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Thread: India - Controlling the grey market for guns

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    Post India - Controlling the grey market for guns

    Controlling the grey market for guns

    25 Jul 2010, 0131 hrs IST,Shantanu Nandan Sharma,ET Bureau

    When Mahendra Singh Dhoni applied to buy a 9 mm pistol, it triggered a riot of redtapism in his home state of Jharkhand. He was made to run from
    pillar to post for several months, before his application was sent to Delhi’s North Block, the union home ministry headquarters, for final approval. The captain of the national cricket team finally received the licence for the bore, but not before two years of paperwork and a controversy over the authorities demanding, among other things, his character certificate!

    While ordinary citizens, who also plan to own firearms, were fretting at the government’s trigger-happy rules that required even a national icon to defend his reputation, the home ministry moved in to amend the Arms Act, 1959 making the process (of acquiring firearms) even more stringent. The proposed changes, which were approved by the Cabinet last week, will minimise chances of issuing arms licences to persons of doubtful antecedents and are supposed to stall proliferation of small arms in a conflict-ridden nation.

    The ministry has argued that proliferation of arms, whether licensed or illegal, vitiates law and order, and hence needs to be curbed. India with 46 million firearms has the world’s second-largest civilian gun arsenal after the United States, according to the 2007 Small Arms Survey. Whereas US citizens own 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms, China with 40 million privately held firearms ranks third. But with bloody incidents involving gun-totting individuals on the rise in the US, as also in Indian cities and villages, concerns over the growing number of licenses isn’t unfounded.

    A serving police officer who did not want to be named says that celebrities and industrialists often apply for small arms for protection, but there has been a craze for licensed guns in some geographical areas in particular. “You would find more such applications in central Bihar or in and around Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh. At times, people try to bribe officers to get arms licences too,” he says. Among people who own guns in India are the rich who need to defend themselves, and politicians and criminals, who not only use the bore to defend, but also as a symbol of power and prestige.

    There is a provision, Section 13 (2A), of the Act, which empowers the licensing authority to grant an arms licence where the police verification
    report has not been received within the prescribed time. Now, the new draft, which will be moved to Parliament for approval seeks to delete the provision thereby making it mandatory for the licensing authority to wait for the police verification report.

    Though the government’s move to amend the Arms Act is unlikely to face any opposition in Parliament, a lobby group called National Association for Gun Rights for India (Nagri) is already terming the proposed amendment as “draconian”. It argues that if someone can own and carry firearms for self-defence in the US, why is he not allowed to do so in India. It argues that terrorists or the mafia are not going to be deterred by gun-control laws, and will be willing to procure arms of their choice irrespective of any laws.

    Rahoul Rai, the president of Nagri says the amendment of the Arms Act is an injustice to ordinary citizens. “If an ordinary citizen applies for a gun’s licence, he is unlikely to get it unless he has right connections. And it may take two to three years. So, many people end up buying illegal arms,” he says.

    What’s more, it is cheaper to buy the same gun in the grey market. The cost of a .32 Cal Revolver, for instance, is over Rs 78,000, whereas a .32 Cal Semi-Auto Pistol costs Rs 85,358, according to the ratelist of Indian Ordnance Factories, the state-owned firearms manufacturing units. Some of the cheaper options include 0.22 LR Revolver (about Rs 46,000), .22 LR Sporting Rifle (about Rs 42,000) and .315 Sporting Rifle (over Rs 55,000), but many of those are available cheaper in grey market because of stringent rules in resale. According to available statistics, only 2% of the total murders in the country is committed by legally held arms.

    Also, stringent rules for licenced small arms may not work so long as there is a proliferation of illegal arms in the country mainly due to rising conflicts. Binalakshmi Nepram, secretary general of New Delhi-based Control Arms Foundation of India, argues that India alone cannot fight the problem of arms proliferation as arms know no borders. “It is important to develop a regional treaty with South Asian countries to curb cross border transfers of Arms. And at the UN level, it is critical for India to support efforts for a global Arms Trade Treaty to curb irresponsible trade transfers,” she says. The treaty is expected to be finalised by 2012.

    For the home ministry, though, a bigger challenge is the lack of a national database that tracks legally held firearms. Ms Nepram mentions how the proposed amendment of the Arms Act wants to create a database. “The draft policy proposes the licencing authority to maintain records and share those with the central government,” she says. And that will ensure a real analysis of guns, law and rights.

    http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...ow/6212270.cms
    http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...70.cms?curpg=2

    Steve
    After today, it's all historical.

