Of National Characters And Shooting Sprees

Back in the nineteen-seventies, when dinosaurs roamed the swamps, there used to be a genre of Bollywood films, more often than not starring an actor I like to mock as Vomitup Bachpan, which is not quite his real name.

These films used to follow a predictable formula. A man, usually young (from which this genre got its name, the “angry young man” film) rises up in wrath against corruption and evil in society, and ends up wiping out said corruption and evil but liquidating the big landowner, sleazy politician, crooked cop or whoever the evildoer might be. (Fairly often, the angry young man ended up dying heroically at the end of the film, so he didn’t even always get the girl, but that isn’t the point.)

The point is that, despite their extreme popularity, these films never actually incited anyone to get off their fat or thin ass and take apart the corrupt system which, even then, was shoving the country down the sewer. Nobody, after watching Vomitup exterminate the tyrannical landlord, rose up in rebellion against the actual tyrannical landlords. Nobody, no matter what they felt about the necessity of eliminating social evils at the point of a gun, did anything to eliminate social evils at the point of a gun or otherwise.

Today, we have what’s almost certainly the worst government ever to sit in power over us, controlled by shadowy businessmen and a monarchical family dictatorship, which fairly openly pull the strings to manipulate a so-called “prime minister” who has never won an election. Corruption is so pervasive that the state is now a kleptocracy; the amounts stolen are so mind-boggling they fail to make sense. Actual and relative unemployment are at staggering levels, and the government tries to hide the number of poor people by arbitrarily declaring even the indigent as being “above the poverty line”. As prices climb through the roof, the government signs away the nation’s mineral resources to crony capitalists for a song, and declares war on its own forest tribes in order to hand over their lands to mining concerns. And if there’s anything the last few years have taught us all, it’s this: our vote makes no difference. Whoever comes to power will do exactly what the last lot did, and outdo them if at all possible.

Now don’t you think this would have been a perfect situation for a mass rebellion, if not a country-wide revolution? Governments have been overthrown for less. As I write, Tunisia has thrown off a dictatorship which, while extremely nasty, was (from what I read) not in most respects any worse than what we have here. A single suicide sparked off the revolution there. Here, we have the government throwing people off the land at gunpoint to make dams and car factories, and we still don’t have a revolution.

Once upon a time, a few years ago, an Irish friend on Orkut asked me a very pertinent question: how come a few measly thousand British civil servants and soldiers managed to control well over a hundred million Indians for well over a hundred years? How was it that the Indians, given their maltreatment at the hands of the British, didn’t simply rise up and tear the Union Jack off the flagpoles, like the Irish did with far less excuse? Why was it that India had to wait until the British, eviscerated by the Second World War, had to quit simply because they could no longer afford an Empire?

I told him basically the same thing I’ve repeated over and over here on this site and elsewhere: India is a feudal nation and a feudal society. In this society, the dispensation and receiving of patronage is all that matters. It doesn’t matter if the man handing out sops to you is evil to the bone; all that matters is that he’s in a position to dish out patronage. So, all the Brits had to do was get the princelings and landowners on their side, and the people would never rebel; the few small attempts at a genuine rebellion were swiftly betrayed or petered out due to lack of support.

And, by the same token, corruption matters not at all, except that it gives a delicious tinge of scandal to Muddle Class conversation and gives the media something to talk about. It doesn’t matter to the desperately poor who are intent on simply surviving, and it certainly doesn’t matter to the upper-class elite, who are its primary beneficiaries.

Feudalism is, in this case, the national character.

I am, as I said elsewhere, no economist. Nor am I a social scientist. But it seems to me abundantly clear that nations have characters, just as individuals have characters, and for the simple reason that nations are made up of individuals. Comes a point where the collective mass of individuals, their tastes and habits, form the nation; but further on there’s an inevitable point where the nation, having now acquired a character of its own, goes to impress that on the individual from a very early age. Once enough people are indoctrinated, you can usually fairly accurately predict what they are going to do under particular circumstances.

As an illustration of national characters, I’m always faintly amused by the Sinophobes who keep pushing the idea of an aggressive, militarily expansionist China. It’s absolutely not surprising that the Chinese are apparently out to win over the world by economic means rather than military prowess; they have always been an inward-looking nation, far more given to commerce than conquest. At the same time, the Japanese (though on the face of it commerce-oriented), were always a militarist society, and so still honour Second World War criminals at Yasukuni; and if Prussia still existed, modern Germany would have been a far more aggressive nation than it is.

Allied to this national character, of course, is an organised myth-making. Indians, for instance, have this tale going around about how “India has never invaded another nation in its last ten thousand years of history.” Elsewhere, I’ve classed this as one of my favourite jokes, and anyone who has an idea of the subcontinent’s blood-soaked history will probably concur. These myths aren't only jokes; sometimes they can be lethal.

Now, as we all know, the recent past has seen a lot of discussion about the actions of a certain young man in the US who took a gun and shot several people, killing six, and critically wounding a major political figure. So much has been written about the killer’s motivations that a couple of things tended to slip under the radar.

The first, is of course, the fact that the US is a society awash with guns. One of the justifications for this love affair is the idea that guns don’t necessarily equal violence, since other nations with a lot of guns, like Switzerland for instance, don’t have much gun crime. But the Swiss national character is rather different from that of the US.

The Swiss don’t, generally speaking, think of themselves as a frontier nation, one constantly in search of enemies to fight, or a global policeman forever in search of a bad guy. The United States was a nation forged in violence, and furthered by violence; its entire point of existence today seems to be to inflict violence on people halfway round the planet. Its movies, its novels, its video games, glorify violence; even its cartoons are violent. If the Angry Young Man of Bollywood has a home then, it’s in the US, where violence has seeped into the national character just as completely as feudalism has into India’s.

