On The Right To Keep And Bear Arms

Here are some questions that all honest, tax-paying, law-abiding citizens of India must ask themselves:

1. Should we blindly trust The State?
2. Should we blindly trust the State Police to look after us and protect us?

If the answer to these questions is a loud "No," then we must face up to the fact that, in India, we are faced with the peculiar situation that they have all the guns, and we have been systematically unarmed.

We are defenceless.

They have all the guns.

And, to top it all, the Central State Police Ministry is seriously attempting to make gun ownership even more difficult for us.

The new arms policy requires a citizen to prove grave and imminent threat to life prior to the grant of arms license.

Think about it: The criminal, the terrorist, the Maoist - they do not require gun licenses at all. They simply buy illegal guns in the black market and use them. There are numberless factories in India that produce crude guns - and these are quite popular, and cheap.

But if a regular citizen wants a regular gun, the procedures make it impossible; there is a huge amount of corruption; and these legal guns and the ammunition required are horrendously expensive.

Ten terrorists killed hundreds in Mumbai recently - because the citizenry has been unarmed.

The State Police could do nothing to prevent this two-day slaughter.

How can we protect ourselves?

For quite a few years now, I have been a member of Indians For Guns. This group, led by Abhijeet Singh, champions our right to keep and bear arms. I am in full support of their endeavours. You can visit their website here; their Facebook page here.

"A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone" is a saying I strongly believe in. In the field of personal security, as in all other fields, I strongly believe in self-help. I believe in private security; I believe in private guns.

Today, there is some good news for people like me: A group of MPs from many parties, led by Digvijay Singh, former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, a veteran CONgressman who has been in the news for strongly criticizing the State Police in their handling of the Naxalites and Maoists, has called upon the Prime Minister and opposed the new arms policy being touted by the Central Police Ministry. Read the news report here. This is a most welcome development. The report mentions that Digvijay Singh is the patron-in-chief of the National Association for Gun Rights, India. Finally, we seem to have some "good politics." By good politics I mean a politics that is for the citizenry, and against the powers and privileges of the State and the State Police. Our current Central Police Minister, P Chidambaram, plays politics of the opposite sort. Chidambaram seems to be in the pockets of the "security establishment."

There is one part of India where all the citizens have the right to keep and bear arms, and that is Coorg, in Karnataka. I visited this district and lectured far and wide. One of the colleges presented me with their emblem: Two crossed machetes with a rifle going through them! It is noteworthy that there is complete peace in Coorg. No terrorism. No Naxalites. And no police atrocities either.

As an economist, I would like to add that our State Police today are nothing but an ugly MONOPOLY. Further, the political theory that the State Police monopoly should be our only provider of security is nothing but COMMUNISM. Free societies cannot be thus. And Indyeah must aim to be a free society.

The first economist in the world to say this was Gustave de Molinari in France during the 19th century. Molinari was a close associate of Frederic Bastiat and the editor-in-chief of their Journal des Economistes. His brief essay on the "Production of Security" - with a foreword by Murray Rothbard - can be found here. It is well worth a read in these troubled times, in this troubled country - a country in which the State Police are largely seen as predators, not protectors. I strongly recommend this essay to readers of my blog.