FLA cleans house in Manchester, several licences revoked

Syranno Baines, Gleaner Writer

The Firearm Licensing Authority (FLA) is reporting that it has revoked over seven licences for persons arising from an investigation in Manchester.

Speaking at a press conference this morning, Chief Executive Officer of the FLA Shane Dalling revealed that the authority also revoked the dealer licence of a firearm dealership in the parish, the licence for the range in the parish and the licence for the ammunition dealership also in Manchester.

Dalling noted that in January the authority received several requests from a total of nine persons in Manchester requesting over 108,000 rounds of ammunition.

He argued that the request was unprecedented as the volume of ammunition would cost over $12 million.

“The individuals each requested 12,000 [rounds] to be used within the space of a month. It is unprecedented because we are not used to seeing that sort of request by individuals to use ammunition. We have dealerships who cannot afford to buy 12,000 rounds for the purpose of selling and we found it suspicious that individuals could afford same,” said Dalling.

He alleged that the individuals made the requests under the pretense that they were attending a competition overseas.

“Our investigations revealed that several of those persons did not have any visas to travel overseas. Our investigations also revealed that some of the persons did not have that amount of money in their account in the last two years. Our investigations also uncovered that immediately after we launched the investigation, a large sum of money was deposited in one of the persons account and one person, after we launched the investigation, told us that they did not want the ammunition anymore,” he further explained.

Dalling said the authority has received statements from persons involved who indicated that they were told to apply for the rounds but they never did.

According to the FLA CEO, these persons further indicated to the authority that someone else completed the request forms for the ammunition and that they were only presented with the documents for signing.

“We were also told that although expenditure sheets were submitted showing that the ammunition was used, we have statements from one of the individuals that he was coerced to sign the expenditure sheet for the usage of the ammunition although he clearly remembers that he did not use that amount of ammunition,” stated Dalling.

Meanwhile, the FLA CEO indicated that the authority has revoked almost 100 gun licences since the start of this year with hundreds more up for revocation.

We want to hear from you! Send us a message on WhatsApp at 1-876-449-0169, email us at editors@gleanerjm.com or onlinefeedback@gleanerjm.com.