Trinidad and Tobago is giving “active consideration” to a request by Mexico to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to pursue legal action in the United States in a bid to have gun manufacturers held responsible for gun-related crimes in the region.
Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley, speaking at a public meeting of his ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) on Thursday night, said Mexico despite having lost an initial approach to US authorities “intends to continue fighting.
“Mexico has approached CARICOM asking us as independent sovereign states with the same problem to join the fight to test it in the courts of America to hold the manufacturers and distributors of handguns and assault weapons into our country, to hold them responsible for the mayhem that they have unleashed on our societies,” Rowley said.
He told party supporters on the outskirts of the capital that his administration is considering the proposal.
“So I can tell you Trinidad and Tobago is actively considering joining that (initiative) to be able to test the legality of those who make those things of war that are destroying our society. We have to join that fight”.
Rowley said America had passed laws to prevent gun owners from being sued, adding those who are making those guns knowing where they are going and what they could do, have been insulated from lawsuits.
But recently a couple of people had sued the gun manufacturers in America and won. So the dam has cracked,” he said, even as he acknowledged this was a difficult fight because one could buy guns all over America in most states.
He said one state was about to change its law to remove the requirement for a license before buying a firearm.
“In other words, you could just go and buy a firearm like how you buy bread. And once that becomes so, we Trinidadians are all over the place, they (the gun will) come to us from Connecticut, Alabama, Miami, Texas, and Georgia and they end up in Trinidad and Tobago. But you know who makes it easier (for the guns to come in)?
Earlier this year, St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves called on the United States to do more to curb the easy access of illegal weapons and their easy exportation to Latin America and the Caribbean.
He decried the proliferation of guns manufactured in the United States and violence associated with the illegal drug trade as the main cause for the high rate of murders in some Latin American and Caribbean countries.
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