mundaire wrote:Chidambaram is known to have staunchly anti-gun views and whenever he has had a say in things, the laws have changed for the worse! Starting with the 1980's when he was MoS in the Home Ministry with a weak cabinet minister (Buta Singh), at the time he brought in the limit of 3 guns amongst other (negative) changes to the law. Ironically Buta Singh's son was arrested on Arms Act charges a few years back (karma can be a real b*tch

).
Lets not forget the 2010 order, under his watch (as Home Minister), the negative fallout of which order is still stifling issuance of arms licenses nationwide.
I wonder if members here know who
'really' was behind the 3 gun limit. I have been told by several senior people & a gun dealer, that there was an active lobby of gun dealers from Delhi, Bombay, Central & South India who were behind introducing the 3 gun limit for an individual.
One can understand why, firearm owners with large collection (specially erstwhile princely families) were not selling their valuable firearms that the gun dealers wanted to purchase. Once the gun dealers lobby was successful in introducing a 3 gun limit per licensee, the gun dealers made a huge amount of money because the market were flooded with firearms.
I know of a former princely state in Gujarat which sold 3 truckloads of arms & ammunition which went to Bombay. One dealer (still operational in Bombay) bought 80 brand new (unused) box packed rifle for peanuts for less than Inr 100 per rifle. In Rajasthan, one erstwhile Royal family told me how they had to sell hundreds of collectible firearms which were laid out in lots of 11 firearms on each mattress on the ground & gun dealers (from India and overseas) had a ball. Muzzle loaders were piled upto 15 ft in height in which several beautiful pieces with engraving would be found.
You can imagine the loss because of the large numbers of firearms that was exported by these unscrupulous dealers for their selfish gain, not to mention depriving firearm enthusiast of a nation by introducing the 3 gun limit.
katana wrote:A similar theory also circulated about the import ban too. The logic being that dealers wanted a total ban on imports because then the firearms were available at reasonable prices wherein their profitability was restricted, while arms already held by licensees would come back to them for resale, thereby keeping prices and their profits high.
In fact, we are seeing this in the current scenario where the same articles come up for sale now and then. They are circulated among licensees while prices are just pushed up by the dealers.
A prominent Delhi based dealer, then approached Prime Minister Vajpayee during his tenure to lift the import ban, having realised the futility of their earlier action of suggestion the import ban. The grapevine even had it that the bureaucracy was kept nicely oiled in anticipation of lifting the ban but the Deputy Prime Minister apparently threw a spanner in the works and thats where it is today.
Anyway, this is all hearsay and I have nothing to substantiate it.