UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal has called on Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to ex­plain the pol­i­cy, pro­ce­dure and prac­tice used to re­ceive firearms from cit­i­zens—in­clud­ing from En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

Mooni­lal did so yes­ter­day, af­ter Young last Sun­day de­nied Mooni­lal’s claim that he’d sur­ren­dered an “au­to­mat­ic” weapon to the po­lice. Mooni­lal had showed pic­tures of the type of pis­tol, call­ing it an “as­sault weapon”.

But Young said he’d nev­er been in pos­ses­sion of an au­to­mat­ic firearm. He said the pos­ses­sion and dis­pos­al of any le­gal firearm must be au­tho­rised and ap­proved by a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and he could con­firm that he, in fact, do­nat­ed a le­gal weapon to the TTPS.

Young said at all times, he abid­ed by T&T’s laws, adding his ac­tion was of his own vo­li­tion and he stood by it. He didn’t re­ply on the specifics of the rea­son for the ac­tion.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Mooni­lal, claim­ing Young “con­fessed af­ter be­ing smoked out”, said the CoP should in­di­cate how many pri­vate cit­i­zens had do­nat­ed their le­gal firearms to the TTPS over the past 10 years and un­der what cir­cum­stances.

Mooni­lal re­it­er­at­ed that Young must an­swer (a), why he went to the Po­lice Ar­moury and not his dis­trict po­lice sta­tion, as re­quired to dis­pose the gun; (b) if Young took the firearm him­self and didn’t il­le­gal­ly trans­fer it to some­one else to take it for him; (c) why ex­act­ly he chose to re­turn a firearm af­ter al­leged­ly “re­cent­ly” ac­quir­ing it; (d) when he ap­plied to the CoP to dis­pose of his weapon; (e) when the CoP gave per­mis­sion to dis­pose of it; (f) when Young re­ceived the gun li­cence; (g) the weapon’s pur­chase date; (h) price, brand mod­el and se­r­i­al num­ber; (i) when reg­is­tered; (j) if Young was the on­ly own­er; (k) if re­cal­i­brat­ed and if so, the na­ture of this; (l) if ever used and un­der what cir­cum­stances; (m) how many guns Young pos­sess­es and why; and, (n) what about the weapon caused him to give TTPS.

Young didn’t im­me­di­ate­ly re­ply to Guardian Me­dia’s queries on Mooni­lal’s state­ment yes­ter­day.

Mean­while, NTA leader Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day called for an ur­gent com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Young’s ad­mis­sion that he “do­nat­ed” a legal­ly owned firearm to the TTPS.

Grif­fith said peo­ple hold­ing Firearm Users Li­cences (FUL) aren’t au­tho­rised to “do­nate” their firearms, but there ex­ists a for­mal pro­ce­dure for dis­pos­ing of firearms through the use of a dis­pos­al form.

He added that there is noth­ing in T&T laws which clas­si­fies any­thing as an “as­sault weapon”.

“Firearms are gen­er­al­ly cat­e­gorised as ei­ther se­mi-au­to­mat­ic or au­to­mat­ic. This dis­tinc­tion is why hand­guns, ri­fles and even shot­guns which are is­sued to farm­ers are in­for­mal­ly re­ferred to as ‘as­sault weapons.’ On­ly law en­force­ment en­ti­ties and per­son­nel, not civil­ians like Min­is­ter Young, can be is­sued au­to­mat­ic weapons by the CoP. It is the rea­son why it is ig­no­rant for any­one to re­fer to them as ‘as­sault weapons’,” Grif­fith said.

Grif­fith al­so queried why the gun was “re­turned to the Mul­ti-Op­er­a­tions Pur­pose Unit”, which Mooni­lal al­so claimed was done.

Grif­fith al­leged, “Giv­en that this di­vi­sion is re­spon­si­ble for Young’s con­tin­u­ous state-spon­sored se­cu­ri­ty, this ac­tion ap­pears un­usu­al. It’s cus­tom­ary, in such sit­u­a­tions, to re­turn firearms to the sta­tion of is­suance.”

Grif­fith al­leged that “Giv­en Young ac­quired the FUL for this spe­cif­ic firearm, and less than one year af­ter he re­turns it,” Young should clar­i­fy the need for its dis­pos­al “with­in such a short pe­ri­od of time”.

The NTA head de­mand­ed a foren­sic ex­am­i­na­tion re­port re­gard­ing the firearm’s sta­tus, which should be made ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic.

“The con­cerns stem­ming from Young’s al­leged ac­tions un­der­score the im­per­a­tive to up­hold prop­er pro­ce­dures and ad­her­ence to the rule of law, specif­i­cal­ly con­cern­ing firearm pos­ses­sion and dis­pos­al. While Min­is­ters and their close as­so­ciates have so many FULs, they can choose to do­nate one back to the TTPS, this Kei­th Row­ley-led ad­min­is­tra­tion has is­sues with suit­ably qual­i­fied po­lice con­sta­bles, small busi­ness own­ers and farm­ers ac­quir­ing a FUL.”