“I feel safe wearing it in my ankle holster every day,” said Verma, 27, who runs a family business selling fire-protection systems. “I have a right to self-protection, because random street crime and terrorism have increased. The police cannot be there for everybody all the time. Now I am a believer in the right to keep and bear arms.”
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This is great news, and I certainly hope that Indian gun owners are able to keep up the fight and secure their rights. The best part of the article though, was that little quote I put up top. The outcome of the Mumbai attack is that the police or military ‘cannot be there for everybody all the time’. Governments instead should be empowering their citizens to not only protect themselves, but actively help pass down information that leads to the arrest and capture of criminals and terrorists. To not just roll over on the ground and pee on themselves in the face of danger, and to stand up to these criminals and terrorists.
Of course the police and military needs to continue to do all they can to defend the country, as they should, but the state definitely should not get hung up on this monopoly on the application of the use of force they think they are supposed to have. Plus, having an armed citizenry will only enhance the defense of a country and keep their leaders in check. –Matt
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New groups mobilize as Indians embrace the right to bear arms
By Rama LakshmiMonday, 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.