New proposed draft rules of Arms Act may make it easier to own guns only for a chosen few

NEW DELHI: Fifty-eightyear-old Pramela Pandey is like any other homemaker in FM Colony in the Civil Lines township of Kanpur. The only difference: when she steps out of her house, she wears a licensed revolver on her waist. "There is utter lawlessness in Uttar Pradesh. You need a gun to survive in the jungle raj," says Pandey, affectionately known as ‘chahchi’, who stays in a joint family of 35 members, five of whom have licensed firearms. The latest and youngest to get a gun is her youngest son Anurag, 26.
The guns owned by the Pandeys are amongst the estimated 4 crore legal and illegal firearms owned by civilians in India, according to gunpolicy.org. The corresponding number in the United States: 31 crore.

As ET Magazine traversed the gun belt of western Uttar Pradesh — from Meerut to Etah, Kanpur, Lucknow and Mohanlalganj — two realities came to the fore: a widespread clamour for legal guns; and the rampant presence of illegal arms. Etah, for instance, is dotted with illegal firearm manufacturing units where one can get tamanchas (crude country-made pistols) for as low a price asRs 1,500.

And, in Meerut, this writer stumbled upon a local shop in the city’s bustling main market, where a bouquet of guns is on offer — from simple self-loaders costing a few thousands to sophisticated six-shooters that carry a tag of few lakhs and are imported from Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.

It’s perhaps against this backdrop of illegal arms that the government has come out with draft rules to amend the Arms Act of 1959 and make it faster to get a licence by reducing paperwork, amongst other procedures. But experts contend that the proposed rules will only make it easier for netas, babus and some categories of professionals to get a gun.

Says Sunieta Ojha, a Supreme Court lawyer: "The proposed rules will make it further opaque and beyond the reach of an ordinary citizen to get an arms licence." The anti-gun lobby, for its part, points to the havoc guns have created. In 2013, 720 people, including 125 women, died just due to celebratory firing in Uttar Pradesh. In fact, around 60% of the total deaths due to such firings across the country were reported from UP.

The same year, the Allahabad HC set up a committee headed by Professor Himanshu Rai of Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, to suggest ways to regulate licensed weapons and curb incidents of celebratory firing. "I would want getting gun licences to be made as difficult as possible, a complete ban on issuing licences for assault weapons like rifles, and regular monitoring of those who have been granted licences," says Rai, who is now dean at MISB Bocconi, a Mumbai-based Bschool. Read more about it in tomorrow’s Cover Story in ET Magazine.