Is it so surprising, then, that the US suffers regular shooting sprees? Is it so very amazing that the poison in the walls seeps out through the cracks? Once you think of violence as right and justified at a national level, how long before violence on an individual level becomes the natural reaction?

National characters can change of course; but very, very slowly. It takes hundreds of years. Unless there’s a catastrophe, as was Prussia’s disappearance after the Second World War. And after a catastrophe, there’s really no telling exactly how the character will change; just that it will.

When the Empire collapses, that moment of catastrophe may be at hand.

I’ll leave you with that thought.

Looking Down The Barrel

Virginia Tech...

The more I learn of the circumstances (including the contradictions in the official account), the more I read of Cho Seung-Hui’s murderous rampage through the dormitories and classrooms of Virginia Tech, the more it seems that this is a fit case for in depth study. OK, I am not a sociologist, but neither are 99.9% of other bloggers going on about it anyway. 

Not just of the shooting itself (and did he really line them up execution style? Did he really? What were they doing, not running? Execution style, over and over again, room after room?), but of how the world – particularly that part of the world I see daily - reacted to it, the possible causes and the circumstances that led to a deranged young manshooting his fellow students and teachers dead over a period of hours, in two separate attacks.

The facts are well enough known by now – at least, there’s not much likely to come out that will actually suddenly throw so much light on the whole thing people are going to go “Oh, how could we have been so blind? It’s all clear now!”- as I said, though, there is enough to go on and make some theories and maybe reach a conclusion or two.

Now, we read that Mr Cho actually spent the two hour interval between shootings sending a parcel of video clips and photographs to the media. I’m sure I couldn’t tell you how he managed it, unless he used some unmanned drop off like a post box – or he managed to change out of his killer gear, seen in all its lethal flashiness above, and back again. Did he stand in line at a post office, guns, shooter vest, and all? Did he have an accomplice post it for him?

I think one may be more or less certain that most, if not all, of the material he posted was prepared before the dormitory phase of the shooting. So he had it all planned. And if it is true that he was – you know – emitting warning signals, why wasn’t he intercepted in this age of “security”?

Besides, we know something of his history by now. This was not a stable person. Even before he went on his current spree, he had made everyone round him uncomfortable with violent imagery and writing, weird behaviour, and had been referred for psychiatric counselling. And this is the sort of flaming lunatic who can walk into a store and buy a gun, presenting a credit card, along with unlimited hollow point ammunition, and walk out again, no questions asked.

Can one still say there is nothing very, very wrong with gun ownership laws in the United States?

In 2001, America went to war after (alleged) Arab terrorists from Al Qaeda (allegedly) hijacked four planes and flew them into the World Trade Centers (sic) and the Pentagon. The total death toll in that alleged attack, if I remember right, was about 2800 odd. Well, in that same year of 2001, there were 29,573 deaths from firearms, distributed as follows by mode of death: Suicide 16,869; Homicide 11,348; Accident 802; Legal Intervention 323; Undetermined 231.(CDC, 2004) - check this site. The number of non fatal injuries weretwo hundred thousand. So, if 2800 deaths caused by an alleged terrorist attack can be the excuse for a global rampage that has so far killed unknown thousands of Afghans, 655000 Iraqis (and that is a figure dating back to last year) and something like 3300 American troops, what are four times that number of deaths in homicidesalone? Not worth a War on Guns?

What are the primary excuses for retaining gun ownership? Why would anyone want to own guns anyway?

Now, I am no sympathiser of the National Rifle Association or of any gun nut. So obviously I will not be unbiased here. But so far as I can see pro-gun arguments boil down to the following:

1. The Second Amendment Argument. The Second Amendment to the US Constitution says “"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

Now that amendment was passed in 1789 – a time when the existence of the US was precarious, resources were scanty, a standing army was not a reasonable alternative. It was just a hundred years since men and women were being hanged in Salem, Massachusetts, for "witchcraft" because the Bible allegedly said "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." (No matter that it was just a mistranslation of the King James). It was also a time when slavery was legal, and the genocidal extermination of Native Americans was not just allowed but positively encouraged, with bounties paid out for scalps. In later days Jim Crow laws were to be passed in the US, segregation would be enforced in Southern states, and till the late sixties interracial marriage would be banned in several states. No less a person than that great liberal, Abraham Lincoln, would say: “I cannot conceive of a future where the Negro will live in equality with the white man."

Yet, where are all those laws now? Segregation is formally dead (though after Katrina we all know the reality is a different story…). You can’t go scalp hunting Sioux any more. You can have a black wife and still not be arrested, and she can sit in the front seats of a bus if she wants. And witches open websites and have magazines. 

So what the hell has a 1789 law, which was meant as a replacement for a standing army and not as a free for all to hand out guns to everyone, got to do with the present? What's so sacrosanct about it? Nothing.

And is a militia necessary today? Er, I don't exactly see anyone invading the US in the near future, with weapons limited enough that the "citizen's militia" can take them on, can you? 

2. That guns are a “part of US culture”.

Hoo boy. That’s about the worst cop out I have ever heard. I might as well say that there have been cultures promoting human sacrifice. And there have been, many. Just because many people choose to buy guns does not ipso facto legitimise them.

In fact, those who advance this argument are also those who are more likely than not to choose to drive fuel-guzzling, environment destroying SUVs, treat the world as a disposable commodity, and promote “individualism” as the alternative preferred to “state interference” even when the alleged state interference – for example, providing efficient public transport services in lieu of SUVs – is to the common good. It’s not just arrogant – it’s contemptuous of humanity.

3. The hunting/outdoors argument.

All right. Now this is the twenty first century.

We do not, in this day and age, have to hunt for survival. Certainly not in America. All hunting does – all any blood sports do – is degrade the participant. Even Blair the Poodle recognises this and banned the centuries-old “sport” of fox hunting in Britain. And when “hunting” includes gizmos to allow even the blind to go hunting, you know that this is just pandering to bloodlust. Where biodiversity is dropping worldwide, “hunting seasons” and “licensed shooting” are just tokens – feel good attempts to pass off the indefensible as permissible.

