India – An Unarmed Country Susceptible To Attack?

I find myself asking the same few questions again after watching the reports coming out of Mumbai, India and the tragedy of death due to terrorist attacks. Sometime after 9/11, I was having a discussion with my adult son about what would have been the differences on 9/11 had passengers aboard the airlines been allowed to exercise their Second Amendment rights and been armed? A complicated discussion to say the least but one that, in my opinion, deserves attention.

Now we are looking at India’s 9/11, the city of Mumbai seemingly all too easy for terrorists to mount an attack against innocent people. Once again I am asking two questions. What would have been different had the people of India been allowed armed self protection? And to go along with that question, how many people died in this attack because they were helplessly unarmed?

It appears that India has very strict gun control laws. Alphecca asks: “India: How’s That Gun Control Working Out?”, pointing out that even the security guards weren’t armed because of draconian gun control laws.

Published at GunOwners.org, an Indian citizen, Abhijeet Singh, offers a history and explanation of why India does not allow its citizens to own guns.

To trace the roots of India’s anti-gun legislation we need to step back to the latter half of the 19th century. The British had recently fought off a major Indian rebellion (the mutiny of 1857) and were busy putting in place measures to ensure that the events of 1857 were never repeated. These measures included a major restructuring of administration and the colonial British Indian Army along with improvements in communications and transportation. Meanwhile the Indian masses were systematically being disarmed and the means of local firearm production destroyed, to ensure that they (the Indian masses) would never again have the means to rise in rebellion against their colonial masters. Towards this end the colonial government, under Lord Lytton as Viceroy (1874 -1880), brought into existence the Indian Arms Act, 1878 (11 of 1878); an act which, exempted Europeans and ensured that no Indian could possess a weapon of any description unless the British masters considered him a “loyal” subject of the British Empire.

Even since India gained independence from the British Empire, much of the same gun control laws exist today.

We can second guess until forever what would have happened if? But this still deserves some discussion. In looking at 9/11 as it happened here in the United States, isn’t it a legitimate question to ask if the terrorists would have even considered hijacking planes to use as weapons if they knew the passengers probably would have been armed?

Or how about the attack at Virginia Tech? Having students or teachers armed probably wouldn’t have stopped the deranged person from doing what he did but how many people died because there was nobody permitted to be armed?

Would terrorists have picked out Mumbai if they had known that security guards and the people were armed. Probably they would have but having these armed people, would the results have been different? Of course they would. Think of the innocent people who hid in fear of their lives and nothing they could do to fight back, to protect themselves or their loved ones. Innocent blood on the hands of governments fearful of its citizenry and unwilling to recognize that lawful people, seldom, if ever, commit crimes with guns.

Personally I believe that there is a reason the United States has not been attacked again on our own soil and that’s because the terrorists haven’t been able to pull it off yet. It has to be figured into the equation that an armed citizenry is a deterrent. It makes the efforts of terrorists more difficult. Why do you think they pick locations where guns are prohibited?

Free human beings have to be able to defend themselves and no government, like the one described above, should be able to strip that right away from lawful and free human beings. All of the entities involved that have the power to deny people their rights, hold the guilt of the shed blood in their hands. That can’t be denied.

Tom Remington