English Gun Law was a Colonial Import from India

[Dean Weingarten]

Destruction of the Magazine at Delhi During the Indian Mutiny 1857-58

Gun control, or more properly, the restrictions on the ownership and use of guns by the general population, was not a common or popular phenomena in Europe until after the First World War. One of the most influential gun control laws was instituted in England and Wales in 1920. It has been the basis for a great deal of restrictions on the private ownership of firearms around the world, both in the Commonwealth countries and in Europe. These restrictions were not designed to protect the public from criminals. Rather, they were designed to protect the ruling class from revolution. Colin Greenwood and Joyce Lee Malcolm are the two foremost scholars on the history of firearms controls in England and Wales. From A Study of Armed Crime and Firearms Control in England and Wales by Colin Greenwood, page 246:

How, then, should policy on firearms controls be affected by the facts produced? The system of registering all firearms to which Section I applies as well as licensing the individual takes up a large part of the police time involved and causes a great deal of trouble and inconvenience. The voluminous records so produced appear to serve no useful purpose. In none of the cases examined in this study was the existence of these records of any assistance in detecting a crime and no one questioned during the course of the study could establish the value of the system of registering weapons.

It was not until much later that Greenwood discovered the purpose of the English firearms registration laws. They were passed to facilitate firearms confiscation in the event of civil unrest or revolution. From Colin Greenwood, May 15, 2000. The term "Constitutionalists" below means British Constitutionalists:

Constitutionalists might argue about whether in Britain, Statute law can over-ride the basic principles of the Common Law, but in 1920 the Government of Britain was in fear of revolution and documents such as the. Cabinet Diaries reveal debates about the number of aircraft available for use against insurgents within the British Isles. In that climate, the registration of firearms (other than shotguns) was imposed for the purpose of “ensuring that all arms are available for redistribution to friends of the government”.

Extensive research by Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm buttresses what Colin Greenwood found. From Guns and Violence, the English Experience, page 162:

Second, the Firearms Act of 1920, which took away the traditional right of individuals to be armed, was not passed to reduce or prevent armed crime or gun accidents. It was passed because the government was afraid of rebellion and keen to control access to guns.

The British government did not have to invent new law. It already had an example that it had been using for 40 years, in India, as a prophylactic against revolt there. The British Crown took over the governing of India from the East India Company after the mutiny or revolt that occurred in 1857-58. Immediate restrictions on the ownership of arms were put into effect. Restrictions on the ownership and use of Arms were codified into law in 1877. From statutoryy-law.knoji.com:

Before 1857 there was no gun control law in India. Any Indian could own any weapon of any caliber. After the mutiny things changed as the British decided that the time had come to restrict Indians from owning weapons and hence the first seeds of arms control were sowed.

The 1877 law has a several similarities to the Firearms Act of 1920.


1. The ownership of pistols and rifles were immediately reduced to a privilege, which could only be obtained by asking the government for permission (The 1877 law included all arms. Perhaps the difference is due to the large number of sporting shotguns owned by the British aristocracy.)

2. A reason had to be given for owning the arms.

3. The license could be denied at the discretion of the authorities.

In practise very few Indians were able to obtain licenses to own and use firearms, while nearly all Europeans were able to obtain them easily. I have a picture of famous geologist, a relative on my childrens' maternal side, with a rifle in an Indian jungle, while he was employed there in the 1920's.

The Indian arms act of 1877 was successful in controlling proliferation of guns in India and hardly .5% of Indians were issued gun licenses. In a way unbridled owning of guns as protected by the 2nd amendment in the USA never happened. The British were thus successful in keeping the local Indian population unarmed.

It has taken a hundred years of incremental tightening of the bureaucratic and legislative screws in England and Wales to reduce the number of people with permits to 783, 000, of which 582,000 are shotgun licenses. That is about 1.3% of the population. The percentage of English and Welsh who owned firearms in 1920 was small compared to the United States. The vast majority of people did not hunt, and the crime rate at the time the 1920 law passed was incredibly low; far, far lower than it is today.

