Why is the government afraid ?

[stringerbell991]

As an indian , I have begun to lose hope in my government. They say they want to keep us safe but is the police really going to protect me from armed gunmen breaking into my house and stealing my property , even raping the women in my household. These are real things that happen up north. Are police going to magically teleport into my house to stop this crime?

The legal process of getting a license in this country is an absolute joke. They make it absolutely impossible for working class people to own a gun. Is this really for our safety or is it just a way to control us and prevent uprising ? How do we change this ? Britishers did this to nutter us , and now it's the netas. what hope do we have ? I'd like to hear from the community

[ankur_ank007]

As an indian , I have begun to lose hope in my government. They say they want to keep us safe but is the police really going to protect me from armed gunmen breaking into my house and stealing my property , even raping the women in my household. These are real things that happen up north. Are police going to magically teleport into my house to stop this crime?

The legal process of getting a license in this country is an absolute joke. They make it absolutely impossible for working class people to own a gun. Is this really for our safety or is it just a way to control us and prevent uprising ? How do we change this ? Britishers did this to nutter us , and now it's the netas. what hope do we have ? I'd like to hear from the community

Hello,

I agree completely with you. Bulandsheher highway rape cases & multiple such chases around National Capital is the proof. I myself have been facing honour killing threats for years now. Police did little to help, I have been driven out of my ancestral house in Lucknow, police complaints in-vein. Arms license rejected multiple times on absurd grounds. Me & my wife have lived in threat for years now, and now we are in the same shadow of fear for our infant son too.

I have started to lose faith in the system.

[mayankbanerjee1]

My 2cent opinion,

Gun control is a long term premium less health policy of our politicians to ensure gunda raj. In short, the free biryani is ensured for generations to come.

My apology if anybody's sentiment is hurt.

Mayank

[stringerbell991]

So what can we do ? Or sit quietly forever?

[goodboy_mentor]

As an indian , I have begun to lose hope in my government.

"my government"? Is it really your government or just a deception to delude you into believing it to be your government? Apply your analytcal part of mind and reach your own conclusions.

Is this really for our safety or is it just a way to control us and prevent uprising ? How do we change this ? Britishers did this to nutter us , and now it's the netas. what hope do we have ? I'd like to hear from the community

Will a criminal ever want you to be able to rise up, and put up an armed resistance against him or want you to be disarmed, so that he may be able to plunder you thoroughly? What is criminalization of State? It is when criminals control the State and decide what is lawful and what is unlawful. What kind of people control the Indian State? Apply your own reasoning and reach your conclusions.

I have started to lose faith in the system.

Had the people of this country started to loose faith in the system from 15 August, 1947 itself, Indian subcontinent would have been a much better place. This idea of mine might appear shocking to some, but it is true. I am in hurry to leave now, will elaborate on it, may be in a few days, when I am free.

Gun control is a long term premium less health policy of our politicians to ensure gunda raj. In short, the free biryani is ensured for generations to come.

Very true but will it really last? Will the Indian State survive? It is highly doubtful. How? Indian State has around 2.5% of world's total land area. It has around 4% of world's total useable water(for drinking and agriculture). It has around 17% of world's total population and every year population equivalent to that of Australia is getting added. Are you able to see the writing on the wall? I do not know but the entire world is able to see the ticking time bomb.

Analyze this scientifically. In animal kingdom, in particular area when food or water is scarce, the animal group tries to capture surrounding territories. But if surrounding territories are in control of strong opponents, fight with them will be suicidal. The fight with external opponents is avoided and instead infighting takes place. After sufficient numbers are dead, then they again start living peacefully.

The things are not very different in human populations. Can the Indian State afford to fight with neighboring countries to occupy their territories? Answer is a big no(unless the policy makers are frustrated crazies like Adolf Hitler). It will be suicidal. Then what is going to happen to control the existing quantity of water? Many States are already fighting over river waters. When it will reach a threshold and explode? Even if I take a very liberal estimate, 15 or 20 years is the maximum. The process can start much earlier also. At this point in history, the ruling elite is diabolically trying to deflect attention from this fact and creating imaginary "enemies", sometimes in form of religious minorities, dalits, sometimes in form of bogey of terrorism etc. etc. Unfortunately these tactics usually fool many ignorant people.

So what can we do ? Or sit quietly forever?

1. Convince the members of parliament. It is easier said than done.

2. Take up the matter in High Courts or Supreme Court. You may click here to read further.

3. Those who are citizens of other countries can lobby with their governments and corporates, so that the Indian government starts respecting the human right to keep and bear arms, the Constitution and to fully open up this market for it's citizens. You may click here to read further.