4. The self-defence argument.

Well, when I mentioned here that perhaps gun nuts would blame the students for not being armed so as to shoot the shooter, I thought I was being sarcastic. I never in my wildest imagination thought that the argument would be seriously advanced. What would be the logical culmination of this theory? That everyone should pack heat at all times, so as to defend themselves?

This argument, done to death, claims that guns deter criminals. I don’t actually think so (a robber busts into your house, and you begin fumbling for the key to the gun cabinet, and then begin stuffing in cartridges, and he stops and watches you do it so you can blow him away. Yeah, right) . But apart from that, I can prove the effects of keeping weaponry in the house for “defence”:

The issue of "home defense (sic)" or protection against intruders may well be misrepresented. Of 626 shootings in or around a residence in three U.S. cities revealed that, for every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense (sic) or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides (Kellermann et al, 1998).

Uh-huh. It would seem to me that you'd be better off being unarmed at home and taking your chances.

(Now, about both arguments taken together. I mean numbers 3 and 4 above. Let me - for the sake of argument - grant that I accept the basic premise that hunting and self defence are reasonable grounds for weapon ownership. So in what way does hunting justify the ownership of an automatic rifle, for example, or self defence the ownership of a Magnum? And why would any person be allowed to buy as many weapons as they want? Why would anyone own literally hundreds of weapons? For hunting?)

5. The “civil war” argument.

I never actually heard of this one before this morning. It seems that if you try and restrict gun ownership, you will have a civil war on your hands. Uh…didn’t the domestic terrorists in the US, the Branch Davidians and the Timothy McVeigh lot, own guns? And if you have something like 30,000 people dying annually from gunshots alone, what civil war could do worse than that?

I guess it would not be amiss to repeat what I’d once written about Indian gun laws: I can’t just go out and buy a gun. I would first have to apply for a gun licence, undergo thorough police checks, and then perhaps I would be granted a licence. With that licence I could buy only what it permitted me to. That might be a single or double barrelled breech loading shotgun (no pump shotguns for the civilian), or a rifle or handgun of 5.56mm (.22) calibre or lower. Also the number of cartridges I am permitted to buy are rigorously restricted and I have to account for every one, returning the used ones if I want to purchase any more. Of course it does not stop people from acquiring illegal weaponry, but it does stop the average person from going on shooting sprees after an argument with the wife. Many as are the things wrong with India, I strongly support our laws on gun control.

Now, it is certainly true that we can’t blame gun ownership alone for the shootings. Many other countries have as high rates of gun ownership as the US, but they do not go on murderous sprees. But those countries – Switzerland, for example – comprise citizens who don’t think they have a right to do exactly as they please. They don’t have a primitive frontier mentality. If one has to give a gun to someone, I’d rather hand one to a Swiss than to an American.

Then there is what Cho actually said on his video. Among other things:

"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today ... Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."

"You just loved to crucify me. You loved inducing cancer in my head, terror in my heart, ripping my soul."

"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust fund ... your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough ... to fulfil your hedonistic needs."

"When the time came, I did it. I had to."

Come…suddenly it no longer seems an utterly senseless shooting. Suddenly it seems to have some ground, some response to the conspicuous consumption of the capitalist dream-turned –nightmare where (thanks, Malcolm)

Those 300,000 wealthy individuals each received 440 times as much income as the average person in the poorest half of the population, nearly doubling the divide from 1980.

But since that is hardly a problem that can be seriously faced up to (it would destroy the individualistic, materialistic society and impose a caring, mutually supportive one if you had to set it right) it's much more convenient to just call this a "senseless crime." And when it will happen again after a few months, when another someone goes off the rails, it will be another "senseless crime". It's all happened many times before.

As for a culture of violence, checked out Hollywood recently, or childrens' video games? If you want to reduce violence, let's begin with them, shall we?

Now, let’s cut the cackle. It’s a deliberate lie that a “democracy” should allow its citizens to bear arms if they please. Even US certified democracies like the UK and Australia ban or restrict gun ownership, as do, for example, Germany, France (oh but they are cheese eating surrender monkeys) and Italy (but they’re losers who cut and ran from Iraq). And as for “democracy”, since when did the Bush regime care for what the American people want anyway? Check out the latest popularity ratings for the war on Iraq?

Now for our media. It seems as if the two Indians who died, a student and a professor, were martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the good of the nation rather than just two people who were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and happened to get shot. They are plastered all over the media. The only thing I haven’t seen is a call for sanctions against South Korea – yet.

Incidentally, I do agree that I am going on about this while 312 people have been murdered in Baghdad by car bombs and elsewhere in Iraq, and that seems more urgent news. Yes, that is a point. But the same people who occupy Baghdad and have inflicted untold miseries on the people of Iraq are the ones who put guns in the hands of children, teach them to kill, and then are “horrified” when the guns are turned on them instead.

Cho Seung-Hui did kill all those people. I just wonder how many fingers apart from his were on the trigger.

While surfing YouTube – a process that ended with my import of thisvideo, I came across a lot of drivel, abuse, and non sequiturs. I personally got targeted by a none-too-grammatical lady who calls herself redhead6868 – whose theme song seems to be “I’m older than u (sic), therefore I know better, sweetie, and I own guns and my husband hunts FOR DEER (sic)”. OK, so there is no effort involved in blowing redhead6868 out of the water (and, no, I did not go to the effort of finding out how old she is). I’m talking of the others.