In contrast, in India in 1857, at least in some cities, most men went about armed:

"Everyone," observed Frayer, "in Lucknow in those days (pre-annexation) went about armed."

In spite of the differences between the implementation of the acts in India versus England and Wales, the purpose was the same. Protect the rulers from revolt.

It appears that gun control in England and Wales was a cultural implant from colonial India.

©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
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Added in 10 minutes 51 seconds:
Any details from an Indian perspective would be appreciated.

[mundaire]

Europeans were completely exempt from the Indian Arms act of 1878. So, they did not need any permit/ license to acquire/ own/ possess firearms in colonial India.

The Act served only to deny Indians.

Sent from my MotoG3 using Tapatalk

[Grumpy]

Gun control in the UK was not a `cultural implant` from colonial India although it could be argued that it was a case of similar although not parallel development. The firearms restrictions in India were introduced to combat fear of a revolution - in the UK the 1920 restrictions sought to restrict the access of firearms to criminals and to SECTIONS of a disaffected working class. The perceived problems being the large numbers of firearms in circulation following WWI, the rise of communism and the continuing Irish `problem`. The government had no major fear of general insurrection and the measures were much more of a contingency to contain a possible situation. There was certainly a degree of paranoia among some within the government and `establishment` following WWI similar to - although nowhere near as extreme as - the McCarthy era in the US following WWII. The fear of revolution has been over-stated and examination of further cabinet documents reveals the more balanced view prevailing at the time.
The 1920 act actually followed a 1903 act restricting the ownership of pistols ( handguns ) which was hopelessly ineffectual ( A three shillings and six pence licence available to all from any local post office. ) There were amendments and/or new Acts introduced in 1925, 1927, 1933, 1937 ... and those are only the ones I can think of and do not include the post-WWII legislation.
I`d be interested in knowing whether Frayer`s comments regarding everyone in Lucknow being armed actually applied to EVERYONE or just everyone British/European. It should be remembered that `Western` attitudes were very different back then and were institutionally racist. The `natives` were not considered anyone and thus did not qualify for the inclusive `everyone`.
It should also be remembered that the 1920 Act was nothing like as comprehensive as that introduced in India as it introduced comprehensive licencing NOT an effective ban on firearms. Whilst one has to show a `need` for a firearm,the ownership of a shotgun is enshrined as a right subject only to the applicant not having a criminal record for violence or mental health problems. There is also no restriction of the amount of shotgun ammunition one may hold, and, whilst the amount of firearms ammunition is limited the actual amount is subject to negotiation. It is common for Shotgun owners to buy ammunition a thousand cartridges at a time and ditto .22 rifle owners. Military calibres are not excluded from ownership and, until the pistol ban, there was no restriction on handgun calibres. All VERY different from the situation in India.
The 1877 legislation applied only to indians and not to Europeans in India who could own firearms without restriction - as Mundaire says. The 1920 Act applied to the entire population of England and Wales. Examination of the two Acts will reveal that they are very different in many respects and that the 1877 legislation did not act as the model upon which the 1920 Act was based. That there are similarities is undeniable but inevitable. Governments rarely re-use legislation, particularly not historical legislation and especially not that dedicated to a colony because law has to be specific and concise. That legislation often needs amendment is undeniable and is an indication of just how how precise it needs to be ... and how dangerous it would be to model one Act upon another.
Colin Greenwood`s `Firearms Control` was a seminal work when published in 1972 and still has relevance in spite of the UK firearms legislation introduced in more recent years. His later doubts as to whether the restrictions upon firearms for sporting use have lowered the incidence of the use of firearms in crime are reasonable and widely accepted as it is known that almost all firearms used for criminal purposes are illegally obtained. That the limitation of the number of firearms in circulation limits the number of homicides is undeniable ... but is, perhaps, a separate matter.

[nagarifle]

"Everyone," observed Frayer, "in Lucknow in those days (pre-annexation) went about armed."

could this also mean armed with swords etc? or just refers to firearms only?

[xl_target]

Re: destruction of the magazine at Delhi.