[ritamrudra]

My 2cent opinion,

Gun control is a long term premium less health policy of our politicians to ensure gunda raj. In short, the free biryani is ensured for generations to come.

My apology if anybody's sentiment is hurt.

Mayank

Very true. The colonial mindset of us Indians have not changed in general. There are trust issues as well. The question is " Do our netas and babus trust the common Indian ????

Having said that, I think the problem is a little deeper than what can be seen. Do we think ourselves as Indians in the first place, or does the common Indian identify himself as a gujrati, marwari, bengali etc, keeping in mind the thousands of factors dividing us Indians...

What do you say ????

[timmy]

I would like to combine my response to this thread and this one: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=25023 here.

My response is going to be somewhat lengthy, both in word count and in the thinking it requires from readers, so I'd appreciate the patience of readers who are interested in bearing with me. I do promise that, at the end, I will make a final point that's on-topic to this and the other thread I linked.

There are global trends occurring in politics that can be noted, and that do not depend on one's political views, which I am not discussing here. My aim is to present an academic discussion that makes a case for how we think about RKBA and take ownership of our own needs. That said, One may have noticed the trends in the world where nations are moving to some extent away from so-called "liberal democracy." Nations that could be considered to be doing so might be Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Israel, Brazil, Russia, Italy, India, the Trump Administration in the USA, and recent events in the UK leading up to Brexit and continuing up to now.

I'd like you to view this youtube video on Russia:



Shirvan, who I believe is Azerbaijani, presents very reasoned thought about a number of subjects as you will see if you care to browse his channel. This video on Russia, I think, makes a great point: the binary thinking between an overwhelmingly authoritarian state and a coup/revolution/regime change is not the only possible resolution to Russia's issue. Shirvan's thought that a peripheral tendency, where central government authority declines in the face of regional forces -- not necessarily dissolving, but diminishing, is also a very possible, perhaps more probable outcome to the present situation there.

I would go a step further with Shirvan's thought and propose that this is also a global trend that we see in today's nations. Scotland, for instance, seeks independence from the UK. China's leaders have always had a strong fear and reaction to anything that would threaten their central government control. Nehru feared the same thing regarding languages until he was checked in Andhra, and now Andhra and Telegana have split. The Czech Republic and Slovakia separated. I am surprised more people don't discuss this regional trend in the USA, where the issues of Abortion and Gun Ownership have devolved to the states by Supreme Court decision and by acts of Congress. South Sudan was an example of this, as well as events in Tigray, and many others around the world.

My point here is that paradoxically, while increasing levels of authoritarianism seem to be making appearances on the world stage, so are waning levels of central authority. This means that national "rule of law" is not as prevalent in nations around the globe as it once was and that the possibility of different legal authorities prevailing in different parts of a given country is becoming more prevalent.

Next, I should like you to consider this article from "The Atlantic," a magazine from the USA, about poltical violence:

AUGUST 15, 2022
The New Era of Political Violence Is Here
The danger is not organized civil war but individual Americans with deep resentments and delusions.
By Tom Nichols

I’ve been thinking about the threats against law enforcement and Trump’s barely veiled warning to Attorney General Merrick Garland about a “country on fire.” We should no longer wonder if we can avert a new era of political violence in the United States. It’s already here.

Civil war is among the many terms we now use too easily. The American Civil War was a bloodbath driven by the inevitable confrontation between the Union and the organized forces of sedition and slavery. But at least the Civil War, as I said Friday on Morning Joe during a panel on political violence in America, was about something. Compared with the bizarre ideas and half-baked wackiness that now infest American political life, the arguments between the North and the South look like a deep treatise on government.

The United States now faces a different kind of violence, from people who believe in nothing—or at least, in nothing real. We do not risk the creation of organized armies and militias in Virginia or Louisiana or Alabama marching on federal institutions. Instead, all of us face random threats and unpredictable dangers from people among us who spend too much time watching television and plunging down internet rabbit holes. These people, acting individually or in small groups, will be led not by rebel generals but by narcissistic wannabe heroes, and they will be egged on by cowards and instigators who will inflame them from the safety of a television or radio studio—or from behind the shield of elected office. Occasionally, they will congeal into a mob, as they did on January 6, 2021.

There is no single principle that unites these Americans in their violence against their fellow citizens. They will tell you that they are for “liberty” and “freedom,” but these are merely code words for personal grudges, racial and class resentments, and a generalized paranoia that dark forces are manipulating their lives. These are not people who are going to take up the flag of a state or of a deeper cause; they have already taken up the flag of a failed president, and their causes are a farrago of conspiracy theories and pulpy science-fiction plots.

