Waste of time applying for firearm licence

Dear Editor,

I am writing this letter to let you know that you’re wasting your time applying for a firearm licence if you’re not connected politically, unwilling to pass something and if you don’t know someone who can help you.

After trying for three years to get a firearm licence, I met with one of the highest ranking police officers. After writing to him, he didn’t even have the common courtesy to apologize for not responding to my letter or saying that he was sorry I was waiting so long.

Instead, he had the audacity to tell me that I have to put in a new application. For what? To get the same results of the old one. Why should I put in a new application? I did what I was asked to do. The police force didn’t do their job.

Editor, experiences like these are why I don’t want anything to do with the police force or government offices. This is one of the reasons I didn’t apply for re-migrant benefits and never will. Because I don’t want to be told that my application got lost or expired. In Guyana, if you go through the proper channels, you get nothing. You must go under or over the (table) system to get whatever you want. It’s how the system operates here.

It’s insulting, disgusting and disrespectful to ask a person who waited three years to get a firearm licence to start over when it was no fault of their own.

If a person who has a US secret clearance, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) background check, served in the Army 26 years, including in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, trained on various weapons and can walk into any gun store in America and walk out immediately with a firearm can’t get a firearm licence in Guyana after waiting three years, then I don’t know who can.

For those reasons, I will never apply for a firearm licence again nor will I ever go the government offices for anything again.

Yours faithfully, Anthony Pantlitz