dom­i­nates ap­pli­ca­tions.

“I do not see any dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of per­sons of any par­tic­u­lar race ap­ply­ing. Peo­ple who had no in­ter­est in ob­tain­ing a firearm 20 years ago have an in­ter­est now be­cause of the state of crime in Trinidad. I am six dif­fer­ent mix­tures in me. I don’t know which one of me would grav­i­tate more to­wards a firearm if I didn’t have one.”