Trinidad and Tobago are actively considering Mexico’s request regarding small arms.

“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, hold them responsible for the mayhem that they have unleashed on our societies,” Rowley said.

He told party supporters on the capital’s outskirts that his administration is considering the proposal.

“So I can tell you Trinidad and Tobago is actively considering joining that (initiative) 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 | that those who are making those guns knowing where the guns are going and what they could do have been insulated from lawsuits.

But recently, a couple of people sued the gun manufacturers in America and won. So the dam has cracked,” he said, even as he acknowledged this was a brutal 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 buy a firearm like 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, ending 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 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 leading cause for the high rate of murders in some Latin American and Caribbean countries.

“The United States of America had to do something about not having easy access to guns and the easy exportation of guns. They have the resources to help us with that,” he said.

Following their summit in the Bahamas last month, CARICOM leaders mandated the Council for National Security and Law Enforcement (CONSLE) and the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) to prepare for a Special Symposium to consider Crime as a Public Health Concern which is to be hosted by Trinidad and Tobago in April 2023.

Rowley told the PNM meeting that the meeting in April would be critical for the region.

“I lead the CARICOM on this matter. CARICOM is a quasi Cabinet, I am responsible for national security, and if you ask me what I want out of this crime symposium, over and above educating our population, I want CARICOM to speak as one voice to our major trading partner, our friend in the North, to speak with one voice to say to them, ‘America must do more to prevent guns from coming from America into our country,'” he said.