Finance Minister Colm Imbert says AR-15 semi-automatic rifles are “murderous” weapons and legislation is needed to ban them.
At the Parliament sitting yesterday, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley spoke to the need to make legislative intervention to ban assault weapons.
In response, Opposition MP Ravi Ratiram said assault weapons were already banned in T&T, and he quoted a firearms expert.
In winding up the budget debate, Imbert criticised Ratiram and the Opposition on the issue. He said what was banned in Trinidad and Tobago was an automatic firearm.
He noted that according to the Firearms Act, a “prohibited weapon” is defined as “any artillery or automatic firearm”.
The United States passed legislation in 1994 called The Federal Assault Weapons Ban, where they have banned categories of weapons, he noted.
The definition of an assault weapon in the US includes all of the specified semi-automatic rifles—all AK series, UZI, Beretta and AR-15s, he said.
Imbert noted many of the weapons used by gangs and criminals in Trinidad and Tobago were not automatic weapons, which this country’s legislation speaks to.
He recalled a Time Magazine article dated May 2023, entitled “How the AR-15 rifle became America’s most dangerous weapon”, as he pointed out that an analysis showed mass shootings in the US were done using AR-15 semi-automatic rifles.
Imbert explained Trinidad and Tobago’s legislation was very “narrow”, and it simply says “automatic weapons” are banned.
“But the AR-15 is not an automatic weapon, it is a semi-automatic rifle,” he said.
He said Caricom was not “foolish” for working on legislation to address this, and neither was the US.
“They recognised that the semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 are murderous and must be banned, and should not be in the hands of a civilian,” said Imbert.
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Publish date : 2024-10-10 22:00:00
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