Apparently the crown had learned a thing or two since they tried the same thing in the North American colonies (in 1775) and failed miserably. That failure, a hundred years before the "Indian Mutiny", caused them to lose control of what is now The United States of America. Yes, it started with gun control, which in that case was just a stepping stone to the imposition of further tyranny. There are many parallels in more recent history that have started with the imposition of gun control.

Furious at the December 1773 Boston Tea Party, Parliament in 1774 passed the Coercive Acts. The particular provisions of the Coercive Acts were offensive to Americans, but it was the possibility that the British might deploy the army to enforce them that primed many colonists for armed resistance. The Patriots of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, resolved: “That in the event of Great Britain attempting to force unjust laws upon us by the strength of arms, our cause we leave to heaven and our rifles.” A South Carolina newspaper essay, reprinted in Virginia, urged that any law that had to be enforced by the military was necessarily illegitimate.

The Royal Governor of Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage, had forbidden town meetings from taking place more than once a year. When he dispatched the Redcoats to break up an illegal town meeting in Salem, 3000 armed Americans appeared in response, and the British retreated. Gage’s aide John Andrews explained that everyone in the area aged 16 years or older owned a gun and plenty of gunpowder.

Military rule would be difficult to impose on an armed populace. Gage had only 2,000 troops in Boston. There were thousands of armed men in Boston alone, and more in the surrounding area. One response to the problem was to deprive the Americans of gunpowder.

Lord Dartmouth, the Royal Secretary of State for America, sent Gage a letter on October 17, 1774, urging him to disarm New England. Gage replied that he would like to do so, but it was impossible without the use of force. After Gage’s letter was made public by a reading in the British House of Commons, it was publicized in America as proof of Britain’s malign intentions.

Two days after Lord Dartmouth dispatched his disarmament recommendation, King George III and his ministers blocked importation of arms and ammunition to America. Read literally, the order merely required a permit to export arms or ammunition from Great Britain to America. In practice, no permits were granted.

quotes from here

When the "redcoats" tried to size the powder magazines at Lexington and Concord, the populace rose up and delivered to them a very harsh lesson that started the American Revolution.

[goodboy_mentor]

"Everyone," observed Frayer, "in Lucknow in those days (pre-annexation) went about armed."

In spite of the differences between the implementation of the acts in India versus England and Wales, the purpose was the same. Protect the rulers from revolt.

It appears that gun control in England and Wales was a cultural implant from colonial India.

Any details from an Indian perspective would be appreciated.

"Everyone" in those times meant the politically ruling class or those contesting or fighting for political power. Who were they in Lucknow around 1857? They were the British, Muslims and the two political classes(castes) of Hindus called Brahmins and Kshatriyas. Other two castes called Vaishyas and Shudras were not allowed to be armed by the casteist "divine" socio political order of caste system prevalent for thousands of years in the Indian sub continent.

Education/ knowledge, property/ wealth, arms/ RKBA are the three inalienable pillars of freedom or liberty. They are like three legs of three legged table. Destroy or subvert or seperate any one of them, the table falls.

Brahmins were the political and intellectual class. They were allowed to enjoy and control all the three inalienable pillars of liberty. They could have knowledge, property and arms. By this they controlled Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras.

Kshatriyas were the political and soldier class. They were not allowed the knowledge. Were allowed only property and arms. Without knowledge they were like brainless robots and de facto slaves of Brahmins. So for any kind of knowledge or guidance they had to seek their "advice". Thus they were controlled to serve the interests of Brahmins.

Vaishyas were the non political trading class. They not allowed knowledge or arms. Were allowed only property. Thus they were also de facto slaves of Brahmins. So for any kind of knowledge or protection of their life, property or dignity had to approach Brahmins who would "guide" the Kshatriyas to do the needful if it served their interests. Else not.

Shudras were the non political working class. They had no rights to have knowledge, property or arms. Thus they were slaves and at mercy of all the three castes above them.

