Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The first pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the pro­posed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion took place yes­ter­day at the Barataria Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

In at­ten­dance were Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein.

The ses­sion drew a full crowd, with no avail­able seat­ing and at­ten­dees stand­ing both in­side and out­side the venue.

A sec­ond con­sul­ta­tion is sched­uled for to­day in Tu­na­puna.

The con­sul­ta­tion be­gan with Ho­sein ex­plain­ing the claus­es of the Home In­va­sion (Self De­fence of Prop­er­ty) Bill, 2025, as those gath­ered read along with copies that were dis­trib­uted.

As they wrapped up the con­sul­ta­tion, Alexan­der stressed that noth­ing was set in stone and that the pur­pose of the con­sul­ta­tion was to take the sug­ges­tions made and present them to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie and oth­er Cab­i­net mem­bers be­fore the mat­ter is tak­en to Par­lia­ment.

One of the sug­ges­tions came from Sean Ram­nar­ine, the pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of the Prison Ser­vice, who pro­posed that li­censed firearm hold­ers re­ceive prop­er train­ing.

Ram­nar­ine al­so ques­tioned if the spouse or fam­i­ly of a li­censed firearm hold­er who us­es the weapon dur­ing a home in­va­sion will be pro­tect­ed un­der the law.

When asked, Ho­sein said, “That is a mat­ter that we will have to take back to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. It is a grey area, and that is some­thing we will have to take back to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.”

An­oth­er mem­ber of the au­di­ence, Char­maine Bourne, asked what pro­tec­tion she would have if she used mace with­out a li­cence. She raised the ques­tion af­ter shar­ing that her home on St Paul Street had been in­vad­ed twice.

In re­sponse, Alexan­der ex­plained that pos­sess­ing mace or pep­per spray with­out a li­cence is il­le­gal. How­ev­er, he ad­dressed the ques­tion hy­po­thet­i­cal­ly, say­ing it might be con­sid­ered a “weapon of op­por­tu­ni­ty” de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stances.

Both min­is­ters said the pro­pos­al was to give cit­i­zens a fight­ing chance against crim­i­nals, in keep­ing with the elec­tion promis­es.

Ho­sein, while ad­mit­ting that not every­one would be grant­ed a firearm, en­cour­aged those el­i­gi­ble to ap­ply for one.