THE Prime Minister on Sunday afternoon said arming citizens was not the answer to the country's crime problems, going as far as to say the proposal by the Opposition to enact stand-your-ground legislation is also not a viable solution.
Speaking at the PNM's sport and family day at the Toco Composite High School, Dr Rowley said the promise of a stand-your-ground law was dangerous, and urged his supporters to reject that.
Speaking at the UNC's Monday Night Report in Couva on April 17, Opposition leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar said the government seemed oblivious to the growing problem of criminality, specifically addressing home invasions.
'We will bring legislation to Parliament to create a specific criminal offence of home invasion, which will involve increasing the sentences for larceny, burglary, serious assault, unlawful entry to your properties, whether it be your homes or businesses; and that you will be able to use force - they (criminals) come using force with guns, cutlasses, whatever it may be.'
On Sunday, Rowley said, "When the Opposition Leader says that their answer to their supporters' call for defense from the criminal element is to pass in the Parliament of this country, stand-your-ground legislation, I want to ask the Opposition Leader: what ground are they going to stand on to kill anybody they want to kill and simply say, 'I was afraid of that person,' or, 'That person was about to attack me in the road or in my yard, and I killed them.''
He added that the punishment for predial larceny should not be death, as that is what stand-your-ground laws might allow.
He said such laws, American-based legislation, were currently being challenged in US states that had passed it.
He warned that such laws allowed 'some people who hate other people' to use it for "legal murder."
Rowley also chastised pundits Dr Bramanand Rambachan and Satyanand Maharaj for comments they made last Wednesday, suggesting that citizens of East Indian descent were being targeted by urban youths from the East-West Corridor.
They were speaking at a meeting at the site of the shooting of Aranguez pharmacist Cheval Ramjattan. Ramjattan later died at hospital.
Maharaj said then: 'All the crime we have been facing in Aranguez is being committed by the urban youth, the miscreants who occupy the East-West Corridor, who feel that what you have belongs to them. And I say that boldly.
"Criminals seem to think Aranguez people have money, but this is generational wealth. We, the citizens, are denied guns, we have no right to shoot back, so we are picked off one by one."
Rowley said guns for all was not the answer and took aim at the comment made by Maharaj saying, 'When the Opposition Leader, and two or any other number of pundits want to get up in this country and say that the crime we are all facing that we are all exposed to, that we are all victims of. When they want to get up and say that it is Black people who are attacking Indian people. I say today: you all stop that! Don't go down that road! That i
