7 News Belize

Ministry Puts Chester In Check On New Gun Laws
posted (November 15, 2019)
Last night, licensed gun owners all over Belize raised a collective eyebrow when the Commissioner Of Police appeared on TV and said that sweeping new regulations governing ammunition and gun licenses would come into effect next year.

Here's a snapshot of some of the measures he announced for January.

Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"What the new measures is going to do is that we are now limiting every license firearm holder to 200 rounds per annum, so each license firearm holder will only be allowed to have 200 rounds for the whole year. Now, we have to take in consideration that some people do go on range and do practice shooting. When the go on the range and they expend those 200 rounds, if they need to have those 200 rounds replenished they would have to apply to the commissioner of police to replenish those rounds and a requirement will be that they will have to bring along the 200 expended shells that they used on the range to show that they have expend those rounds on the range." I know that it might not be a popular move for some people what we are trying to do, but as I said to the gun dealers I am not here to be popular. We are hoping that these new measures will come into effect 1st January next year and then we see how things work out from there."

Well, early this morning, the Ministry Of National Security tried to quickly walk back some of those strident declarations.

A release says, quote, "The Ministry of National Security hereby clarifies that a proposal has been made for some amendments to the Firearms Act, including a proposal to limit the number of bullets that can be purchased by a license holder. The Ministry advises that the proposal is still under review." End quote.

So, "still under review" is the status and if you have comments and recommendations, you can end them to CEO George Lovell via e-mail ceo@mns.gov.bz or phone number 822-2817.

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