guys
i have added and edited somethign to tingreman's article ...
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Part I -- Realizing and correcting our mistakes...
After putting an end to mutiny of 1857, British viceroy Lord Lytton (1874 -1880), brought into existence the Indian Arms Act, 1878(11 of 1878); an act which, exempted Europeans and ensured that no Indian could possess a weapon of any description unless the British masters considered him a "LOYAL" subject of the British Empire. Father of Nation M.K.Gandhi referring to Arms Act of 1878 remarked "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest"(page 238,My Experiment with Truth, M K Gandhi).India won her independence in 1947, but our Government still took 12 years to formulate the new Arms Act.1959 which was further supplemented by Arms Act Rules of 1962.Although a little better than Arms Act of 1878,unfortunately,the new Arms Act of 1962 did not show any sign of Government of Independent India trusting its Citizens. While the new legislation gave vast arbitrary powers to the "Licensing Authorities”, to ensure that procurement of Arms License remains a distant fruit for citizens where as the concept of Prohibited and Non-Prohibited bore/calibers remained intact. This concept was used by the British to ensure that the military supply of Ammunition does not find its way to Indians especially freedom fighters as they did not trust Indians who formed major percentage of serving personnel in their Army and Law Enforcement Units. The Pakistani Government however, did wave this colonial idea afterwards. All the calibers which are/were used by Military/Law Enforcement Units of our country were kept out of reach and civilians were left to settle for less effective or better to say useless calibers like .32 ACP,.25 ACP,22 LR etc.,while the minimum caliber advocated worldwide for self defense purpose is 9 mm P/9x19 mm.Although some belonging to old thoughts may recommend .380 ACP/ 9 mm short/9x17 mm as qualifying round for SD purpose, but the statistics of actual street fight show that this caliber (.380 ACP aka 9 mm short) does not have enough power to qualify as serious Self Defense round. The new Arms Act is also no good for Indian Arms manufacturing Industry. Limits on quantity and quality of Arms manufactured/produced was imposed and addition to that a complete ban on importing of machinery required for production of quality Arms left the Indian Arms Industry limbless. This killed the spirit of competition and left industry to produce only very low quality handguns/rifles with unjustified higher price tags which never found their place in international market where as country as small as one district of India are dominating the world market and earning huge foreign revenue. Later on things became worse when in 1980, Government turning a blind eye to the fact that militants/terrorists/separatist element never used licensed fire-arms in committing crimes, but citing the internal disturbances and insurgency as the reason, completely banned the import of Arms and Ammunition of any kind for the civilian market. The Indian Ordinance Factory (IOF) -a public sector enterprise is the only one which produces any weapons meant for civilians market although its priority remains supply for Military and Law Enforcement Units. The civilian versions of their weapons are sub-standard, highly over priced and below the benchmarks to qualify for self defense or target practice.
Now the question arises, what did independence change with respect to Indian Arms Act? The obvious answer is nothing! Is this the situation The Father of Nation and other freedom fighters had dreamed of in their independent country?
Many may say, ‘what difference will possessing arms make?'.The right answer to this question could be perfectly answered by ones logical mind. On 26/11, even if 10% of the crowd at Taj Hotel bared arms, there wouldn’t have been a human slaughter !The simple reason being at least 50% of the 10% arms owner would have had the guts to shoot-down the terrorist. It has been one complete year for 26/11 event and still our Indian Government are busy requesting quotations from foreign arms manufacturers. Strange! Not surprising though, only because if the government and its Ministers had a little concern about their responsibilities towards their Nation, India might never have had such a terrifying attack in the first place. Now , other notable concern for all the Indian citizens .We are all aware of Michael Phelps of US winning 9 gold medals in the Olympics , however We never had the time to think as of Why does India have only a few gold medalist ? Abhinav Bindra, due to his devotion and dedication towards the shooting sport, won a gold medal in Olympics, irrespective of the problems he might have faced. Although we have a few "well-known" shooters in India (on state/national level) only a few make it to the Internationals. Why? The reason being stringent gun laws. Today, if a professional shooter is to import a "air-gun" , he/she has go through the whole officials hierarchy just to acquire the permission ! Believe it or not, Indian made "air-guns" are good for level 0-1 only, ammunition and shooting range charges excluded. If one decides to take the shooting sport professionally, he/she has to think it twice (from money/time aspect).