In the first place, let me just go over the fact that Cho Seung Hui may have been an ethnic Korean, but he lived in the United States since the age of four. He grew up in an American milieu, watched American movies, presumably learned to drive at the regulation American age of 16, learned to shoot as any “red blooded he man” American (as distinct from namby-pamby liberals) would, ate American food, and imbibed American values. I find it rich, therefore, that he should be racially targeted as an Asian – and there should be fuming rhetoric as to how the “gooks” should have been killed by the “Japs” back in World War II. Going by that sort of “logic”, then, after Timothy McVeighblew up the Alfred P Murrah building in Oklahoma City, killing 168, people of Irish origin should have been targeted (were they? No.Arabs, who had nothing to do with it, were). (As an aside – our ever-toadying Indians are at it again. On the website known as Sepia Mutiny, the hangout of Indians resident in the US, some are going to great pains to say that we are South Asians, as distinct from East Asians, and hence “blameless”. I suppose no one among them has heard of the Reverend Martin Niemoller.)

Now, Asians, whether South or East, are rather different culturally speaking than the West. I mention this simple fact because, somehow, it does not seem to have entered the minds of most people. We Asians (and the Russians too) are much more family oriented. It is not a matter of shame to us to head to the bosom of the family when we have problems. I don’t mean this to be patronising, it’s just a statement of fact. How does this affect the current issue?

Well, all of us have problems and grievances. All of us have times when we want to withdraw from the world, or lash out at it. Some of us (I am one) are loners by temperament, we internalise our problems, but when it gets too much for us where do we head? To the family. No one is ever no longer a part of the family in an Asian society. You may live a continent away, but you are still part of the family, and your actions reflect on the family’s “honour”. This is why Cho’s family is so obviously distressed and apologised to the American people for his actions. An average Western family would have gone “It’s awful, but it was what he did, we are not to blame.” But Cho, brought up in an American milieu, did not go to his family with his grievances. He bottled them up till they exploded in slaughter.

Obviously, now, Asians also have psychopaths like – for example – this guy here. But they are almost invariably serial killers, not what I would call binge murderers like Cho. The serial killer, as any psychologist or criminologist will confirm, is a special breed. More usually than not he is of above average intelligence, whatever his conceived motives, and is very careful to space out his killings and tries not to get caught. He does not operate in a murderous frenzy triggered off by an inability to handle pressure. Unlike the binge murderer, he is not actuated by grievances that tip the balance of his reason beyond all thought of self preservation.

When we read or listen to Cho’s video manifesto, his anger against the “hedonistic” lifestyles of his peers is obvious. Listen to him: “Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you slugs. Your trust fund wasn’t enough, you snobs.” He claims to have been picked on and humiliated, and to have been forced to have done what he did (uh – back in school I was obese, picked on and bullied, disliked for my alleged “intellectualism”, mocked for my ineptness on the sports field and inability to get girls to fall for me. Did I pick up a weapon? No. But if I had had access to a weapon, there are times when I might have. I very seriously doubt it, though). You can’t call his rampage senseless, anyway. He had grievances and he went to great pains to tell the world about those grievances.

Of course, now, it no longer matters at this stage of proceedings whether the grievances are real or imagined. For the person involved, they are real and more than real. They are so important that they are literally a matter of life and death. An Asian, under these circumstances, would likely seek refuge in the bosom of the family, or, failing that, commit suicide – a lonely suicide. But Cho, whatever his ethnic origin, was no longer psychologically an Asian.

And what of his grievances? The average person in the US is under intense pressure to prove himself. Proving himself, more than anything else, means material success. If you don’t have wealth, you are nobody (and we Indians are headed the same way, fast). Cho, the son of supermarket workers, already psychiatrically not quite all there (as his family claims, he was autistic as a kid, and as his fellow students claim, his behaviour was bizarre), looking around him and finding conspicuous consumption and the irresponsible display of wealth. For an inherently unstable person like this, the pressure to perform, to match up, is potentially too much. In Asia one can step back and take a breath, but not so in the US, not unless you don’t mind being labelled a failure.

So, Cho was an unstable young man under intense psychological pressure. What could he do about it? Denied the option, by his upbringing, to go take refuge in his family (even if he wanted to, that would be “unmanly” by US standards) he took the way he could.

And about that way – as I said, I too was bullied and abused. I wanted sometimes to get hold of a weapon. But could I? No. I don’t want to have to repeat ad nauseam what I said already about gun laws in the US, but it stands to reason that Cho, had he not had ready access to firearms, would not have run amok with a bread knife. I’ve already talked enough about gun laws in the US. Check my previous two posts (linked above) if you want to refresh your memory.

Somewhere I once read that one in every four people in the US has appeared, at some point, on television. Television is the road to recognition. If you’re nobody, if you’re famous for absolutely nothing but being famous, if you are, say, a Nicole Richie or Paris Hilton, get on TV and your reputation’s made. Cho’s video manifesto was tailor made for TV. He wanted to go out with a bang so loud as to live forever on TV, and get movies made about how he went out in a blaze of glory like Billy the Kid. He’s very likely to get his wish.

And that’s another thing.

Now, of course, while I am on this topic of TV and – by extension – video games and movies, what is the staple? Violence, violence, and yet more violence. Video games are all about violence – can anyone name a non-violent video game in recent memory?; the most loved movies are ultra-violent ones like Blackhawk Down, much appreciated by the dickless weapon worshippers, of whom more anon. Compare and contrast European television and movies to American ones to see how violence is not necessarily the route to high cinematic art. Oh yes, I do realise that films and videos are not to be taken seriously. I realise that, you realise that, but millions of people round the globe don’t necessarily realise that. Fantasy and fact get blurred, all too easily.

Now a guy who keeps shooting men and women on a video screen naturally gets somewhat used to the idea of pointing a weapon at someone and pulling a virtual trigger. But that is not necessarily all he does. For in the US, hunting is something anyone who is not a pinko liberal commie faggot Islamofascist traitor terrorist lover is brought up into; getting a gun is not just easy, but is a rite of childhood’s end, as is learning to use it. In other parts of the world, a teenager who shoots animals would be regarded at least as a potential danger and certainly as an oddball; in the US he is taught to shoot animals, usually by his own father. Once one begins killing, killing comes easier and easier. Inflicting death becomes a pleasure in its own right. A way to get your rocks off. And also a way to feel empowered. You’re ground down at work? So what? You can blow away a bull moose! Nimrod the Hunter had nothing on you!

