NAGRI in the News Archives - National Association for Gun Rights India

Diggy takes aim at Pistol PC – Rights group lobbies against tighter arms rules

By Sanjay K. Jha
The Telegraph
Monday, August 9, 2010

New Delhi, Aug. 8: For the first time, Parliament could witness a battle over an issue usually associated with US politics: gun control.

The home ministry’s plan to amend the Arms Act, making gun licences harder to obtain for ordinary citizens, is poised to face strong opposition in the House.

The National Association for Gun Rights in India (NAGRI) is mobilising support among MPs with the backing of its chief patron, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh.

NAGRI president Rahoul Roy told The Telegraph the MPs would resist the Arms Act (Amendment) Bill, 2010, whenever it was introduced in Parliament.

दिग्गी बनाम चिंदबरम

Punjab Kesari
Friday, August 6, 2010

नाक्साल्वाद ही एक ऐसा मुद्दा नहीं है जिस पर दिग्विजय सिंह ने गृह मंत्री चिदम्बरम के खिलाफ तलवार निकाल रखी है | चिदम्बरम से आजकल जो उन्हे नई परेशानी है, वह है गृहमंत्री ने हथियार और आयुध क़ानून १९५९ मे बदलाव किया है जिससे किसी व्यक्ति के लिए हथियार हासिल करना और जिनके पास है उनका लाइसेंस नवीकरण करवाना कठिन हो जायेगा |

NRA News interviews NAGRI President

Originally aired 7/30/2010

Rahoul Rai (President NAGRI) and Abhijeet Singh of the National Association for Gun Rights India (NAGRI) talk to Cam Edwards about the mission of their group and the status of firearm freedoms in India. The men explain that while Indian law provides for “shall issue” rights to gun ownership under the Arms Act of 1959, ordinary citizens are frequently denied firearms and forced to appeal to the judicial system. Now the government is looking to pass a new Arms Act that would downgrade gun ownership rights to may issue status. Rai and Singh discuss the governments stance that guns contribute to crime and terrorism, and they examine the role that a well-armed citizenry could have played to thwart violent incidents like the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

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Gun ownership laws trigger Indian debate

By Hannah Gardner
Foreign Correspondent, The National
Thursday, July 29, 2010

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.”

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.