Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar is en­cour­ag­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to ap­ply for their firearm users’ li­cences (FULs) and says her gov­ern­ment al­ready has be­gun to work on ‘stand your ground’ and an­ti-home in­va­sion laws.

While cam­paign­ing pri­or to the gen­er­al elec­tion, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) had in­di­cat­ed that the coun­try’s ex­ist­ing self-de­fense laws are in­ad­e­quate.

At yes­ter­day’s post Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, the PM al­so re­vealed that the laws gov­ern­ing FULs are be­ing as­sessed.

She is en­cour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to ap­ply.

“We will be re­view­ing short­ly the firearm li­cense laws. Re­mem­ber we’ve said we will con­sid­er giv­ing le­gal firearms to law-abid­ing cit­i­zens? But they will on­ly be giv­en to per­sons who want it,” the PM said.

“I see some peo­ple com­plain­ing and say­ing, ‘No, No, No!’,” she ob­served. “If you don’t want it [a FUL], you know what to do. Do not ap­ply.”

The UNC made le­gal gun own­er­ship, ‘stand your ground’ and an­ti-home in­va­sion laws a pil­lar of its cam­paign strat­e­gy.

“Our pro­pos­al means putting in­to our laws the le­gal prin­ci­ple that al­lows a per­son to use force in self-de­fence with­out re­treat­ing. Right now, you can on­ly use rea­son­able force but this prin­ci­ple, al­so cas­tle doc­trine, states in­di­vid­u­als have the right to use force, in­clud­ing dead­ly force, to pro­tect them­selves against an in­trud­er in their homes. The law will pro­tect home­own­ers, busi­ness­peo­ple and oc­cu­piers when they use force, in­clud­ing dead­ly force, against any in­trud­er who un­law­ful­ly and forcibly en­ters their res­i­dence,” Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said dur­ing the cam­paign.

The UNC had promised that once in gov­ern­ment, it would cre­ate a home in­va­sion of­fence in law with a 25-year jail penal­ty and al­so of­fer a ‘stand your ground’ le­gal prin­ci­ple al­low­ing cit­i­zens to use dead­ly force to de­fend their homes against in­trud­ers.