I have always held the theory that people who love guns are monumentally sexually insecure – guns are the weapon worshipper’s way of tackling his penis envy, as is driving SUVs, the traffic equivalent of the gun. Now I do agree that until someone points a gun at someone and presses the trigger the gun is unlikely to kill or injure anyone, but the fact that thirty thousand people die yearly from gunshot wounds in the US shows that guns do get pointed and triggers pressed remarkably often. That’s nearly a hundred times aday.

It’s odd also that the same gun worshippers are most likely to support stopping the Iranians, for example, from possibly, at some remote distant future time, getting their hands on a nuclear device, even if they show no signs of wanting one, because of the alleged potential danger; but show no compunction about keeping actual and real dangerous weaponry right by their side.

In what other country of the world would an aspiring presidential candidate (Mitt Romney) lie about owning guns when he does not, and about going hunting when he has never applied for a hunting licence? Anywhere else in the world, whether a politician owns a gun or goes hunting is either irrelevant or else actually counterproductive. And as the governor of Montana (I think) – a Democrat to boot – said, “I probably own more guns than I need, but not as many as I want.”

In what other country would the right to own deadly weapons become a factor on which elections are won and lost?

The most potent irony in this is the simple fact that Cho – a mirror, as he is, held up to society – will become a product furthering that society. I can already see the books being written on him, and by next year there will certainly be one or more movies in the pipeline.

What will not happen is either a ban on guns or even reasonable control. That’s so, uh, anti-freedom. To quote Donald Rumsfeld, “Free people are free to do bad things…” I guess shooting holes in people is – by that standard – expressing one’s freedom. Rather like freedom of speech.

"Police struggle to find Virginia Tech motive"? It's...plain as the nose on your face, unless you deliberately choose to ignore it.

Even sarcasm fails as a tool sometimes.

Billy Get Your Gun

Those of you who are long timers on my blog will be familiar with my extreme anti-gun views. One of the few things I agree with where Indian laws are concerned is the licensing procedure.

This procedure, as you can see, and as I said before, makes it almost impossible for an ordinary citizen to buy a weapon. 

So it might be a bit odd that I decided to apply for a weapons licence. After all I have never even killed so much as a sparrow (even though I own an air rifle) and I have never been threatened or anything that I should need to pack heat.

But still - I'm applying for a licence for a .32 handgun (official reason: self-protection) and a double-barrelled 12 bore shotgun (official reason: sport). Alternatively I may apply for a .22 rifle and give the official reason as "target practice" if they make noises about the "sport".

Bizarre? It isn't really.   

You see, I have no intention of buying any of these weapons. What I want to do is prove a point.

I have no criminal record. I have never even got a parking ticket. I am, as such things go, a so-called "upstanding" member of society. I pay my taxes on time, my identity papers are all up to date and so on, everything's in order.

So I want to see what reason they give for denying me a licence, as they are almost certain to do. I'll keep you posted.

*******************************************************************************************

I announced my intention of applying for a gun licence, as an experiment to see on what grounds that licence would be denied me. I had also reiterated my opposition to private gun ownership – an opposition that I maintain today, more fervently than ever.

I won’t waste time here repeating the reasons I’ve given several times in the past for opposing private ownership of firearms; I just want to emphasise the point that my attempt to acquire a firearms licence was to prove how difficult it is for a citizen of this country, who has no criminal record (I’ve never even got a traffic ticket) to get a firearms licence (something which, by law, he or she is entitled to) and then to acquire an actual firearm. I seem, however, to have exceeded my wildest expectations in this regard...

I should explain that in India firearm production is (legally) the sole prerogative of the government arsenals. There are an immense number of illegal weapons floating around, some crude homemade pieces (very popular with petty criminals and known as kattas), some also homemade but of extremely high quality, and some illegally imported. But for the main purpose of this post I am going to confine myself to the mechanics of the legal way of purchasing a firearm, since my purpose was to demonstrate how difficult it would be for me, a law-abiding citizen, to do so.

These arsenals are by and large busy in producing guns for the army and the police. Civilian weapons are not their primary purpose of existence. They produce civilian weapons only when there aren’t any pending orders for police or military weaponry. Therefore their production of civilian weapons is not high. Nor is there any pressure of competition and no reason to modernise or even to produce particularly well-made weapons (by and large Indian firearms are poorly made, as a gunsmith in Jaipur admitted to me last year).

In India, a civilian wishing to purchase a firearm is restricted to certain calibres only (5.56mm to 7.65mm, approximately .22 to .32, on the whole, except for shotguns – single or double barrelled breech-loaders, not pump action types) and each weapon is further licensed for a particular number of cartridges only per year (this number varies from state to state, but is generally somewhere between 25 and 50). So you cannot just waltz into your neighbouring gunsmith’s and walk out with a Cho Seung-Hui type arsenal of handguns and ammunition. Also I want to make it clear that you can only buy the type of weapon you’ve been licensed to buy. If you’ve got a licence to buy a single-barrelled breech loading (SBBL) shotgun, that’s what you can buy, nothing else. Clear so far?

Also, a licence isn’t handed out just like that – you apply for one, you wait while you’re being checked out by the police, and then if they’re satisfied then you may be granted a licence with a specification of how long it’s valid and within what period you must purchase your weapon. If you don’t buy it within that time you’ve got to apply all over again. By and large, the police aren’t all that eager to hand out firearms licences because they aren’t exactly happy about firearms floating around in private hands during the rather frequent riots and pogroms that occur in this country.

