Meadows wants discretionary powers to grant gun permits removed from Firearms Licensing Act

 

Dennis Meadows, former deputy chairman of the Firearm Licensing Authority (FLA), wants a review of the Firearms Licensing Act to remove the discretionary powers given in the granting of gun permits.

 

He made the call while speaking on Thursday evening on Radio Jamaica's Beyond the Headlines.

 

Mr. Meadows said he believes all Jamaicans, "once they are not restricted persons under law", should be allowed to own guns. 

 

"If Dennis Meadows can be afforded the opportunity to defend my family and my property, my neighbour in the same circumstances would apply but be denied and there is why I said that the inconsistency treating with situations - similar situations, in my view - is the concern I have in terms of how the FLA is now run," he contended. 

 

His statement follows allegations by current FLA head Shane Dalling that previous boards granted gun licences to more than 200 people with criminal backgrounds.

 

Mr. Meadows admitted that licences were approved for some ex-convicts, arguing that a criminal record does not automatically exclude a person from getting a licence.

 

But he denied that the board he was a part of granted licences to people who are excluded under the law. 

 

At a press conference on Tuesday, Mr. Dalling revealed that some of the applicants who received gun licences had been convicted of serious offences such as murder, illegal possession of firearm, robbery with aggravation, rape, and drug trafficking.  

 

Asked by Beyond the Headlines host Dionne Jackson Miller to respond to that claim, Mr. Meadows said: "Dalling asserted that. Let him show you any file that was signed by my board with anybody charged for murder." 

 

"Are you saying it's not so, that you weren't involved in any such grant of permits?" she asked. Mr. Meadows replied: "That's not true."

 

He went on to explain the circumstances under which persons denied a firearm by one FLA board were granted one by his board.

 

The former FLA deputy board chairman argued that new boards can review the decisions of a previous one and sometimes arrive at different conclusions on the same evidence. 

 

"The membership of the board varies in terms of how we view things. You have conservative members, in terms of how they view things, [and] you have more liberal [members]. I'm a liberal person. And therefore, what a previous board would have considered ‘X’, the new board would consider ‘Y’. It was our majority view," he sought to explain.

 

Mr. Meadows said the process of review was usually thorough. 

 

"To satisfy ourselves we would invite the applicant for [an] interview. We would interview him and assess his demeanor and everything. In addition, we would even write to the police to see if there's any issue with this person. We went as far as sometimes sending back the file for re-investigation, because what also obtained by the FLA then was that investigators was (sic) out there in the field investigating Dionne Jackson’s application, and if Dionne Jackson is not prepared to play, Dionne Jackson receives an unfavourable report," he asserted.