KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) says the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to in­crease the fees for Firearm User Li­cens­es (FUL) shows how lit­tle it cares about pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens.
Re­spond­ing to the pro­posed changes to FUL fees, NTA’s North­west Co­or­di­na­tor Paul-Daniel Na­hous said the changes al­so show how much the Gov­ern­ment is will­ing to per­se­cute reg­u­lar peo­ple.

These peo­ple in­clude re­tired De­fence Force per­son­nel, hunters and those want­i­ng to par­tic­i­pate in shoot­ing as a sport.
Na­hous, a law en­force­ment con­sul­tant, asked: “Did any­one stop to think that these ex­or­bi­tant in­creas­es may lead to more prae­di­al lar­ce­ny for farm­ers, who in turn may in­crease the prices of their pro­duce, in­flict­ing more pain on the con­sumer?”
Dur­ing the Na­tion­al Bud­get 2023 pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert pro­posed to in­crease all FUL fees un­der the Third Sched­ule of the Firearms Act Chap­ter 16:01, ex­cept as­sault weapons, by 100 per cent. Im­bert said they would have sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er li­cense fees than oth­er types of firearms.
In an NTA state­ment, Na­hous said the Gov­ern­ment is plac­ing an ad­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial bur­den on over 20,000 law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

He was be­wil­dered at the pace of the planned amend­ment of the Firearms Act, card­ed to take ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2023, with­out even hav­ing the cor­rect ter­mi­nol­o­gy.

He added there were no rec­om­men­da­tions for ad­dress­ing the many grey and un­clear ar­eas in the Firearms Act.
“An as­sault on law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, who want the right to pro­tect them­selves be­cause the State clear­ly can­not. The min­is­ter’s en­tire fo­cus was on the ac­qui­si­tion of le­gal firearms while not ad­dress­ing the re­al is­sue of il­le­gal firearms, which in the hands of crim­i­nals, are re­spon­si­ble for every one of the record amount of mur­ders with the use of firearms our na­tion is present­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing.”
Na­hous said the Gov­ern­ment is send­ing a clear sig­nal to crim­i­nals that it is an al­ly will­ing to ig­nore their trans­gres­sions.

Mean­while, it en­sures that an an­ti-gun cam­paign and witch-hunt con­tin­ues against law-abid­ing cit­i­zens while the blood of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans floods the streets.
The Gov­ern­ment al­so plans to lim­it pri­vate cit­i­zens pos­sess­ing as­sault weapons and as­so­ci­at­ed am­mu­ni­tion.

Im­bert said while the Gov­ern­ment pre­pares the leg­isla­tive amend­ments, the li­cence fees for own­ing as­sault weapons in pri­vate hands will in­crease to $5000 per year. The an­nu­al li­cense fee for own­er­ship of an as­sault weapon for use in a fir­ing range will in­crease to $1000.
But Na­hous ques­tioned who ad­vis­es the Gov­ern­ment on the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of weapon sys­tems.
“First­ly, what does the min­is­ter un­der­stand an ‘as­sault weapon’ to be? For the sake of ac­cept­ed pub­lic un­der­stand­ing, a pro­fes­sion­al can on­ly rea­son­ably equate the term “as­sault weapon,” to mean a weapon which dis­charges a NA­TO spec ri­fle cal­i­bre, used by the mil­i­tary, with au­to­mat­ic fire ca­pa­bil­i­ties.”
Na­hous said ur­ing NTA po­lit­i­cal leader Gary Grif­fith’s tenure as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the Po­lice Ser­vice did not is­sue a sin­gle FUL to a civil­ian. He said if Grif­fith had done that, he would have breached Sec­tion 6 (2) of the Firearms Act.
“If Im­bert would like to see what an ac­tu­al as­sault weapon is, he need look no fur­ther than at his State-pro­vid­ed se­cu­ri­ty de­tail fol­low­ing him around 24/7 or the re­cent video footage in which two se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers lost their lives and for which their col­league is still bat­tling for hers.”