What makes this situation worse is that there is no remedy for it. When people are driven by fantasies, by resentment, by an internalized sense of inferiority, there is no redemption in anything. Winning elections, burning effigies, even shooting at other citizens does not soothe their anger but instead deepens the spiritual and moral void that haunts them.

Donald Trump is central to this fraying of public sanity, because he has done one thing for such people that no one else could do: He has made their lives interesting. He has made them feel important. He has taken their itching frustrations about the unfairness of life and created a morality play around them, and cast himself as the central character. Trump, to his supporters, is the avenging angel who is going to lay waste to the “elites,” the smarty-pantses and do-gooders, the godless and the smug, the satisfied and the comfortable.

I spoke with one of the original Never Trumpers over the weekend, a man who has lost friends and family because of his opposition to Trump, and he told me that one of the most unsettling things to him is that these same pro-Trump family and friends now say that they believe that Trump broke the law—but that they don’t care. They see Trump and his crusade—their crusade against evil, the drama that gives their lives meaning—as more important than the law.

I have heard similar sentiments among people I know.

Some of these people are ready to snap and to resort to violence. A Navy veteran in Ohio was killed in a standoff last week after he attacked the Cincinnati FBI office; a man in Pennsylvania was arrested and charged today for threatening to “slaughter” federal agents, whom he called “police state scum.” But that doesn’t stop charlatans and con artists from throwing matches at the fuses every day, because those hucksters, too, have decided that living a normal life and working a straight job is for saps. They will gladly risk the occasional explosion here and there if it means living the good life off of donations and purchases from their marks.

When enough Americans decide that a cult of personality matters more than a commitment to democracy, we risk becoming a lawless autocracy. This is why we must continue to demand that Trump and his enablers face the consequences of their actions: To cave in the face of threats means the end of democracy. And it would not, in any event, mollify those among our fellow citizens who have chosen to discard the Constitution so that they can keep mainlining jolts of drama from morning until night.

We are going to be living in this era of political violence for the foreseeable future. All any of us can do is continue, among our friends and family and neighbors, to say and defend what is right in the face of lies and delusions.

from:https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters ... re/671146/

The point I'd like to stress regarding The Atlantic article is the randomness of violence across society and increasing acceptance by citizens of this as a means of expression. Is this not the point of Osama bin Laden's program, where rather than a hierarchical organization, a facilitation of individual violence was encouraged and groomed? We are seeing this happen in our localities in front of our very eyes, no matter what the ideology or cause is behind it. What I'm identifying here is the acceptance by large numbers of the citizenry of violence as a means to an end, whether that end is well-defined or is simply a matter of felt grievances.

Such people at least have some semblance of a purpose, but those who are only acting on their own for their own greed or enjoyment of inflicting pain on others are also going to react to this acceptance of violence -- only rather than a cause or a grievance, they will do so for reasons we've traditionally considered "criminal" and "aberrant."

Consider the level of these tendencies by first rereading Abhijeet's post of a few years back:

http://10news.dk/?p=760

Interpol: allowing citizens to carry guns in public is most effective way to prevent terror attacks
January 8, 2015 140151

How long would the jihadis at Charlie Hebdo, Westgate, Mumbai – and many other terror attacks to come – be able to continue killing if they were surrounded by armed citizens? Interpol states that the only way to stop such attacks is to allow citizens to carry arms (the only alternative to an armed citizenry is “extraordinary security” surrounding every area where many people meet – train stations, super markets, schools, etc. – which is of course completely unrealistic). If guns are illegal, only violent criminals, fanatic jihadis and our over-worked, understaffed police will have them.
In case you are unsure whether it is a good idea that citizens legally own firearms: Switzerland has very liberal gun laws and one of the lowest percentages of homicide in the world. Interesting statistics on guns, homicides and firearm related accidents in the US here.
From abcNEWS:

Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said today the U.S. and the rest of the democratic world is at a security crossroads in the wake of last month’s deadly al-Shabab attack at a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya – and suggested an answer could be in arming civilians.
In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Noble said there are really only two choices for protecting open societies from attacks like the one on Westgate mall where so-called “soft targets” are hit: either create secure perimeters around the locations or allow civilians to carry their own guns to protect themselves.
“Societies have to think about how they’re going to approach the problem,” Noble said. “One is to say we want an armed citizenry; you can see the reason for that. Another is to say the enclaves are so secure that in order to get into the soft target you’re going to have to pass through extraordinary security.” …
Citing a recent call for al Qaeda “brothers to strike soft targets, to do it in small groups,” Noble said law enforcement is now facing a daunting task.
“How do you protect soft targets? That’s really the challenge. You can’t have armed police forces everywhere,” he told reporters. “It’s Interpol’s view that one way you protect soft targets is you make it more difficult for terrorist to move internationally. So what we’re trying to do is to establish a way for countries … to screen passports, which are a terrorist’s best friend, try to limit terrorists moving from country to country. And also, that we’re able to share more info about suspected terrorists.”
In the interview with ABC News, Noble was more blunt and directed his comments to his home country.
“Ask yourself: If that (Westgate terror attack) was Denver, Col., if that was Texas, would those guys have been able to spend hours, days, shooting people randomly?” Noble said, referring to states with pro-gun traditions. “What I’m saying is it makes police around the world question their views on gun control. It makes citizens question their views on gun control. You have to ask yourself, ‘Is an armed citizenry more necessary now than it was in the past with an evolving threat of terrorism?’ This is something that has to be discussed.'”

