Charles Kong Soo

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said there will be a ban on le­gal “as­sault weapons” held by hold­ers of firearms li­cences. He told Par­lia­ment on Fri­day that amend­ments will be made to Firearms Act to close loop­holes per­tain­ing to “weapons of war”.

Speak­ing in re­sponse to a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence in Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds, Young said the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Cari­com crime sym­po­sium was the first step in ac­knowl­edge­ment of the fact that through­out the re­gion coun­tries are fac­ing vi­o­lent crime and that it is a pub­lic health is­sue.

“Com­ing out of that it was stat­ed clear­ly by every prac­ti­tion­er that one of the great dif­fi­cul­ties that we face here in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the rest of the re­gion un­for­tu­nate­ly is the in­flux of il­le­gal arms and am­mu­ni­tion.

“You had some peo­ple try­ing to mis­lead us, the cit­i­zens, by re­fer­ring to the Firearms Act and say­ing look, but it is al­ready banned—au­to­mat­ic weapons. In the de­f­i­n­i­tion of pro­hib­it­ed weapons in the Firearms Act, au­to­mat­ic weapons are banned but I put on the record here to­day that it is as­sault weapons and the de­f­i­n­i­tion of as­sault weapons will come.”

Young added: “Don’t try to tan­gle up about il­le­gal arms and we’re go­ing af­ter le­gal firearms That’s not true, it’s il­le­gal firearms and we’re say­ing that one of the ways to stop the scourge of as­sault weapons is al­so to say we don’t even want the le­gal ones.”

He said the de­f­i­n­i­tion will come and it will cov­er what it need­ed to cov­er as it was not cur­rent­ly done.

Young said cit­i­zens know what as­sault weapons are and the dev­as­ta­tion of the cal­i­bre of the weapons be­ing used on the streets by crim­i­nals. He stressed that it was im­por­tant to recog­nise the vi­o­lent crimes peo­ple are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing to­day, es­pe­cial­ly with il­le­gal firearms and in­creas­ing­ly with as­sault weapons com­mon­ly known as AR-15s and AK-47s.

Young said it is very dif­fi­cult for some­one with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to gov­ern the coun­try to face the types of po­lice re­ports that Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds has faced.

Young not­ed how com­mon it is for a crime scene re­port to record mul­ti­ple spent shells of 5.56mm and 7.62mm am­mu­ni­tion re­cov­ered. He said one round of a high-pow­ered ri­fles’ am­mu­ni­tion would kill who­ev­er it hits im­me­di­ate­ly, un­like a 9mm and .380 pis­tol round. He said that is the rea­son for call­ing them weapons of war be­cause of the de­struc­tion they can in­flict.

Giv­ing an­oth­er ex­am­ple of their lethal­i­ty and col­lat­er­al dam­age, he point­ed out that re­cent­ly a 5.56mm bul­let passed through a wall and steel door and killed a woman in her bed­room.

To deal with crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty, the com­po­nents of a crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem had to work. This means that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, Foren­sics, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, de­fence lawyers and the Ju­di­cia­ry must work co­he­sive­ly.