The Po­lice Ser­vice says it stands ready to sup­port cit­i­zens who are con­sid­er­ing ob­tain­ing firearm users li­cences (FULs).

One of the promis­es made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar dur­ing the re­cent elec­tion cam­paign, was to make FULs more ac­ces­si­ble for cit­i­zens who qual­i­fy.

Speak­ing to­day on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew show, TTPS Me­dia Am­bas­sador, ASP Owie Rus­sell, stat­ed that cit­i­zens are en­ti­tled to pro­tect them­selves and their homes against crim­i­nal at­tacks.

He al­so gave as­sur­ances that the Po­lice Ser­vice will work to­wards ed­u­cat­ing FUL hold­ers about the laws gov­ern­ing own­er­ship.

“We un­der­stand a man's home is his cas­tle … and he would want to de­fend him­self and his fam­i­ly to the best of his abil­i­ty,” he said.

“We hope there would be some lev­el of con­sul­ta­tion,” he not­ed con­cern­ing the ex­pect­ed in­crease in le­gal gun own­ers. “We, as law en­force­ment, will do all that we had to do on our side to en­sure the safe­ty of the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

ASP Rus­sell ob­serves that while more cit­i­zens may have in­creased ac­cess to le­gal firearms, not every­one who qual­i­fies may take up the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“Every­body will have their own view about some­thing based on their own ex­pe­ri­ences,” he said, adding that some peo­ple are un­easy with the con­cept of firearm own­er­ship.

“There are peo­ple who may nev­er feel com­fort­able ap­ply­ing for a firearm notwith­stand­ing the fear of crime,” he said.

Ear­li­er this week, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er (Ag) Ju­nior Ben­jamin re­port­ed that there was a no­tice­able in­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple ap­ply­ing for FULs since the elec­tion.

He al­so con­firmed that the ap­pli­ca­tion process would be avail­able on­line.

At a re­cent Post Cab­i­net brief­ing, the Prime Min­is­ter al­so had en­cour­aged cit­i­zens wish­ing to ob­tain li­cens­es to ap­ply to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.