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    Gun ownership laws trigger Indian debate

    Hannah Gardner, Foreign Correspondent

    Last Updated: July 29. 2010 1:12AM UAE / July 28. 2010 9:12PM GMT

    NEW DELHI // It’s 1.30 on a Friday afternoon and Tejinder Singh Ghei, the owner of a tidy, one-room gun shop near Kashmiri Gate in Old Delhi, has not had a customer all week.

    An old plastic telephone on Mr Ghei’s counter rings and, after a short conversation, Mr Ghei hangs up with a sigh.

    “That was a dealer in Amritsar,” Mr Ghei said. “He says there is no business there either. It’s dead everywhere.”

    Business has been bad for years thanks to ever tighter gun laws, Mr Ghei said, but since March, when the government introduced a new set of amendments, it has been even worse.

    Along with highly restrictive curbs on the sale of ammunition and the creation of a national database of firearm owners, the new regulations also require gun-licence applicants to prove a “grave and imminent threat” to their lives in order to be approved.

    “Who can prove this? It’s ridiculous,” Mr Ghei said. “India is a dangerous place. We are all at risk, but we don’t get threats.”

    He was not the only one angered by the recent changes. India’s gun owners are also outraged, and for the first time they are fighting back in a style similar to the US’s National Rifle Association.

    In January, a small group of enthusiasts met in Delhi to found The National Association of Gun Rights India (Nagri) to lobby lawmakers and to fund legal cases that make it easier to own and carry arms in India.

    This month the organisation began a membership drive – and in doing so, they have provoked a debate about the role of fire arms in the land of Mahatma Gandhi.

    “The bottom line is it’s about freedom,” said Abhijeet Singh, 37, an entrepreneur and one of Nagri’s founders.

    “The first line of defence has to be the citizen. It always has been like that, it will always continue to be like that.”

    Gun rights are an emotive issue in India because they are closely bound up with the country’s struggle for freedom.

    After the Mutiny of 1857 – known here as India’s first war of independence – the British banned all non-Europeans from owning weapons to prevent another uprising.

    Even Gandhi, a famous proponent of non-violence, wrote in his autobiography: “Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look back upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”

    Thus in 1959, when the new Indian government drafted a law to replace the British one, it granted every citizen the right to bear arms, regardless of race or social standing.

    Businesses such as Mr Ghei’s – which at the time was run by his father – boomed as people bought guns for hunting, protection and as status symbols.

    But in the 1980s, with separatist insurgencies raging in Kashmir and Punjab and a Maoist rebellion in the centre of the country, the government began to make it harder to get gun licences and permits to travel with a firearm.

    Now, gun enthusiasts say, the only way to purchase a legal firearm is to ask a local politician to pull some strings or to pay a hefty bribe.

    “I am a free citizen with no criminal record,” said Sandeep Mukherjee, 44, who has been waiting more than two years for a permit to carry his handgun with him when he travels.

    “I am not going to pay a bribe. It’s a right given to me under Indian law, why can’t I exercise that right?”

    Like many would-be gun owners, Mr Mukherjee said his desire to own a firearm stems from a need to protect himself and his family. India has one of the lowest ratios of police to population in the world – 130 per 100,000, compared to an international average of 270.

    In states such as Uttar Pradesh, where Mr Mukerjee lives, kidnappings, armed robberies and highway hold-ups are still commonplace.

    He and other Nagri members argue that a combination of a slothful judicial system and a corrupt police force contribute to the rising crime rates, and more open gun laws can act as a deterrent.

    “An armed society is a polite society,” said Rahoul Rai, the president of Nagri.

    But anti-gun campaigners say arming citizens is not the way forward. The Control Arms Foundation of India (Cafi), which was set in up 2004 in response to rising gun crime in the north-east, estimates there are already some 46 million firearms in India, making it the country with the second largest number of guns in civilian hands after the US.

    “If I say I am going to protect myself then I exempt the state from doing its job. What India are we living in? This is not some failed state,” said Arundhati Ghose, a former India ambassador to the UN who campaigns for Cafi.

    Cafi estimates that some 58,000 people have died as result of armed violence in India in the past 15 years, while tens of thousands more have been wounded or maimed.

    Nagri counters that the majority of these were caused by the 40 million illegal arms in circulation, not the 5 million legal ones held by people it hopes to represent.

    “No criminal is standing in line applying for a firearms licence,” said the Nagri founder Mr Singh. “Why would he? He can get more firepower on the black market and he is less traceable. It is only the law-abiding citizen who is affected by these laws.”

    hgardner@thenational.ae

    http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs....9847/1015/NEWS
    After today, it's all historical.

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