As per our discussion http://www.indiansforguns.com/viewtopic ... 719#p87719, I could post two articles viz "Indian Arms Act and RKBA" and "Indian National- A Subject or a Citizen". I thought not to disturb the above mentioned thread as it is currently doing a very important job, and started a new thread wherein we can focus our attention on educating general masses about the cause of RKBA thrugh print and electronic media, internet etc. I am trying to put in my best efforts (even with limited command over language and subject-there is always new to learn), as I believe, someone, somewhere has to start, (easy said and easy done, why not me
), This thread may please be used by members, to discuss the articles/stuff meant for media etc.I am happy to say, I got good response for writing two small, (may be not upto the professional quality articles, Guys forgive me, I am not professional writer or reporter) from the members, the first article was edited after suggestion from more experienced IFGians and got pubished on internet here htp://www.merinews.com/article/gun-laws-vs-na ... 2380.shtml
, since, Lionheart got it published using his name, I am not aware of the response, he got from the world. The second article "Indian National- A Subject or a Citizen", also got published here http://www.merinews.com/article/an-indi ... 2936.shtml I have received very positive feed back thru emails. People have positive comments at http://astonmartinnews.com/story/404466 ... un-control
http://alphecca.com/ and http://www.pubsub.com/Stops-Jihad-on-Co ... xv9q2u5atS
This is some sort of encouragement for us- all the IFGians. We can move forward only if we move together, I need your valuable opinions and experience on the subject. Any feedback negative/positive is more than welcome and will enable us to move forward in this direction. I am putting below both the article for your presual and n/action.
regards,
tingriman
Indian National- A Subject or a Citizen
During my childhood, I used to see camps organised by NCC/SSB and Army to train school going teenagers and adults in fire-arms handling. Sometimes these camps were organised in collaboration with local government schools particularly during summer vacations. At the end of 15 days camp, participating teenagers and adults were used to be taken to a Shooting Range and certificate awarded depicting grades depending upon their performance on Shooting Range. These certificates used to be of immense importance to the recruitment authorities at recruitment rallies. Those were the good old days, when words like terrorism, militancy or naxalites were perhaps unheard of, but the ostensible, policy of govt was to keep youth prepared for the time of need or in other words, for any external/internal threat. Years have elapsed, thanks to our policy makers in the Government, many breeds of separatist have emerged under different names and banners, each propagating it own nefarious agenda, and each hell bent upon making the life of common masses as difficult as possible showing no respect either to Indian constitution, rich Indian cultural heritage or to the lives of innocent civilians. The SSB/NCC training camps have long been vanished, now a few people talk of NCC these days, that too with in the compounds of some educational institutes.
Training in handling of fire arms is something our electronic and print media hesitates to talk of, perhaps out of phobia of some kind, or a fear that masses associate with fire-arms, generally out of ignorance. The media has failed to educate the masses on the subject and always remained a mute spectator to policy of Government on Arms and Ammunition resulting in gross violations of citizen’s Right to Keep and Bear Arms, dead shooting sports in the country, zero competition amongst the manufacturers of Arms and Ammunition apart from a nation of ignorant masses. A fresh example in this regard is that drafting of afresh proposal on Arms Act in under process in Government and comments being sought from the citizens by the Deputy Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, but media has failed to provide the much needed publicity thus nullifying the need of government issuing a circular in this regard at the first place. In the absence of useful suggestions and healthy debate on the subject, formation of a better policy or an Act of Law is totally ruled out.
This fear and ignorance is natural in the wake of vague Arms Act that we still have in place even after 63 years of Independence. The Arms Act of 1962 is basically the extension of the Arms Act of 1878 (II of 1878) passed during the reign of Lord Lytton, aftermath of the failed mutiny of 1857. The sole purpose of Act was to prohibit Indians to acquire fire arms so as to neutralize any possible threat of a fresh armed mutiny from Indian freedom fighters. The intelligentsia of that time including the father of nation Sh. M. K. Gandhi had condemned the Arms Act of 1878 as blackest. In his autobiography “My Experiment with Truth“ he writes in chapter XXVII, “I used to issue leaflets asking people to enlist as recruits. One of the arguments I had used was distasteful to the Commissioner: 'Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.”
