Firearms legislation passage critical

THE NATIONAL security of Trinidad and Tobago and this country’s commitment to eradicating the illegal arms trade within the Americas, makes passage of the Firearms Amendment Bill 2003 by the House of Representatives all the more critical. The Lower House is due to consider and approve amendments to this Bill, which was passed in the Senate last November. The significance of the Bill’s passage is “the need to comply with international obligations flowing from the May 1998 signing by TT of the Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and other related materials.” As of February 2002, 15 Organisation of American States (OAS) nations (Argentina, Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Grenada, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela) have signed the Convention.

The Convention’s purpose is to “make the citizens of the hemisphere safer by helping to shut down the illicit transnational arms market that fuels violence associated with drug trafficking, terrorism and international organised crime.” The Convention’s key provisions include: ensuring that arms are transferred only to legitimate users; improving the ability to track illegal firearms; information-sharing on legislative practices to combat illicit arms trafficking and money laundering related to such illicit arms trafficking and transnational cooperation “in various fields of law enforcement such as extradition, mutual legal assistance, confiscation and forfeiture.” In keeping with these obligations, one of the Bill’s major provisions is the creation of “a firearms registry to keep records of all licences, applications, importations, losses and other prescribed matters concerning firearms.” The proposed legislation also makes trespass with a firearm and possession of a firearm while drunk or under the influence of drugs, punishable offences.

Regional security featured prominently in talks between Prime Minister Patrick Manning and US Government officials in Washington DC in December, with Manning outlining several initiatives being taken by TT in that area. According to a 2003 report from the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), some 50,000 firearms are smuggled from the US to Canada, the Caribbean and Latin America on an annual basis. The group said these weapons include handguns, rifles, machine guns and shoulder-fired missiles and constitute a “significant problem especially because the United States supplies most of the world’s weaponry.” IANSA claimed United Nations benchmarks to control the worldwide illegal weapons trade “are not mandatory for any countries which may account for some of the discrepancy in fulfilling the recommendations.” The group further alleged that compliance with UN efforts to curb the global illegal weapons trade has been “disappointing” from countries in the Middle East, China and Russia.