Solidarity March- Bangalore

[Pran]

Change India, an initiative by RK Mishra is planning on holding a solidarity march to condole the Mumbai terror attacks.

The rally in Bangalore will start off from BRV Grounds on Cubbon roads. Me and Inder thought it would be a good idea to participate in this rally with anti-terror banners very similar to what Oleg has created. Other IFGians from Bangalore who would like to join us can respond on this thread.

More details on this rally can be seen on the link below-

http://www.changeindia.info/

Pran

[kanwar76]

Will be there Pran....

Did you think anything about lines on the poster?

-Inder

[penpusher]

Would be interesting to hear the organizers reaction to your banners. Pran & Inder,do give your feedback on the response to this.

[Sakobav]

Goodluck Inder and Pran; would it also make sense making small flyers of the poster for handing out?

Dont worry about monies we have a running tab with Inder and Mack The Knife.

Best

[kanwar76]

One crazy evening with lots of arguing and so called non-violence activists using violent means to tear our banner

Will put up the details and pics soon..

-Inder

[Pran]

The rally was an interesting experience. Inder even gave a small interview to a TV channel.

Excerpts from what people told us-

"If you give people guns, they'll kill each other on the streets"

"Guns should only be given to police"

"I totally disagree with this!"

A friendly American appreciated our efforts. The rally gave us a chance to convey our opinion on RKBA and get people thinking.

Pran

[penpusher]

One crazy evening with lots of arguing and so called non-violence activists using violent means to tear our banner

Will put up the details and pics soon..

-Inder

Looking forward to the detailed report.Pran and Inder,well done.

Inder can you put up the link,if any, to the video of the interview that you gave.Would love to hear it.If there is no link, can you provide the tran.script?

[kanwar76]

Hi Guys,

It all started when Pran came to know about the rally. He called me and told about this days ago but lazy guys as we are, we started work on the banner this morning only.

We went to a painter who make cloth banners and after wasting some time there and taking his advice to go for a flex printed banner we reached the printing shop and finalized the banner.

Rally start time was around 6:00PM. We reached there around 5:30 after buying poles and ropes to hold the banner, March started before time and we had to jog a little to catch up with everyone.

As soon as we opened the banner, some girls in crowd started doing ho.......ho.... with a big wide open mouth . but still not much problem till now, we started walking alongside the march and in-between kept getting mix responses of appreciations as well as disapprovement

Rally reached M.G road near Gandhi statue in around 15 minutes and people started talking same old things “we need to change our leaders” “Attack Pakistan, put diplomatic pressure” and so on. All of a sudden Mr. R.K Mishra sees our poster and one guy comes towards us advising me to keep the face of the banner towards road so that we can get more publicity. At that moment I thought... Yeah.. at least one guy agrees with us but my joy was short-lived as suddenly i realize that media is taking photographs of the crowd and if we turn the banner we wouldn’t get any coverage I ask Pran to not to turn banner.

After finishing speeches, everybody maintained 1 min silence and sang national anthem. All of a sudden one group of ladies come towards us and start shouting, we don’t stand by this. This is wrong. Terrorist also have human rights. One of them even tried to bring the banner down and tear it looking at this more people started arguing. One of them even accused me (in a very high tone) that we are piggybacking on them to push our agenda, I advise him to lower his tone and remind him that this rally is about change and this is the change we want and INDIA is a democratic country.

Many people came and argued with same old points like

1. People will kill each other
2. Guns have no place in civilized society.
3. One of them even gave a example of US and told me she lived in US and you can buy guns in Wal-Mart but when I ask her do you know what is a FOID card she didn’t has any answer, she even called some other guy for helping her in making her point but even that guy had no clue about regulations in US. She gave me an example of US university shooting but when asked “have you heard anybody killing anybody in a shooting range” she went mum…
4. Guns are for armed forces only.


Same argument from everybody but I think we made a point there. At least we made these people think. There were many guys who appreciated us including one American who by chance is husband of an anti-gun.

Penpusher it was not an interview as such. Those guys were from Art of living institute. She asked me only one question:

Interviewer: What do you think if people had guns in Bombay; it would have made a difference?