Similarly when you are controlling/ denying access to knowledge, wealth and arms by "laws", you do not need to propound any fanatic or violent philosophy to inflict direct oppression or tyranny. You can keep chanting peace and ahimsa as a matter of political propaganda to mask the real intentions, since you have cleverly created oppression(both social and political), systemic violence of the highest order in the society, which very few will be able to understand.

In spite of the differences between the implementation of the acts in India versus England and Wales, the purpose was the same. Protect the rulers from revolt.

Disarming of the population or a class of people under any color or pretext is always political. That is to prevent a popular uprising. In other words to protect the ruling elite by subverting the rule of law. "Crime control" etc. is just a smoke screen. Soviet revolution had taken place in 1917. There was fear of similar political communist movement in England. As a preemptive measure gun control was introduced.

It appears that gun control in England and Wales was a cultural implant from colonial India.

Any details from an Indian perspective would be appreciated.

Gun control laws for Indian sub continent were conceived and enacted by the British Parliament. The Indian sub continent was the laboratory to test their efficacy. Was it a cultural implant from India? Probably not. Why? Because if one reads the English Bill of Rights 1688, it clearly states that King had subverted the rule of law and disarmed the protestants for political reasons. So the British ruling elite was smart enough to understand the "value" of disarming. Since Americans were even smarter, they understood the implication of disarming and revolted before they could be disarmed.

Were the British copying the ideas from the gun legislations enacted in India? Probably yes. Why? If one reads the Arms Act 1959 of India and Firearms Act 1968 of England and compares them, would find striking similarities.

My replies in the another thread viewtopic.php?f=3&t=23906 might be of interest to you.

[Dean Weingarten]

Here is a link to the source with the Frayer quote:


It is a google book source.

Frayer quote source

[Grumpy]

The situations in America and India were rather different in that the British were generally contemptuous of any American threat and the forces stationed in America were hardly of the first order .... something that also applied to their commanders. `Rejects` is a term that was once used. The `enemy` also were somewhat different as they were comprised mostly of Americans of British - including Irish - descent - or were actually British/Irish born. Britain had created a colony of it`s own political and religious dissenters and adventurers and then proceeded to treat them as inconsequential `cash cows`.
In India many of the higher/ruling classes were largely content with their lot under British rule. As has been pointed-out many times, an organised insurgency in India could have removed the British at almost any time ... had there been adequate support. As it was, the subjugated were trodden on by both the British and their own higher/ruling classes.
Of course the 1878 legislation was political. Legislation is, by definition, political but the 1878 Act was, obviously, intended to deny arms to any with a revolutionary intent. There was certainly a political element to the 1920 Act in helping to prevent the remote chance of a degree of insurgency but the 1988 Act and 1997 Amendment were kneejerk reactions to events.
All-in-all goodboy_mentor I can find little or nothing to argue with you about in your interpretation of matters.

Added in 2 minutes 57 seconds:
Dean Weingarten, thankyou for the Frayer link which explains the situation very well.

[Dean Weingarten]

Thank you for the commentary. Enlightening. Were Vaishyas and Shudras the majority of the population? One source, commenting on the act, claimed that prior to 1857 any Indian could purchase and possess any arm that they could afford.

I found that an uncertain proposition. What were the mechanisms to keep the Vaishyas and Shudras uneducated, without property, and disarmed? Was it a set of laws or religious doctrines enforced by the Brahmins and Kshatriyas?

Added in 7 minutes 9 seconds:
The sources and links are in the original article. When I posted the article here, the links did not automatically follow.

Added in 22 minutes 30 seconds:
To Grumpy:
You noted:
"Governments rarely re-use legislation, particularly not historical legislation and especially not that dedicated to a colony because law has to be specific and concise. That legislation often needs amendment is undeniable and is an indication of just how how precise it needs to be ... and how dangerous it would be to model one Act upon another."

My experince is virtually the opposite, though based primarily in the United States. Governments (or perhaps I should say legislators) are usually rather busy and/or lazy or simply are attempting to use their time effectively. They much prefer to steal ideas that have already been hammered out and work, or are percieved to do so. Who can blame them? A great deal of the United States Gun Control Act of 1968 was lifted from the NAZI weapons control law JPFO comparison of GCA 1968 and NAZI weapons control law.