Coming back to 26/11 related concern of India; we have the Naxals/Ulfa/Maoist issue pending since long. It has been reported through the media multiple times, that the people living the above affected regions have to posses illegal arms, which they can acquire very easily to defend themselves. If, in the first place had India have had tangible gun laws , these people might have never thought of possessing illegal arms cause they face dangers from these groups and the police as well. As we have read above that we have "Licensing Authorities" which usually take around a year or more to issue a arms license, these people are left with no option than to purchase arms from the illegal market .Only if today, India had a "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" for her citizens, would had these extremist group thought twice before harming an innocent. CAFI is the only organization in India which is against RKBA. Agreeing on their views would not be wrong, but agreeing on their "no-initiative" to stop illegal arms trade would be wrong. Has ever the CAFI never thought about MLA's and MP's having highly sophisticated weapons guards around them? It has always been talked about guns affecting the crime rate of a country, but never ever has it been thought, to take an effective action on illegal arms trade, which in turn will reduce the crime rate itself. A fact never known to the law abiding common man, is that, these criminals posses pistols/revolvers which are as sophisticated as a .44magnum, whose one bullet is sufficient to take down an 85kg healthy man. Whereas our Indian police use the same old Service Revolvers/Pistols, which malfunction when they are needed the most! It has been brought to light may times by the media that some of the PSI's guns couldn't respond well during the 26/11 event. Probably that is the reason Indian government has to import handguns. Little was the government concerned about the protection of aam adami , would there have had been taken serious measures to prevent the happening of such event , cause if filed an RTI about the measures taken by the State Government, would one know how concerned and serious is The Government about the protection of their Tax Payers. The legal fire-arms owner are not at all responsible for free flow/trade of illegal fire-arms in the country. Remember, the anti-social elements are still getting their supply without any difficulties beside stringent gun laws. Worst the citizens are at the mercy of criminals/terrorists.
Legally armed citizen, in fact can help government to curb the crime and fight militancy. There have been many instances in country where citizens snatched weapons from criminals/terrorists and foiled their designs thus preventing loss of life and property. In one such incident, reported from Jammu and Kashmir, a girl not only killed one militant commander but also scared others to run for their life without doing any harm to her family. These results can be optimized by helping these citizens getting armed with adequate knowledge and arms as they have full right to protect their life and property, after all they are law abiding citizens of this country.
Let the government know that we want your tax count, let them know that you want your blood count, let the government know how we feel about the present arms law and act which doesn't give merit to law abiding, taxpaying citizens, let the government know that if guns are not required than why there are more than a dozen guns required around MLA, MPS and others. Let the government answer if the life of a normal "Janta" person is not worth protecting as much as is of a MLA or MP, let the government know that how this biased policy about arms ownership has created a big rift between a law abiding citizen and guns. Let them answer how stopping import of the firearms has helped them gain revenues or help the domestic industry, which anyway doesn't exist in hand guns and rifle segment as the government doesn't grant such permission, who the government is supporting by such practices ? The government has actually taken the firearms away from the citizens. Can someone who earns 1.5 Lakh a year own a gun even made by IOF? That means more than 90% of the Indian population can't even have a gun which government gets made, isn’t their life worth protecting? Don’t they have a right to self defend themselves in areas where police takes hours to reach? And who is profited in the second hand arms sale? Where guns worth a thousand or five max sell for 2 to 3 lakh, isn't this an eye opener for the government loosing revenue like this?
The national portal of the government of India has online complaint redress system "
http://grievance.nic.in/Netizen/arpgn.asp" which gives you multiple errors while addressing your complaint/grievance. This is the era we live in ! The government shows the Common Man with fake empathy!
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Re-edited and Completed by:
lion-heart guru
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hope you guys comment since i think i am on the last step to get this published
Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.
guru