Unfortunately, instead of making the Act citizen friendly, the policy makers in Government kept on making policies in such a way so as to make it toughest for law abiding citizens to legally acquire, keep and bear the arms. In fact, this myopic approach has not only rendered civilians helpless for their personal defence but also indirectly made the job of criminals/anti-social elements/ terrorists easy. Moreover, all these policies of Government totally failed to curb the ways the anti-socials elements/criminals/terrorists get their supply of sophisticated illegal weaponry. In spite of stringent gun controls, we had attacks in Two Heritage Shrines in Kashmir and they were totally destroyed, Ragunath Temple in Jammu, J&K Legislative Assembly, Indian Parliament in New Delhi, Crowded markets of New Delhi, Hanuman Temple in Gujarat, Trident, Taj hotels and Nariman Building in Mumbai apart from this, killing of innocent civilians and members of Military/Law Enforcement Agencies/ State Police is routine of day in Kashmir, North East States and naxalite infested areas of the country. The free flow of illegal fire-arms and their use against the civilians, Military/Law Enforcement Agencies/State Police remained unchecked. The so called war in Kashmir, North East States and naxalite affected areas is not fought with licensed non-prohibited bore calibres.
Gun controls are blessings for criminals when criminals have guns and their victims don't, crime becomes a safer occupation as gun bans don’t disarm criminals but attract them. In some countries with strict gun-control laws, burglars enter houses while people are still at home several times as often as that happens in country like the United States. Gun control is a moral crusade against a benighted, barbaric citizenry. This is demonstrated not only by the ineffectualness of gun control in preventing crime, and by the fact that it focuses on restricting the behaviour of the law-abiding rather than apprehending and punishing the guilty, but also by the execration that gun control proponents heap on gun owners and their evil instrumentality.
The possession of arms is vital for resisting tyranny, and that to be disarmed by one's government is tantamount to being enslaved by it. The possession of arms by the people is the ultimate warrant that government governs only with the consent of the governed. In truth, a state that deprives its law-abiding citizens of the means to effectively defend themselves is not civilized but barbarous, becoming an accomplice of murderers, rapists, thugs, and terrorists and revealing its totalitarian nature by its tacit admission that the disorganized, random havoc created by criminals is far less a threat than are men and women who believe themselves free and independent, and act accordingly. A government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defence is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people.
Evidence suggests that armed citizens are very responsible in using guns to defend themselves. The Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, using surveys and other data, has determined that armed citizens defend their lives or property with firearms against criminals approximately 1 million times a year. In 98 percent of these instances, the citizen merely brandishes the weapon or fires a warning shot. Only in 2 percent of the cases do citizens actually shoot their assailants. In defending themselves with their firearms, armed citizens kill 2,000 to 3,000 criminals each year, three times the number killed by the police. A nationwide study by Kates, the constitutional lawyer and criminologist, found that less than 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The "error rate" for the police, however, was 11 percent, over five times as high.
It is by no means obvious why it is "civilized" to permit oneself to fall easy prey to criminal violence, and to permit criminals to continue unobstructed in their evil ways. While it may be that a society in which crime is so rare that no one ever needs to carry a weapon is "civilized". A society that stigmatizes the carrying of weapons by the law-abiding -- because it distrusts its citizens more than it fears rapists, robbers, and murderers -- certainly cannot claim this distinction. Perhaps the notion that defending oneself with lethal force is not "civilized" arises from the view that violence is always wrong, or the view that each human being is of such intrinsic worth that it is wrong to kill anyone under any circumstances. The necessary implication of these propositions, however, is that life is not worth defending. Far from being "civilized," the beliefs that counter violence and killing are always wrong are an invitation to the spread of barbarism. Such beliefs announce loudly and clearly that those who do not respect the lives and property of others will rule over those who do.
