Re: Basis of ban on the import of firearms in India in 1986
Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2015 8:25 pm
I agree with you sir. 1st we will have to prove that IOF alone is not sufficient to fulfil the needs against each and every requirement. Once the roar is as loud as required, the change is bound to happen.mundaire wrote:By the logic given here, pretty much every commodity and product should be freely importable - only then can you say that the consumer has free choice! However, this means accepting that the government has no authority to regulate any imports or for that matter any commerce, other than to ensure that it is free & fair... I very much doubt any such challenge to the ban on arms & ammunition imports will fly in a court of law.
Allow me to give this discussion a different twist.
While arms license holders see the ban on imports as the only thing holding them back from owning their dream guns, they tend to forget that their community is a minuscule minority in India and thus their desires are of little interest to those in power.
Those who have been denied an arms license (usually for no justifiable reasons) are many many times their number. Those who never even applied for an arms license, daunted by the harassment of the process and/ or the astronomical prices (of arms & ammunition) prevailing in India would be an even greater number.
So while the total number of people who may desire to own a legal firearm in India is large, that number is NOT represented by the total number of arms licenses in circulation.
You want better products? You want imports to be opened?
Then FIRST you need to address the above problem. Once there are 1 million additional arms licensees out there with nothing worthwhile to buy, the clamour for change will be louder... as the number goes up to 10 million it will be absolutely deafening!!
To put the above figures in perspective some years back there were over 100,000 arms license applications PENDING in just one city (Lucknow). Clear the backlog of just 10-15 cities and you have over a million new arms licensees, clear the all India backlog and the above figure of 10 million will turn out to be a conservative one.
The way I see it, that's the only way things will change for the better....
Cheers!
Abhijeet
Regards