Furthermore, this is the North East of the country, which is treated more or less as occupied territory by the government in Delhi and where there are many laws specifically designed to limit the freedoms available to the population – even freedoms the rest of the country takes for granted (for instance, the roaming facility is denied to prepaid mobile telephone connections here). So I was sure there would be some extra hurdles thrown up in my getting the licence. I knew all this at the time I applied. You must understand that.

So what did I apply for? My application was for either a double-barrelled breech loading (DBBL) shotgun or a 5.56mm (.22) rifle. I applied for both, and expected to be granted (if at all) licences for one or the other. In the event, months passed...and months...and nothing happened. I did not get the licence. I did not get any intimation that it was rejected. In fact nothing happened at all. And 2008 passed.

A few days ago, since I was in the administrative building (equivalent of City Hall) I decided to follow up on the licence. I finally found the office which handled gun licences (Room 219, if I’m not mistaken). A bored female clerk looked alarmed when I asked about the licence, not alarmed at my question, you understand – just alarmed that anyone would make her do any work. She flipped through a register and asked what weapons I’d applied for. The conversation went like this:

I: “A double barrelled shotgun and a .22 rifle.”

She (looking suddenly relieved): “Oh, we’re just giving licences for .32 pistols.”

I: “No shotguns?”

She: “No, only pistols.”

I: “How about .22 pistols? Or .32 revolvers?”

She: “No, only .32 pistols.”

I kid you not.

Apparently, there is this special law promulgated for the North East that restricts gun ownership only to 7.62mm handguns, and I’m sure this woman would not be able to tell the difference between a pistol and a revolver to save her life. So for the moment I’m discounting the “no revolver” comment. But what sort of moron thinks a 7.62mm handgun is less lethal than a single barrel breech loading shotgun, for dog’s sake?

An Indian official, that’s who.

As for the licence, she told me I would have to produce copies of the following while applying for the licence: my passport sized photo, a no-objection letter from the local council chief (equivalent to the local municipal head...why? Beats me) and three copies of my electoral photo identity card (EPIC). This is where the first comparison to the previous blog post (about the car) comes in. The EPIC is a government-issued card, to be sure – but it is notoriously inaccurate, often has one person’s photo with another’s name and a third person’s address, and so on. My own EPIC, for instance, has my parents’ names transposed. I asked if I could submit copies of my passport instead. After all, the passport is as official as the EPIC and is issued, in this country, after rigorous police verification. Nothing doing, she said. It was EPIC or nothing. Remember the ration card I mentioned? The bureaucratic brain works in predictable patterns.

Anyway, I am determined to see this through, so I will submit these documents and re-apply and see what happens this time. In the meantime I went over to the appropriate website to see what kind of weapon I would be entitled to (I am, remember, not intending actually to purchase it, merely to get the right to purchase it). Roughly, this is what I found:

The .32 pistol is produced by the Gun and Shell Factory at a place called Cossipore (or Kasipur) near Calcutta. It’s not available through the gunsmiths who sell shotguns and air-powered weapons, but only through a few government outlets, the closest of which to me is the factory itself. Here’s what I am supposed to do in order to get my hands on this weapon (taken from here):

1.    Download the Booking Form from the Web and Complete it.
2.    Payment can be made by way of D.D as per the details in the Application Form or by cash at the Gun and Shell Factory, Cossipore, Kolkata. 
3.    Pre-requisites:
(a) Your arms licence should have valid Purchase Period.
(b) If the license validity area doesn't cover Cossipore (W.Bengal) you should get NOC under Rule 50 of Arms Rules 1962 from licensing authority which issued you the license or the one which issued you P.P.

4.    How to get transport license issued: 
(a) Deposit Rs.100/- in the government treasury by filling Challan Receipt.
(b) Write an application for getting T.L. in Form-XX and attach NOC and Treasury Receipt of Rs.100/- with it and deposit it with the Arms Branch, D.C. office, Calcutta. You will get the T.L issued in a short period of time.
5.    Getting the weapon: 
(a) Please contact the Gun and Shell Factory by telephone before going to the Factory premises for buying the weapon.
(b) Reporting time at the Factory Gate is 8:30 A.M. not later than 9A.M., along with original license with valid P.P. and T.L. issued by DM, Calcutta.
(c) Delivery of the Pistols starts from 11A.M. and continues up to 5 P.M.

From what I could discover elsewhere, there is a waiting period of between two to four months after booking the weapon before they actually make it (depending, as I said above, on how busy they are). Then, one would have to hang around in Calcutta for some days to weeks (that’s what the “you will be issued the TL within a short period of time” means). And, after going through all this red tape, one would have to go to the factory (after contacting them by telephone – and what happens if they tell you not to come? Why, you wait some more) at 8.30am and stand around waiting till 11am, and maybe even till 5pm. Why? Don’t ask me! Maybe they want to see if you’re physically fit to bear the gun?

Anyway, what is the work of art for which you’re going to all this trouble? The .32 Indian Ordnance Factories pistol, illustrated top right, is known as the Ashani (whatever that means) and is a copy of the 1910 Browning semi-automatic pistol. A hundred-year-old design, in other words. I told you they weren’t big on modernising, didn’t I?

Now, the gun factory’s own website details the flaws of this design (spelling and grammar as in the original):

Drawbacks: 
1.    Magazine: The design and construction of the magazine is faulty which results in jamming and/ or improper feeding of the ammunition. There is no support to the feeding lips at the rear end as a result of which feeding problem occurs arize early. The base of the magazine is permanent welded and removal of minor dents on the shell become difficult.
2.    Barrel Lock: The design is faulty as a result of which it gets loose and comes out. Many times the barrel lock along with the main spring gets lost and there are a few cases in which even the barrel gets lost. Now the pistols which are released from the factory have barrel lock permanently fixed by Araldite. 
3.    Grips: Plastic grips break down very quickly. 
4.    Nickle Colour: Most of the people don't like the Nickle colour. 

