Webmaster, Author at National Association for Gun Rights India

Controlling the grey market for guns

By Shantanu Nandan Sharma
The Economic Times Bureau
Sunday, July 25, 2010

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!

Lobbyists for RKBA in the land of Mahatma

By Jeremy Page
The Times, South Asia Correspondent
Thursday, June 24, 2010

It’s another painfully slow day at the Singh Arms Corporation, a musty, one-room gun shop near Kashmir Gate in Old Delhi that dates to the birth of modern India in 1947. Charan Pal Singh Ghei sits alone at his desk, surrounded by ancient glass cabinets full of shotguns, hunting rifles, pistols and revolvers.

On the wall above hang three Mughal-era matchlocks once owned by the Maharajah of Uppal. Gathering dust in a corner near by is a British Snider Enfield rifle dated 1857 — the year of the Indian Mutiny. “This is a dying trade,” says Mr Ghei, 76, the shop’s owner and head of the All India Arms Dealers Association. “Even my own son doesn’t want to take it over.” The problem, he explains, is that although Indians have had the right to buy and bear guns since 1959, it can take two years to get a shotgun licence, and longer still for a handgun.

Gun rights movement in India underscores important point

By Kurt Hofmann
St. Louis Examiner
Tuesday, February 9, 2010

A recent Washington Post article notes a nascent gun rights advocacy movement in India.

In the land of Mahatma Gandhi, Indian gun owners are coming out of the shadows for the first time to mobilize, U.S.-style, against proposed new curbs on bearing arms.

Then again, “nascent” is perhaps not an accurate characterization of gun rights advocacy in India. Gandhi himself, after all, famously said that:

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.

New groups mobilize as Indians embrace the right to bear arms

By Rama Lakshmi
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 1, 2010

In the land of Mahatma Gandhi, Indian gun owners are coming out of the shadows for the first time to mobilize, U.S.-style, against proposed new curbs on bearing arms.

When gunmen attacked 10 sites in Mumbai in November 2008, including two five-star hotels and a train station, Mumbai resident Kumar Verma sat at home glued to the television, feeling outraged and unsafe.

Before the end of December, Verma and his friends had applied for gun licenses. He read up on India’s gun laws and joined the Web forum Indians for Guns. When he got his license seven months later, he bought a black, secondhand, snub-nose Smith & Wesson revolver with a walnut grip.

NAGRI Inaugural Meet

The first meeting of the National Association for Gun Rights India (NAGRI), took place on 17th January 2010 at the Habitat Centre, New Delhi. What follows is a brief summary of the meeting:

The weather gods don’t heed the best laid plans, and come Sunday, Delhi saw some of the worst fog of the season. Traffic was backed up for hours and most morning trains & flights were cancelled/ delayed/ diverted. Despite this initial setback, the vast majority of our enthusiastic invitees braved the conditions and made it to the venue in time for the meet.