SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

A qui­et shift in le­gal gun own­er­ship may be un­fold­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go—and it seems women are lead­ing the move.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, men have dom­i­nat­ed the ranks of Firearm User’s Li­cence (FUL) hold­ers, us­ing the le­gal route to pro­tect their homes, fam­i­lies, and busi­ness­es.

But in the wake of es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lent crime, there’s grow­ing anec­do­tal ev­i­dence that more women are seek­ing firearms for self-de­fence— al­though no of­fi­cial po­lice da­ta has con­firmed this trend.

The mo­men­tum ap­pears to have picked up fol­low­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, in which she pledged to in­tro­duce Stand Your Ground leg­is­la­tion. The pro­posed law would pro­tect in­di­vid­u­als who use force — in­clud­ing dead­ly force—against in­trud­ers un­law­ful­ly and forcibly en­ter­ing their premis­es.

Now sworn in as Prime Min­is­ter, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­it­er­at­ed her com­mit­ment to pub­lic safe­ty, en­cour­ag­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to ap­ply for FULs. She has al­so promised to es­tab­lish spe­cial com­mit­tees to ex­am­ine and rec­om­mend poli­cies that en­able cit­i­zens to pro­tect them­selves.

Her fiery cam­paign call—“load up the ‘mat­ic (au­to­mat­ic), pull it back, and knock it on them, and then knock it again when the crim­i­nals com­ing through your door!”—drew back­lash from some quar­ters, with crit­ics call­ing the state­ment reck­less in a coun­try al­ready plagued by vi­o­lence.

Still, firearm ex­pert Paul Na­hous said her com­ments had a no­tice­able im­pact.

“Since Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to ap­ply for their FULs,” Na­hous said, “I have seen an in­crease in women want­i­ng to be hold­ers of firearms.”

He said dozens of women have reached out to him in re­cent weeks for as­sis­tance—whether start­ing new ap­pli­ca­tions, ad­dress­ing stalled files, or seek­ing le­gal ad­vice for ap­peals.

Yet, while the in­crease ap­pears sig­nif­i­cant, re­li­able da­ta to con­firm a broad na­tion­al trend re­mains un­avail­able.

From what he has ob­served, in­ter­est among women has grown by 20 to 30 per cent since the new ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice—es­pe­cial­ly among women in their 30s to mid-40s. The most com­mon­ly re­quest­ed firearms are pis­tols, in­clud­ing Glocks, Sig Sauers, Spring­fields, and Smith and Wes­sons.

Of the more than 34,000 pend­ing FUL ap­pli­ca­tions cur­rent­ly be­fore the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), Na­hous es­ti­mates that women ac­count for few­er than 10 per cent. That to­tal pend­ing was first dis­closed in 2023 by then-na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds dur­ing the de­bate on the Firearms Bill (2022).

Na­hous said many of those ap­pli­cants have been wait­ing five to 20 years for ap­provals.

Ref­er­enc­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s push, he added, “I give her all cred­it in the world for it. It was long over­due.”

Be­yond self-de­fence

Be­yond self-de­fence, Na­hous said more women are al­so turn­ing to sport shoot­ing. “You will be very sur­prised to see the num­ber of men get­ting licks by some women in sport shoot­ing. So I’m see­ing a pos­i­tive trend to­wards women be­ing em­pow­ered in firearm own­er­ship.”

Still, cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers per­sist.

“The biggest hin­drance women face in get­ting a li­cenced gun is their hus­bands, part­ners and fam­i­ly mem­bers,” he not­ed. “Deny­ing a woman the right to pro­tect them­selves, to me, is akin to en­cour­ag­ing the abuse.”

Na­hous al­so is­sued a note of cau­tion: gun own­er­ship is not a guar­an­tee of safe­ty.

“A gun is a sword, not a shield. Hav­ing a gun on you does not mean some­body can­not at­tack you. And to de­fend your­self with a sword means you have to cut them down be­fore they cut you down. And that is a very im­por­tant con­cept to un­der­stand.”

Busi­ness­woman re­news fight

Among the women seek­ing to re-en­ter the process for FUL is a Port-of-Spain busi­ness­woman. Over her 28 years in goods dis­tri­b­u­tion, she has been robbed 14 times—three of them at gun­point.

“It’s hard to open your busi­ness af­ter be­ing robbed,” she said. “Some­times you just want to shut your doors be­cause you keep ask­ing your­self what is the point of run­ning a busi­ness when you can­not en­joy the lux­u­ry of mak­ing a prof­it.”

De­spite mul­ti­ple at­tempts, she was nev­er is­sued a file num­ber. Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent call spurred her to try again.

“So it’s more for safe­ty and al­so cash in tran­sit,” she said.

At­tor­ney: Wider ac­cess to guns must be bal­anced with safe­guards

At­tor­ney Jonathan Bha­gan, chair­man of the Caribbean Com­mit­tee Against Sex Crime, sup­ports the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s com­mit­ment to bol­ster­ing self-de­fence rights.

“How­ev­er,” he said, “I would like not just Stand Your Ground leg­is­la­tion but a wide va­ri­ety of amend­ments to the Of­fen­sive Weapons Act Chap­ter 11:09 and the Firearms Act to al­low the use of pep­per spray, tasers, ba­tons and oth­er weapons in self-de­fence.”

Bha­gan added, “It will lev­el the play­ing field and in­evitably stop a rape by al­low­ing a woman to shoot an at­tack­er dead and trust that the law will be on her side.”

Still, he cau­tioned that wider ac­cess to guns must be bal­anced with safe­guards.

“The on­ly dis­ad­van­tage of in­creas­ing gun own­er­ship is that our so­ci­ety has a high rate of men­tal ill­ness ... more fund­ing and mea­sures should be put in place to screen men­tal­ly un­fit ap­pli­cants.”

Unan­swered ques­tions

Key ques­tions re­main unan­swered about the FUL process:

* Is there a na­tion­al in­crease in FUL ap­pli­ca­tions since the Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment?

* What per­cent­age of cur­rent ap­pli­cants are women, and how does this com­pare to pre­vi­ous years?

* Are more women ap­ply­ing in spe­cif­ic re­gions—ur­ban or rur­al?

* How is the TTPS ad­dress­ing the long­stand­ing ap­pli­ca­tion back­log?

The Sun­day Guardian sent a list of ques­tions to act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin but re­ceived no re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.