http://10news.dk/?p=760

The man quoted poses a rhetorical question to make his point by saying:

“Ask yourself: If that (Westgate terror attack) was Denver, Col., if that was Texas, would those guys have been able to spend hours, days, shooting people randomly?” Noble said, referring to states with pro-gun traditions.

But now, unfortunately, we have the answer to this rhetorical question in the events of the school shootings in Uvalde, Texas, where we saw first hand how Texas law enforcement -- over one hundred of them according to some reports -- stood by for hours as a young shooter massacred more than 20 people. This incident only ended when the shooter took his own life.

I'll state again, my point is not political, but then again, maybe it is the most political issue of all: What I've quoted and written highlights what I think is happening in the world. It is going on in some nations more than it is in others, but it is happening, and the "it" I refer to is the possibility of violence happening to each of us individually. It may be a political issue nationally or locally, termed as a breakdown of law and order, or criminally oriented.

Another factor to this trend I want to briefly mention is climate change. Whatever your political or scientific views on this matter are, there's no question that things are changing. There is either a dearth of water or too much. Temperature is rising. Storms are becoming more severe. These events will negatively affect agriculture, both growning food and distributing it, and also the availability of drinking water. Many have ascribed the tragic events in Syria and the spread of that tragedy to wide parts of that region to the breakdown of agriculture. Indeed, Lenin is quoted as saying:

“Every society is three meals away from chaos.”

If you accept the point that these trends that I've presented might exist and also that our individual safety and security might be at risk because of them, you may ask: what is a reasonable personal response to these things?

Some in the USA are involved in "prepper" movements, where they prepare for a great upheaval. I don't see this happening or at least being a big threat. Rather, I see these events moving along incrementally and being accepted by most in the fashion of the frog in the heated pot of water analogy.

What I can do is take individual action and seek to prepare myself, however. I can also take individual responsibility for my own safety and security, rather than leaving it up to someone else.

Some of these preppers espouse going into the hinterlands and setting up a homestead. There, they grow their own crops, manage their own livestock, and "live off of the grid" with no electricity, or with electricity they generate for themselves by some means. How these installations will survive the catastrophic events they foresee, I'm not sure. Some band together in communities and others try to move further away from civilization and adopt an even more primitive lifestyle.

This may work for some, but I wonder how these "teachings" make provision for people like me, who are too old or physically unable to meet the strenuous demands of self-sufficiency. I also wonder what they intend to do when they approach old age.

There are all sorts of solutions proposed and as the number of contingencies are infinite, so are the number of measures those who seek whatever degree of self-sufficiency must use to counteract them. Nobody knows the future, even though the signs of problems are clear enough (or are they?).

I'll close by making the point that we all bear personal responsibility for our own safety. Admiral Hyman Rickover once observed:

“Responsibility is a unique concept. It can only reside and inhere in a single individual. You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you. You may disclaim it, but you cannot divest yourself of it.”

We may give responsibility for our personal safety to others, such as the government, law enforcement, our friends, etc., but as Rickover says, we are still ultimately responsible and we will bear the results of our decisions.

IFG stands for RKBA, or, the law abiding citizen's right to personally own firearms. Believing in this, I say in answer to your question, that political views, ideologies, ethnicities, or whatever else, whether these things divide us or unite us -- we still are responsible for our own safety. We may not have the power to do all we'd like, or even all we need, but we can do something.

Such decisions aren't easy nor can they ever provide an iron-clad guarantee of safety. I noted wingcosethi's very appropriate response in the linked thread:

Owning a gun by itself will not help. A person who has not been trained or at least does regular firing practice, will be more dangerous on the streets. An policy in permitting arms ti the citizens must also make sure that there are adequate small arm firing ranges available in the country. I have a gun and had not fired it since the 1971 war and when I tried the three rounds at 25 yards I missed the target. Each round cost 1500 rs.

This is very true. But if we recognize the situation, we can decide to do what we can.

[rs123in]