History of gun laws in India
Quite a while ago I came across Abhijeet Singh’s webpage discussing the history of Indian gun laws since when India was a British colony. I meant to blog it but forgot about it until I was reminded of it by the recent Mumbai attacks.
This changed towards the mid to late 1980s, when the Government, citing domestic insurgency as the reason, put a complete stop to all small arms imports. The fact that there is no documented evidence of any terrorists ever having used licensed weapons to commit an act of terror on Indian soil seems to be of no consequence to our Government.
The prices of (legal & licensed) imported weapons have been on an upward spiral ever since – beating the share market and gold in terms of pure return on investment. Even the shoddy domestically produced guns suddenly seem to have found a market. Also since the Government now had a near monopoly on (even half-way decent) arms & ammunition for the civilian market, they started turning the screws by pricing their crude public sector products (ammunition, rifles, shotguns & small quantities of handguns) at ridiculously high rates – products that frankly, given a choice no one would ever purchase.
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“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.” — Mahatma Gandhi (An Autobiography OR The story of my experiments with truth, by M.K. Gandhi, p.238)
From a historical point of view I find gun laws around the world fascinating. Whenever I get the chance I tend to ask foreigners about their gun laws. I get a lot of emails from overseas readers so I get plenty of opportunities.
More at Gun Ownership in India.
Wow, that quote from Gandhi might be the most interesting part. Thanks.
Great wise men understand the paradox of gun control. That’s why they aren’t in favor of gun control.
Bill, as you can see in the comments policy, comments must stay on topic, your statements, which you re-phrased as questions, are not on topic. Just in case you are genuinely interested, I will make a few points:
The state can not always protect you. It did not protect those killed in the terrorist attack. It did not protect 30,000+ people murdered in your country or the 15,000+ people raped last year.
Swimming pools kill far more people than guns in the USA.
The wild west was not wild, it was in fact a very polite place.
Does your country own nuclear weapons in order to commit a genocide of Pakistan? No, they own them to deter attacks.
Guns, like any tool, come in many varieties, all for different purposes.
People commit murder with many types of weapons. Thugs in India committed murder with nothing more than a Rumāl.
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