And suggests the following remedies (from the same source):

1.    Magazine: Improved design magazine can be purchased from your local gunsmith who has years of experiance behind him (or) you can contact us to help in locating one.
2.    Barrel Lock: Better designed Barrel Lock is available which does not gets loose unless intentionally done.
3.    Grips: You can change to a wooden one of your choice which are available in different designs at reasonable price with your local dealer or ask him to source them for you.You can view them HERE.
4.    Nickle can be easily stripped down using chemical provided by us. The pistol can then be easily blued using hot caustic soda method. (email for details)
5.    Ventilated Rib: We provide ventilated rib to be pernmanently fixed by gas welding at the fore-end and back-end on the slide of the pistol. This makes the slide heavy and consequently decreases recoil.
6.    Magazine release button: Presently both hands are required to remove the magazine from its well. We can modify your pistol so that the magazine releases by pushing button on the side of the grip using right hand thumb. After fitting this button your pistol would now fire with magazine removed and would let you safely uncock the hammer.

Since all these modifications are not just possible but apparently highly desirable, why the hell doesn’t the factory simply incorporate them in the initial product itself? Remember the Premier Padmini that leaked? Products needing repair before they’re even used for the first time aren’t anything unknown in India.

Incidentally, all Indian weaponry is wildly overpriced. This pistol, after taxes, will come in at somewhere near seventy thousand rupees (about $1400). At that price one would normally expect to pick up an infinitely superior weapon.

No wonder the illegal weapons market is flourishing.

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Some people like to pretend everything comes as an amazing shock.

You long timers on this blog will know of my steadfast opposition to civilian ownership of guns. I’ve written about it many times before and got a lot of hate mail as a result from people who, probably, don’t own guns themselves but just like the idea.

Nor have I been the only one opposing guns – and after Cho Seung Hui’s (in my opinion, somewhat over-publicised) rampage earlier this year, you’d have thought some people in this country (the pro-gun group being America-worshippers to a man) would perhaps change their minds and decide that – just  possibly - guns weren’t the best thing ever to have been invented. Apparently, you’d have been wrong.

So, in July one of India’s less bad newspapers (there are hardly anygood ones, just a difference in degrees of hopelessness), The Hindustan Times, ran a feature pitying the poor forlorn gun owners who (gasp) could buy only three guns of limited calibre on one licence, even if they got a licence in the first place. The poor things! They have to actually prove they need a gun before getting a licence for one, what an infringement on their freedoms! And then the guns are all junk…oh, what a bore.

I need hardly say the guy who blogged about this article, ridiculing it, came in for a rash of vulgar abuse from the crowd I mentioned.

Now a few days back, something just waiting to happen, something I’d expected would happen long ago, finally did. In Gurgaon, a consumerism driven quasi-suburb of Delhi, two schoolboys brought a gun to school and shot dead a third. The operation was well planned – they brought the gun to school, hid it in the loo somewhere, and shot the victim as he was about to board the school bus at the end of the day. The motive was, allegedly, that the victim was a “bully” and that the two budding psychos (now in a remand home and completely sans remorse) who shot him were seeking revenge.

Apparently, the dad of one of these two young killers (they fired several shots at the victim, passing the gun from one to the other), a rich real estate dealer, had left a loaded gun at home near the television set and gone out of town. His gun licence had been given him for purposes of “personal protection”. I would, automatically (given the facts of the case) assume that then he did not need protection when out alone in the wide world away from his normal haunts, and wonder when, therefore, he did need protection, and from whom. But it gets even more interesting than that. The gun didn’t even belong to him. It belonged to a friend of his…and he had it, loaded, near his TV set. Incidentally, he had also taught his son to shoot. An essential survival skill – I think not.   

From the media reaction, you’d have thought that for the first time ever it suddenly became common knowledge that Indian people owned guns and that gun ownership had become a sort of status symbol among the noveau riche and the upper middle class. The same media which was whining about the plight of the poor gun owners suddenly began breast beating on the appalling lack of gun control in India…apart from (and this is matter for a separate blog entry) the stresses on Indian schoolchildren that made them start bullying or prone to violence (that many other sources deny the victim ever bullied anyone is neither here nor there – they contradict each other on everything about him except his name; they contradict each other on his personality, academic record, sports interests, etc, you name it, they disagree on it). Right now I’m talking about the guns.

I’m sure that as soon as the media furore dies down, and it’s back to business as usual, someone or other is going to argue in favour of all schoolchildren being allowed to carry guns in order to defend themselves from one another. It’s only a matter of time.  

Anyone who thinks guns are necessary or should be handed out to civilians on request, which is what 'liberal licensing policies', so called, amounts to, should have their head examined. And I am not just talking about the Gurgaon school shooting. I have myself picked shards of bone and pellets out of the exploded face of a kid who had been shotgunned at close range. I used to see at least one gunshot wound a week in my intern days. Most of them were allegedly “accidental” shootings from licensed, legal, weapons.  

All over the papers these days is the increasing comment about vigilantism. There was, a couple of weeks ago, a very major clash in Guwahati between Adivasi protestors and Assamese locals (remember my post about that?). I can just imagine the situation if one or both sides had had free access to firearms. The Wild West would have had nothing on it.

It's a specious argument to say that firearm possession will either act as a deterrent or reduce crime. People in India who cite gun laws in the US and claim gun ownership reduces crime never actually, one can’t help noticing, provide figures. And of course if they ever quote anyone they quote the National Rifle Association, which is hardly a neutral body.

Incidentally, I am sure you'll have noticed that the number of incidents of shootings in the US is on a steady upswing in the last few weeks.

There are a few of standard arguments by the Indian pro-gun group about gun laws:

1. Liberal Gun laws will prevent crime

 Sure they will. The robber will be so terrified of your locked-down, unloaded gun he won't ever think of entering your house. Give me a break. And if you load it and keep it out in the open, then, well, see what I just wrote.