I see legislation lifted directly from federal law into state legislatures, even with clauses that have no applicability in state law (Wisconsin School Zone Law). I see legislature after legislature copy, often times, nearly word for word, statutes from other states.

Clearly the 1920 law was not precisely the same as the 1877 law in India. But the basic principles were very similar. Many other paths could have been chosen, but the general path that had been followed in India was the one taken.

I do not doubt that the British Aristocracy believed that the law would never apply to them. After all, they were in power, and had been in power for hundreds of years.

[Dean Weingarten]

Grumpy wrote:
"That the limitation of the number of firearms in circulation limits the number of homicides is undeniable ... but is, perhaps, a separate matter."

That is a curious statement. I have not seen any serious evidence to suport it. Plenty of cherry picked statistics. Evidence... no.

[mundaire]

Preventing people from certain castes from owning Arms, was not done via laws, but social coercion. As such it (social coercion) varied vastly across India, depending largely on how powerful the the Brahmanical order was in the particular area.

Furthermore, this practice was next to non-existantant in large areas like Punjab, Western Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, etc. While places like Eastern Uttar Pradesh, most of Rajasthan, Bengal, etc. would likely have been affected to differing extents.

AFAIK the emphasis here may have been on swords & armour not other arms like knives, spears, bows etc. Firearms at the time were handmade (like everything else) and were of course expensive and out of reach of most poor people (due to affordability). Caste restrictions had nothing to do with keeping them out of the hands of people of a certain caste.

To test my assertion one need only look as far as the British colonial recruitment policies, which heavily recruited non-Bhramins and non-Kshatriyas from the areas I have mentioned. Classifying them as "martial" castes/ communities - Mahar, Sikh, Sikh Light, Jat etc. regiments are all examples of regiments formed out of such recruitment policies.

If you wish for further proof, read about the domestic powers who filled in the vacuum created by the decline of the Mughal empire. These were Marathas to the west, Sikhs and Jats to the north. None of which were high caste kshatriyas as per the varna system. How did they carve out empires for themselves if they did not have access to arms?

Further south, look at the example of the Nairs in Kerala. They are a proud community with a rich martial heritage spanning hundreds of years, but they too were not high caste kshatriyas as per the varna system.

Also, let us not forget that more than 25% of pre-partition India's population was Muslim, and they were not hamstrung by caste based social restrictions on possession/ ownership of arms, neither was the Tribal population.

The Arms Act of 1878 did indeed disarm a (largely) armed populace, to assert otherwise would be a distortion of facts.

Cheers!
Abhijeet

[goodboy_mentor]

Thank you for the commentary. Enlightening. Were Vaishyas and Shudras the majority of the population? One source, commenting on the act, claimed that prior to 1857 any Indian could purchase and possess any arm that they could afford. I found that an uncertain proposition.

Yes when combined together they would be the majority.

Yes it is almost true that any Indian could purchase any arm they could afford before 1857. In order to understand you need to get an idea about what was going on before 1857. The areas that were governed by Muslim, Sikh or Hindu rulers had no restrictions on manufacture or possession of arms. Not sure about areas governed by East India Company. Most probably the condition was similar since British were trying to consolidate power and would not have liked to rock their own boat by enacting laws to disarm the local population. The British got political foothold in India after the Battle of Plassey in 1757. They became rulers of Bengal. At this time they were not in a position to rule over entire Indian sub continent. There was a triangular contest for political power going on in North India between the Afghans, Sikhs and Marhattas. The Afghans defeated the Marhattas in Third Battle of Panipat in 1761. This caused Marhattas to be out of the game. Then Sikhs defeated the Afghans and established their rule in areas that included present day North Western Frontier Province of Pakistan, Pakistani Punjab, Indian Punjab, present day Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, entire Jammu and Kashmir that is controlled by Pakistan, India and China. All these years the British were bidding their time, consolidating and expanding their political power in rest of the Indian sub continent. These Sikh ruled territories were annexed after the end of Anglo Sikh Wars in 1849. Therefore till 1849 there was no gun control in these territories. The story of arms confiscation and disarming of population started in 1849 onwards. Especially entire Punjab was disarmed after 1849. Along with this the existing educational system was destroyed and replaced by British controlled system so that the next generation does not know their past, who they were and what they are going to become.

