India Elections causing illegal gun prices to rise
The Election-Gun-Buying-Mania does not appear to be purely an American phenomenon. The black market in India have seen prices for guns double since before the general election. The arms dealers claim the spike in demand is attributed to the various political factions arming themselves. The Telegraph of India reports:
He said each round of bullet fetches Rs 150 to Rs 200, pipe-guns are Rs 1,000 a piece, and single-shotters between Rs 3,000 and Rs 5,000. “There is good demand during elections and both the CPM and the Congress buy them. That is why we have almost doubled the prices now. We test the fitness of each piece we sell, if a bullet turns out to be dud, we return half the money charged through the linkman,” he said.
Nice of them to return half the cost of any dud ammunition! One US Dollar buys about 50 Indian rupees.
The first phase of the general election began in mid April and will end mid May. There are an estimated to be 714 million voters.
A Homemade pistol found by Indian police.
Now I buy a lot of guns usually. Typically I pick up something every few months. I don’t buy junk guns, I am not paranoid, it’s just my hobby. This whole gun rush thing has been annoying me lately because of how the gun sellers themselves are marketing it. They’re trying to turn it into something based on the American election and that is simply disingenuous. There has been a gun rush during ever recession in history of firearms. The sellers are hyping it up this time to make more money. One seller I am particularly close with confessed that he’s definitely playing the election card. The media is too stupid to identify the problem as anything else so they are fueling the fire. They don’t know anything about guns anyway. I typically reload and shoot between 1k and 2k pistol and rifle rounds a month depending on the weather. I can’t even buy reloading supplies anymore because of this ridiculous rush.
What really irks me about the whole thing is that all of these guns and all of these shooting supplies are going to be sitting in someone’s closet being unused. The manufacturers aren’t stupid, they’ve not met production because they know it won’t last, and an apparent shortage helps cause a panic which drives up demand and drives up prices.
The way I see it is that the Fed government doesn’t even need to implement any new gun control. We’re doing it to ourselves.
Hopefully in a year or so we’ll start seeing unused pre-owned jumping on the market when everyone realizes that they can’t eat a crate of AR15s or live in an M1A.
Hey, India! How’s that arms prohibition workin’ out for ya? Not so great, huh? Only rich people and criminals have guns you say? That’s too bad. This explains how that kid gets that Colt Python in “Slumdog Millionaire” though.
The pistol looks like it’s patterned after a Beretta M1934, which was the same type of pistol Ghandi was shot with.
Are you sure this is because of the elections, or could it be that people are trying to have a fighting chance in the next terror attack?
It’s called supplies and demand. If a merchant can get away selling a product for 500% profits more power to him. I’ll let the free market decide the price.
I only use three to four firearms in my large collection. The rest stay in the safes use. The only time I take them out is to spray them with oil to prevent rust.
I understand why there are a high demand for arms in India, especially for the weak, poor, and minorities. They need it the most for their own safety. They understand that the police is powerless to prevent violence.
This also bring us to a paradox where leaders for the weak, poor, and minorities advocate gun controls. As a leader you would think the opposite and not lead your followers into the gas chamber or slavery.
looks like the khyber pass shops are still cranking them out, scrap steel and hand tools, gun control, never heard of it up in them thar hills.
“gunner”
Those politician bxxxxxds also involved in car theft cause they need to ferry their supporters around. The gun and car theft articles covered here http://www.8ak.in/8ak_india_defence_news/2009/05/elections-fueling-demand-for-illegal-guns.html
That is the funny part of gun control in India. During elections or times of riots, the police will ask the registered gun owners to deposit their firearms with them. So if you are a registered gun owner, you r left unarmed, especially when you might need your weapon while the criminals and other anti social types are armed.
Matt,
Arms restrictions have made India home to what is estimated to be the world’s largest lot of illegal firearms – more than 40 million illegal firearms are estimated to be in circulation there. And these are former military arms, not the home-made pistols and stuff that you see in this picture. Shows what happens when socialist clowns write the laws. America – please listen!
Carl,
These elections have been especially bloody with the Naxalites killing scores of people who just wanted to vote. India isn’t much of a democracy if you look at how the government doesn’t care about voter intimidation, how it protects terrorists by not allowing law abiding citizens to own guns and by its socialist tendencies of taking half a step forward and twenty five backwards while making everyone applaud because they have a gun to their heads.
Manu,
Good work there. Try and post on some of the Indian gun forums if you can. Some journalists participate there and your blog may get more attention.
Thanks for the info, Mehul. I think the image of the pistol is profound because it shows just how advanced the production of illicit arms really is. That’s a nice piece, and probably rivals some guns available for sale here in the US. It’s even chorme plated. It’s bumper chrome, but still that’s impressive. The grips are even nicely done, meaning that there is a certain level of artisanship and competition that goes into the manufacture of illegal guns. There’s no chance of stopping people from owning guns, ever. It will never happen. It doesn’t even work in countries where they were never allowed to civilians to begin with, and I think that’s great!
I’ve always said that if gun prohibition came to America, it would unleash waves of suppressed, selective fire SMGs and real Assault Rifles the likes of which haunt the Anti-Gunners nightmares, and they would literally be for sale on every street corner in America. Why would people buy these things? Because they already own most everything else! Why would you have a Bolt Action .22 when you could have a select fire SMG if the price and penalties for possession were the same? With the SMG, you’d more than likely be able to reload the ammo, too. If you’re gonna be a Bear, be a Grizzly.
Hey good
I wanna buy it can you tell me where I can buy it