Me: Yes, If even 10% of guys at CST would have had guns, they would have stopped terrorists for at least 15-20 minutes giving enough time for police to react and contain them. Mr. karkare and other police officer would have been still alive and that’s the reason we are here. This rally is about change and this is the change we propose. We urge each citizen to arm him/herself and form a first line of defense against criminals.

These are few pics. I tried to make a movie when the ladies were trying to pull our banner down but it didn’t come very well

People with candles:

Picture496.jpg

People with candles:

Picture497.jpg

Our Banner: I think we should have thought of something more effective but as already told this was finalized in hurry.. so may be next time

Picture498.jpg

Our Banner

Picture499.jpg

Our Signature and messages on big board

Picture500.jpg

Thanks a lot to Pran for arranging this, Abhijeet for giving us permission to use IFG URL and Oleg for the picture we used in banner

-Inder

PS: Navi baijee, regarding handouts, even I was thinking of same and wish to do it next time with some hard statics and pro guns quotes flyers..

[penpusher]

[renegade_division]

1. People will kill each other
2. Guns have no place in civilized society.
3. One of them even gave a example of US and told me she lived in US and you can buy guns in Wal-Mart but when I ask her do you know what is a FOID card she didn’t has any answer, she even called some other guy for helping her in making her point but even that guy had no clue about regulations in US. She gave me an example of US university shooting but when asked “have you heard anybody killing anybody in a shooting range” she went mum…
4. Guns are for armed forces only.

In the last half a month on my discussions with various people I have invented some quite novel responses to these questions. Lemme share them with you

1) People will kill each other: Are you saying that all people wanna do is to kill each other? All you(the questioner) wanna do is to kill me, and the only thing which is stopping you is that you don't have gun?
Ok lets say I do give you a gun, whom are you going to kill around you?(make them answer, the answer should be no)
Ok how about this, who is the most aggressive person in your family, how about if you give him a gun whom are they going to kill?(again the answer should be no, if otherwise see below)
Ok now how about this, who are the most angry people you have seen in your life, and how many of them you think they will start shooting as soon as they get a gun?(now the answer will not be none, so you ask them this)
How many times these people have picked up a knife and stabbed their opponent, or the person they were angry with?(The answer in most cases should be none, or really small figure).
See, this is what I am talking about, people scream and howl a lot that how they will kill you in a fight, but its not to be taken literally, whenever we imagine a society with guns, we simply replace current situations(with no background of guns) and put guns in to the picture.

For example you(or your son) had a fight with a guy on street and they really beat each other bad, now you insert guns into the picture then its of course going to look like they will be killing each other with guns, but there is no background of the guns, they picked up a street fight because they knew there are no guns involved, the maximum damage which can occur is that one of them gets beaten up really bad, there is little or no risk of dying instantly.
This is why people pick up fights like these. Larger, more powerful one of the individual is the more inclined he will be to pick up the fight. That's why most of the bullies are physically so huge.
On the other hand if both individual have guns, the physical size does not matter, in fact the bully cannot guess how fast the guy can pull his gun, or even if he is having a gun or not(in cases of conceal carry).

So your argument is simply not logical when you think people are just sociopaths who wanna kill other people, and all they are waiting is a "govt licensed Legal gun" to kill other people.

2) Guns have no place in civilized society
Ok honestly speaking nobody gave me that lame of a logic but it can be easily fought with statistics, for this its better that you have some figures remembered on the tip of your tongue.
What you gotta do is to ask them this:
"Ok if guns have no place in civilized society, how come world's richest and most powerful and most freest societies have highest civilian ownership of guns? For example USA, Switzerland, Yeman(world's fastest growing democracy), France, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Austria, Germany etc(in the order of civilian ownership of firearms)
(Check out the list, and make sure you go through a country's gun laws profile in case your opponent knows these statistics, although any gun control freak would not make such a point
List of Countries by Gun Ownership).
Another question you can ask is this:
"Where are more civilian owned guns, in Canada or in Namibia"(the answer is of course Canada.

3) One of them even gave a example of US and told me she lived in US and you can buy guns in Wal-Mart
I don't even know what the point of the question is and why you decided to answer it?
Imagine if someone made a case for Rapes and said this "DO you know that in USA you have to ASK for sex before having it with a woman?", are you going to start answering the question??