Many people deal with the problem of crime by convincing themselves that they live, work, and travel only in special "crime-free" zones. Invariably, they react with shock and hurt surprise when they discover that criminals do not play by the rules and do not respect these imaginary boundaries. If, however, you understand that crime can occur anywhere at anytime, and if you understand that you can be maimed or mortally wounded in mere seconds, you may wish to consider whether you are willing to place the responsibility for safeguarding your life in the hands of others
One who believes it wrong to arm himself against criminal violence shows contempt of God's gift of life (does not properly value himself), does not live up to his responsibilities to his family and community, and proclaims himself mentally and morally deficient, because he does not trust himself to behave responsibly. The handgun is the only weapon that would give a lone female jogger a chance of prevailing against a gang of thugs intent on rape, a teacher a chance of protecting children at recess from a madman intent on massacring them, a family of tourists waiting at a mid-town subway station the means to protect themselves from a gang of teens armed with razors and knives. An unarmed man is incapable of functioning as a free citizen; his property, his body, his very life are at the command of others, since there is no risk inherent in committing depredations upon him, as it is well said that an unarmed man is a subject while an armed men is a citizen
(K KUMAR)
South Africa
(for http://www.indiansforguns.com)
AND
Indian Arms Act and RKBA
After putting an end to the 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 ensuring, 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 the 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 the Arms Act Rules of 1962. Although a little better than the Arms Act of 1878, the new Arms Act of 1962 unfortunately, did not show any sign that the Government of ndependent India trusted its Citizens. While the new legislation gave vast arbitrary powers to the ‘Licensing Authorities’, it however ensured that procurement of Arms License remains a distant dream for the ordinary citizen.
The concept of ‘Prohibited and Non-Prohibited bore/calibers’ was used by the British, to ensure that Ammunition used by the military, police and paramilitary forces do not find its way to ordinary citizens, specifically freedom fighters who had loyalties amongst a major percentage of serving personnel in the British Army and Law Enforcement Units. After partition and independence, the Government of Pakistan showed broader vision and faith in their citizens by waiving aside a redundant relic from the colonial era. On the contrary in India, all the calibers which are/were used by Military/Law Enforcement Units of our country, were made sacrosanct and placed out of the reach of civilians who had to settle for less effective calibers like .32 ACP, .25 ACP, 22 LR etc.
The minimum caliber, advocated world wide for self defense purpose is the 9 mm P/9x19 mm. Another school of thought advocates the 380 ACP/ 9 mm short/9x17 mm as qualifying round for SD purpose. Statistics on the other hand reveal that the ballistics of the .380 caliber is inadequate to ‘stop’ an assailant, in an actual street fight.
Due to the new Arms Act, the indigenous Arms manufacturing Industry has remain fettered, due to a omplete ban on import of machinery, required for production of quality weapons. Today very inferior quality shotguns are produced, which due to ban on import of machinery and coupled with the ban on imports of firearms, are sold with unjustified high price tags. The quality of these indigenous weapons, produced by the few licensed arms manufacturers, which includes the Government owned Indian Ordnance Factory, have no takers in the international market.Countries which have a GDP less than most states in our country, dominate the world market, through the production and sale of quality weapons thereby earning huge foreign revenue.
The situation took a downturn in the 1980s, knowing fully well, that terrorists, criminals, separatists never use licensed weapons but resort to illegal, unlicensed and higher caliber weapons to wreck havoc on society and create mayhem, the myopic policy makers in the Government, citing internal disturbances and insurgency, completely banned the import of Arms and Ammunition of any kind for the civilian market.
The Indian Ordinance Factory-a Public Sector Undertaking is the only factory which produces weapons meant for the civilian market, though its priority is to supply Military and Law Enforcement Units. The weapons they produce are grossly substandard, highly over priced and below the benchmarks to qualify for self defense or target practice. Abhinav Bindra would never hope to qualify for the Olympics, leave alone winning a gold medal if he were to use an IOF produced gun. Some of the ‘gems’ produced by the IOF is the infamous .315 Rifle, when fired, the exiting round, instead of flying true and straight, actually flips over, a ballistic feat which would be appreciated more by the ISRO scientists.