But the most detailed study of the educational system in place in Lahore before the British took over came in the shape of the research undertaken by Dr. Leitner, the first principal and founder of Government College, Lahore and the Punjabi University. The eminent linguist described in some detail how the ‘Punjabi Qaida’ was removed from the scene, at even the village level, after the events of 1857, when it was felt that unless Punjabi was removed as the language of first choice, the ‘wild Punjabis’ would soon overcome the British. Both Leitner and John Lawrence disagreed with this strategy, while Henry Lawrence, Dalhousie and Montogomery wanted a military solution to “end Punjabi educational dominance once English was introduced”.

In the de-militarisation of the Punjab, “over 120,000 cartloads of arms and swords were confiscated”, and in the process, says Edwardes and Merville in their publication of 1867 (page 433-34) it was thought important “to make sure militant Punjabis – Sikhs, Muslim and Hindus – and their language, were crushed by removing not only all arms and swords, but more importantly their books, which were all burnt”. Sir Aurel Stein described how a wealth of books on mathematics and astronomy were lost in this ‘action’. For those still interested, samples of those books can be found in the Punjab Public Library.

But which sort of schools and ‘madrassahs’ and ‘shawalas’ existed in Lahore before the British came in 1849 to ‘civilise’ the people of this ancient city? The Muslim ‘madrassahs’ were located at every ‘guzzar’ and the madrassahs opened by the family of fakir azizuddin were considered among the most modern in the entire subcontinent. They not only taught Punjabi, Arabic, Persian and Urdu languages, they also, at the elementary level, excelled at mathematics. Thus the basics of the logical transfer of knowledge had already been laid at the basic level. It now seems that the British, against the popular belief, actually destroyed this structure, to forever dent the ‘formal learning institutions’ available to the Punjabi people.

source http://www.sikhawareness.com/topic/1268 ... he-panjab/

Found one video presented by one of the descendants of Fakir Azizuddin -

He is speaking in Urdu. Those who know Hindi will be able to understand. Sorry for those who cannot understand it. Basically he is talking about who his people were, what they have become now and is also corroborating what has been said about the educational system above.

What were the mechanisms to keep the Vaishyas and Shudras uneducated, without property, and disarmed? Was it a set of laws or religious doctrines enforced by the Brahmins and Kshatriyas?

There was no wall of separation between the religion and the State. Religious doctrines were the law. They were generally enforced by very rigid social customs. If necessary, force of the State was also used. To get some idea you may read another posts here viewtopic.php?f=3&t=23554&start=15#p232609 and viewtopic.php?t=21023#p204074 It is true that this grip over power got loosened in some parts of the Indian sub continent due to various reasons. For example in Punjab it was largely due to the rise of Sikh religion which was against the caste system and their rise to political power. They had many generals and soldiers that were Shudra castes and proved to be excellent soldiers. Quoting below from Page 26 of History of Sikhs 1739 - 1768 (Evolution of Sikh Confederacies) by Dr. Hari Ram Gupta.The soft copy of the book can be found by searching for the author "Hari Ram Gupta" in the history section of http://www.sikhbookclub.com/

The Sikhs sent him a reply that they had gone without food for the last two or three days and they expected to leave the place the next morning. The Faujdar again sent them strict orders to disperse at once. But the Sikhs would not move. Then Jaspat mounted on an elephant and launched an attack on the Sikhs with whatever troops he had with him. The Sikhs offered a stubborn resistance. During the course of the action, a Rangretta Sikh named Nibahu Singh caught hold of the tail of Jaspat's elephant, leapt up like lightning and cut off the head of the Faujdar. This was the signal for a general stampede of the royal troops.

Rangrettas belonged to Shudra caste as per the caste system.