Yes you can buy guns from Wal-Mart and your point is...?
Nwo lets say she does change the question "look what a chaos of a society it is in there"(now the fun part comes because there is no way to put it in a strong question, how to make USA look like a Chaotic African war zone. Most people in USA would never ask that question, some morons on Orkut did ask me that, well the argument is totally on USA is still way safer for a woman than India is any time hands down.

Usually guys(males) do make this kind of question, because for guys they might find India more safe than USA, I mean we can walk at any point of the city, and we mix into the crowd and we are safe. But its not the same for women they are unequally safe in India(that is men are more safe in most of the dangerous areas than woman), and women are equally safe in America(that is women and men are equally unsafe in dangerous areas of USA).

Point being that most men support Gun Control in India because life is easy and safe for men in India, and its the women who need Gun rights.

4) Guns are only for armed forces
Not the most brilliant point the gun-control fanatic, and I usually give amazing arguments in US about arming the civilians against govt aggression, but unfortunately in India people are WAY TOO MUCH brainwashed about democracy, so they think "Oh if govt has turned Fascist, you wait till next election, and vote them out of the govt" "Its not the system, its the people, replace them".
In America even the pro-gun control people have a certain amount of distrust against the govt, so this argument makes sense to them, but there is no success in Indian mindset.

I don't have a satisfactory answer of this question for Indians, maybe people here can help me.

A few other questions I have faced.

5) Indians are not responsible enough to be trusted with guns
Usually this "statement" comes after you tell them how USA, world's richest, most freest and prosperous country has so many guns, they try to tell you "Indians are this...Indians are that, USA is different".
There is only one reply to this stupid question, ALWAYS spin it as if he said "Indians are not intelligent enough like Americans", mock his statement as if he said "Indians have lesser IQ than Americans".
Why? Because if you keep on talking about Responsibility, he will keep on saying "Indians are more emotional, illiterate, blah blah", he will accept that Indians are inherently not good in comparison to Americans on these things, but if you talk about Intelligence, people immediately react strongly.

Nobody who makes such kind of a statement will accept that Indians have less IQ than Americans(its self-deprecating).

Considering this is the MOST MADE POINT to be by gun rights skeptics, the answer is evolved into asking them this "So if you were made Mayor of town where half of the people are Americans, other half Indians, you will allow Americans to carry guns, but Indians not".
OR
"If you were Viceroy during British Rule, you would have allowed Britishers to carry Guns, but Indians not? Who else you wouldn't have allowed to carry guns? Dogs?? I mean can I read this written somewhere in your rule Dogs and Indians not allowed to carry guns"

Boy that totally throws them in defensive mode. The point this is the most ridiculous and illogical argument it must be suppressed through ridicule rather than promoted to be answered.

[nm]

Very well written!!! renegade_division

Great effort Inder and Pran.....

This is quite encouraging for us Delhi guys.....would take part in something similar here next time....


Nishant

[HSharief]

Inder and Pran, GREAT effort. I really applaud you guys for having the cajones to pull this off. Hats off. There is still lot of education that needs to happen and I say all in due time. What you did is a great start. Again, good job.

[Sakobav]

Inder and Pran

hats off to you guys to march with that banner and it takes guts and cool mind to tackle the antis. Its easy for me to say yeah do this and do that but another thing to march on the street.

Renegade thats a nice write up. Even I had to face similar irrational reason from my relative " Kids these days are emotional they can do something with the guns loose temper ..." and justification to deposit my Uncles guns in the police station.

Cheers

[Vikram]

Inder and Pran,

I would stand in the queue,with my hat in hand, to shake your hands.Bravo. Not very easy what you guys did.

Renegade_Division,

That is a well thought out and well written post.Thank you for your time and effort. Not much to argue with there.

Best-
Vikram

[kanwar76]

Thanks Guys,

I think this is need of the hour, we gun-lovers/owners have to be more vocal. We need to shun PC'ness and come out in open. These guys only need education

Thanks Renegade,

Thanks for the long post and advice.

Guys,

Here is small 5 sec video. The woman who is shouting near me tried to bring down the banner...

[youtube][/youtube]

-Inder