The revolvers produced by the IOF, is at best a crude copy of the British Webley & Scott. Some of the copies of the original Webley & Scott revolvers produced illegally in Munger, Bihar have a better finish. The .22 and 30-06 rifles are no better, repulsive and inferior quality wood are used for the stock which are so heavy and unbalanced, that the owners of these rifles would be better off, if they were used as clubs.
This then brings us to the question, after gaining ‘independence’ what positive changes have we seen in the Indian Arms Act? The obvious answer is ‘Nothing’. In fact the situation has worsened. Is this the ‘freedom’ envisaged for the citizens, by the ‘Father of the Nation’ and other enlightened beings?
India to her proven credit is universally known and respected as a peace loving nation, but does this mean, that her law abiding citizens be deprived of their genuine Right to Bear and Keep Arms (RBKA), to protect their life and hard earned property?
Some may say that liberal guns laws are responsible for increase in crime rate and terrorism, but in fact, this is a grossly incorrect statement. Statistics on recorded crimes and terrorism clearly point out that terrorists use illegal, unlicensed, firearms smuggled into this country. Moreover, these anemic calibers, which civilians are allowed to possess legally in our country do not serve their purpose. For committing their act of terrorism, they need sophisticated, automatic and very high caliber weapons (like AKs, LMG, SMG, grenade launchers, Pikka guns, mortars & rocket launchers, RDX and detonating devices) for which no government will issue a license for civilian use. This explains that the problem of insurgency or crime has nothing to do with the Arms control.
Guns are like any other mechanical tool, ‘they don't kill people on their own’. It is the inherent predatory nature of the‘criminal human mind’ which is primarily responsible for committing crime against his fellowmen. If guns are not available, then to a ‘criminal’ or a person with an ‘unsound’ mind, any ordinary tool like a screw driver, kitchen knives, agricultural implements (sharp or blunt) or even stones can serve the purpose.
There are number of incidents and ‘killings’ reported world wide arising from ‘error of judgment’ while driving. Many innocent lives are lost each day on account of road accidents, thousands die each year on account of train accidents, air crash, boat capsizing, Several kill themselves by jumping from high rise buildings or drinking pills or insecticides/medicines used for agricultural propose. Does this mean that the best approach to prevent a loss of valuable human lives each year, we should ban driving, ban plying of trains and aircrafts, ban kitchen knives, ban agricultural implements/insecticides, ban some otherwise life saving medicines, ban building high rise buildings and ban everything which is responsible for loss of human lives? Would any government advocate such a ban?
Compare the statistics of the percentage of people killed each year with legally owned fire-arms, with those killed by illegal firearms. Documented records clearly indicate that in almost all the firearm related crimes, illegal fire-arms are invariably used. The Arms Act has proved to be a complete failure to check the free flow of illegal weapon and the ease with which the criminals and terrorists are getting their supply of highly destructive weaponry. The law instead of helping and coming to the aid of the law abiding citizens has on the contrary become its worst enemy. Neither can they defend themselves from these criminals/terrorists nor can they save their hard earned property. In fact the Arms Act has almost ‘neutered’ the law abiding citizen from keep a weapon for self defense. The worst possible fall out of this short sightedness, or even plain ‘cussedness’, on the part of the ‘powers that be’ is that our country is bereft of a ‘second line of defense’.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (Imperial Japanese Navy), during WWII warned against attacking the U.S. and said "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." What would happen to India, in the absence of a second line of defence, if China were to attack us in the near future? We would over run like ‘grass’ in front of a raging prairie fire!
Legally armed citizens, can not only provide the bulwark of a second line of defense but also help the government to curb the crime and fight militancy. There have been many instances in this country, where helpless unarmed citizens have dispossessed weapons from criminals/terrorists and foiled their designs, thus preventing loss of life and property. The recent laudable case of Ruksana Kausar, a simple girl from a small village in Jammu & Kashmir, who not only killed one militant commander, but also scared his accomplices to the extent that they had to run for their lives, thus preventing further harm to her family. The Government would be well advised to inculcate its citizens with adequate knowledge on self protection and responsible gun ownership to protect their life and property. After all they are law abiding citizens of this country.
K Kumar,
(Tingriman for http://www.indiansforguns.com)
Keep 'em coming! 
