Attorney, gun range director: FULs for women 'no silver bullet'

Attorney and director of the Firearms Training Institute in Chaguanas Nyree Alfonso is a small woman.

She would tell you, however, that when she is vexed, she is about ten feet tall and weighs about 600 pounds but, in reality, she is only five foot three inches. She is, however, no stranger to danger. Being a shipping attorney who would arrest ships for major companies, she has been faced with threats of all kinds from all manner of people. As secretary and director of the Firearms and Training Institute in Chaguanas, she is also equipped with a firearm to handle those threats.

But in a conversation with Newsday on December 11, Alfonso, although being the owner of a firearm, said that approving more Firearm User's Licenses (FULs) and giving more people access to firearms may not be a quick-fix to violence and crime, especially against women. Alfonso said she supported Police Commissioner Gary Griffith’s call to arm people, but each person had to be responsible and able to carry a gun.

The simple fact, she said, is that owning a gun is not for everyone. Aside from official requirements to apply for an FUL though the police, she said it also took training, responsibility and an awareness that a person without a  gun would not have to worry about.

But, most of all, it takes the right mindset. Alfonso described it as a “mental leap” that one has to take, to know that if their life is in danger and they draw that gun to protect themselves, there is a high possibility that someone could die at their hands.

Alfonso got her licensed firearm in 1994, after she was met with threats from ship owners whose ships she had arrested. She recalled her first arrest, where she had to climb aboard a ship and hand deliver an injunction to arrest the boat. Not long afterwards, she came face to face with the owner of the ship.

“He came up to me and said, 'Do you remember me?' I said no. He said his name and I remembered him. He began yelling and said people like me should get killed. He threatened to cuff me down. I told him the day he raised his hand at me he would not get it back.”

Security eventually separated them and escorted her to her car, in case he was waiting for her outside.

She was eventually convinced to get a licensed firearm of her own while assisting a local gun club in Central Trinidad with their regulations. She first resisted the idea but, after a rousing set of threats in her shipping work, she thought it over.

“I could only really do some 'tongue-fu' and stab people with my pen maybe. So I thought I better try and find a way to defend myself. I soon realised that with the type of threats coming down the pipeline, all the 'tongue-fu' in the world may not help.”

After a few years arresting ships and some training, Alfonso, now a hardened commercial and shipping lawyer, faced another ship owner who threatened her life. That time, it didn’t have the same effect.

“This one Haitian boat owner sent his chief mate to my office to tell me if I touched his boat he would kill me. I told him of course I would touch his boat if he doesn’t pay my client what he owes. The chief mate said his boss told him to tell me that if I touched his boat bullets will fly.

“I gave him my card for my gun club in Central TT. I told him, 'Do me a favour, give this to your boss and tell him I said bullets will indeed fly, but he has to ask himself in what direction.'”

One can get a FUL in two steps. The process has no monetary costs attached to it.

First, an applicant must get a provisional license that authorises the discharge of a firearm at a specific shooting range for the purpose of training. The application form is obtained from the Government Printery. The completed form must be submitted to the firearms section of the police along with photos and a certificate of character issued by the Commissioner of Police (CoP).

The provisional licence expires after two months. Once that happens, one can apply for a FUL.

To do so, a FUL application form  from the police firearms section must be submitted talong with the other documents and a certificate of confidence issued by a licensed firearms instructor.

The police process the applications with input from the Immigration Authority, which is supposed to notify the applicant within 15 business days of the  police decision on whether or not the licence will be approved.

But before Griffith became CoP, the police had been issuing licences at a rate of 200 per year, despite having more than 30,000 applications.

Griffith also pointed out that, of the 30,000 applicants, only 3,000 were women.

At a police press briefing two weeks ago, he said he had been pushing for people’s right to bear arms, especially women.

“There is nothing against women having a firearm,” Griffith said last week “A firearm is something that can be an asset for you. There is no need to be fearful of a firearm. A firearm should not be something you feel so sensitive about that you feel you do not want it. A firearm is not a ‘man thing’ it is something that law-abiding citizens can use to protect themselves.”

Alfonso, however, maintains that not everyone is able to carry a gun.

“I know of firearm owners who never fired their gun. They bought it, put it in a holster, put it under their bed or in the safe or whatever, and when it is time to fire the thing, they can’t, and it is taken away by bandits. There are people who have had guns trained on them by criminals and they can’t pull the trigger; they can’t take that mental leap.

"Most firearm holders don’t have a killer instinct. But you don’t need to have a killer instinct, you just need to have a sense that you have to protect your life and the lives of the innocent people around you. That would supersede any other instinct.”

She said one of the most important things to do when you own  a gun is to train. Learning the sound of a firearm, without the use of headphones, could be vital because in real-life situations one doesn’t have headphones. She added that people should also find a safe and secure place to put their gun if they do not have it on their person, to avoid it being in the reach of children.

She added that there are other means of protecting one’s self. She listed martial arts and self-defence tactics and commended Griffith on his initiative to make items like pepper spray accessible, but said those also have to be licensed.

“I wouldn’t want to be pepper sprayed by a bandit or tased by one. So the same way you license a firearm, you should license non-lethal measures. It shouldn’t be something that you could buy at Pennywise,” Alfonso said.

Even with every possible measure to avoid violence against women put in place, Alfonso said the issue is still a matter of learning to respect the lives of women, and people in general.

“Every day someone is killed. We have to stop being that society that is so totally numb to violence and we have to examine what is the root cause of that violence. While we want to put pepper spray and handguns in the hands of ladies, all these mechanisms have to be working in tandem with each other. Why does a taxi driver feel he could pick up an 18-year-old girl and rape and murder her? Why?

“There will always be aberrant people but why is this so prevalent? If we don’t attack those root causes you could put a gun in everyone’s hand and we would still be in trouble.”