Guns ‘n’ Woes

According to a report, only 15 per cent of the 650 million firearms owned in India are licenced.

India has a relatively low count of privately-owned firearms—we’re ranked 110th among 179 countries. Yet, the ‘country-made rifle’ is a common spectre in news reports of robberies and murders. A recent report released by the Small Arms Survey, Mapping Murder: the Geography of Firearm Fatalities, explains why. According to it, only 15 per cent of the 650 million firearms owned in India are licenced. The rest are mostly katta or country-made weapons, which are crude, cheap, and account for nine of every ten firearm-related murders in the country, as they are ‘ideal for criminal use’. The report notes that ‘unlicensed weapons… generally fire single shots; assailants can dispose of them easily and… typically cannot be traced to any owner by ballistic fingerprinting’. While India’s gunshot murders are a tenth of those in the US, the report shows that violence is ‘highly localized’. UP accounts for 14 per cent of all murders in the country—1,470 deaths in 2008. And UP, Bihar and Jharkhand account for two-thirds of the nation’s firearm deaths that year. Dr Anil Kohli, professor of forensic medicine at Delhi University, who authored the report, points to another worry: “While homicide rates have been falling, there continues to be an abnormally high accidental death rate in Meerut, Allahabad and Varanasi. In Meerut, especially, where weapons are produced, the fatality is very high. There were 243 accidental deaths there in 2008 alone. We need more detailed data on this.”

About The Author

Shruti Ravindran