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Karp, Aaron. 2012 ‘Country Analyses: Trinidad & Tobago.’ Measurement and Use of Statistical Data to Analyze Small Arms in the Caribbean and Latin America; Section IV, pp. 27-28. Mexico City: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Center of Excellence, National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). 28 April

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Trinidad & Tobago

The problems of seemingly incomparable data are exposed with a touch of irony by Trinidad and Tobago, where the number of licensed owners is 10,555.(90) This appears to surpass the number of registered guns, at 7,801.(91) The obvious inconsistency is partially explained by the ten year gap between the two figures. But the inconsistency is greater than it initially appears, since licensed owners in most parts of the world typically own 2 to 4 registered firearms. The implication of the number of licensees is total gun ownership must be much higher than indicated here, possibly on the order of 20,000 to 40,000 registered guns alone.

Total private gun ownership is estimated here conservatively, based on the number of licensees in 2008. This procedure leads to a very low estimate for gun ownership on the islands. Assuming roughly 2 illegal guns for every registered example, there would be at least 30,000 firearms on the islands. Knowing the number of licensees, however, the actual total number of registered guns could be higher than that. A clear understanding of gun ownership in Trinidad and Tobago requires greater study.

Sources:

90) "10,550 firearm license holders" in 2008, in: Wells, William, Charles M. Katz and Jeonglim Kim, 'Firearm Possession among Arrestees in Trinidad and Tobago.' Injury Prevention, 19 July 2010. Cited at GunPolicy.org

91) 7,801 registered firearms, in United Nations International Study on Firearms Regulation (New York: United Nations, 1998/99), p. 53. The same number appears for the year 2006 in Report on Citizen Security in the Americas 2011, Washington, DC: Organization of American States, January 2011, p. 22.

ID: Q11603

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