2. Licences should be handed out after gun safety courses, PROVIDED the safety course isn't made an excuse for denying licences

Excuse me? Did you notice that in this country you can get a driving licence without ever having sat behind a steering wheel in your life? What about the proud gun owner who lent his friend the gun the friend then left loaded on his TV set so his gun-trained psycho son could go shoot someone with? Does a gun safety course ensure future compliance?

3. Gun control won’t prevent suicides or murders – would be suicides and murderers would find some other way.

I’ve attempted suicide thrice, as I’ve said before, and it was only my incompetence at poisoning and hanging myself that kept me alive. If I’d had a gun I would not have been alive to write this today. And as for murders – if you have a lethal weapon ready to hand, it seems to me, it makes murder more likely than if all you have to go at your target is a nail file or a bread knife.  

There is no point in comparing, as gun lovers love to do, gun-owning countries like Finland or Switzerland with India - and even in Finlandthere was a major shooting recently. With liberal social and sexual mores, far lower social and political tensions, and minimal environmental pressures such as catastrophic overcrowding, the people there are much less violent (anthropologists have long noted that sexually repressed societies, and overcrowded societies, are more violent. Here in India we have a society that is both sexually repressed and overcrowded). India, unless you're deaf and blind you can't help noticing, is an extremely violent society, one which is getting more violent by the day.

I said it before and I’ll say it again – no civilian has any legitimate reason, in today’s world, for owning a firearm, anywhere. But then the Indian gun lovers don’t mean that anyone should have ready access to guns. What they mean is that upper middle class people like them should have ready access to guns. But you can’t make laws for only one set of people based on economical criteria, so the hoi polloi will have guns too.

Can’t have your cake and eat it, baby. 

Questions for Gun Worshippers

Since recent times have seen fairly large number of high-profile massacres of innocents by disturbed killers who were not career criminals, and since these killings weren’t carried out using illegally acquired weaponry, could we ask a few questions to those who defend the right of civilian individuals to own guns?

Question: If you say you have a free and representative government, do you need to give the people guns? Shouldn’t the people be happy and content, and therefore shouldn’t they be free of the requirement to defend themselves? As for an external threat, assuming you have the strongest regular armed forces in the world, shouldn’t they be good enough to protect the people from any external threat?

Question: If your people need guns to defend themselves against their government, then isn’t the government not as free and as representatiive as you make it out to be? And since you also have the strongest armed forces in the world, can a disorganised armed civilian rabble successfully defend itself against that government and its armed forces?

Question: If the rationale for this private militia of armed citizens is a law dating back to the 18th Century, will the supporters of this also back laws from the same era supporting slavery or the killing of Native Americans for their scalps?

Question: If the point of owning guns is freedom, and if freedom is the absolute imperative of your society, then why don’t you legalise, say, drug use? It doesn’t even hurt anyone except the user, unlike, shall we say, child porn, now does it?

Question: If the possession of guns is important to protect oneself from possible criminals (the “if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns” argument), then how many guns does an individual need to own? Surely not more than one or at the most two? How many guns can one person fire at one time? So should there be no limits on the number of guns one person can purchase?

Question: Are there any statistics proving crime rates in societies which restrict gun ownership are significantly higher, with allowances made for other factors including unemployment rates, etc, than those of societies which allow gun ownership? And are there any statistics proving that mass gun ownership has actually deterred crime? If so, what are those statistics? Do these putative statistics bear out the idea that the number of victims of gun crimes using legal guns are less than the number of hypothetical victims of illegal weaponry in that same period, in cases where legal guns prevented crimes from being committed?

Question: If guns are potentially, at the very least, dangerous instruments, capable of killing even by accident in the long run, shouldn’t they be kept safely locked away from children and pets, and unloaded to prevent them from accidentally discharging? But then aren’t they less likely to be of any use deterring criminals? While the homeowner is unlocking and loading his gun, won’t the criminal, whom you claim to have unfettered access to illegal weaponry, be using the said illegal weapon? How do you prevent the guns themselves from becoming the criminal’s target? How do you, as in the recent shooting case in Germany showed, prevent a relative or other person with legitimate access to the gun-owner's house from obtaining one or more of the guns?

Question: Since it’s undeniable that a certain number of public shooting incidents have happened in recent times using guns that have been perfectly legally acquired, and these have led to the deaths of a large number of people, at least some of whom were innocent of all capital crimes, should there be a policy on public carrying of firearms? What should this policy be? If firearms can be bought and kept at home or in the place of business, how can you prevent owners, even if not angry or disturbed or malicious individuals from taking them out in public even if they have no permit to do so?

Question: If there are multiple shootings by such deranged individuals, using legally acquired weapons, what is the solution? Is it to ban all firearm ownership, or at least ownership of such firearms as can be carried in concealment? Or is it to arm everyone, or large numbers of people, to enable them to attack such armed individuals? But if you arm large numbers of people, aren’t you making more certain of more shooting incidents where the stresses of modern life cause such individuals to crack, and there is a lethal weapon close to hand? And also since you are not about to pay for these guns to be handed out the public at large, is this policy not discriminatory towards those who cannot afford, or for some reason choose not to own, guns?

Question: If everyone is provided guns, does it not also increase the likelihood of pre-emptive gun use? In more than one way, does it not imply a return to the Wild West?

Question: If one posits that to carry guns at large in public will deter terrorist attacks as at Bombay, are handgun-armed civilians without training even theoretically a match for highly-trained terrorists who can successfully fight off hundreds of commandoes for days? How will security systems distinguish between legal arms owners and armed terrorists? Does this not make it easier for armed criminals and terrorists to penetrate security screens? Can the threat of being killed by civilian fire deter suicide terrorists who are prepared to die in the course of their mission?

Question: How do you ensure individuals shooting at psychopaths or terrorists in a crowded situation do not accidentally kill or injure bystanders? If such happens, who is to take the blame? What if the alleged psychopath or terrorist happened to be a person with a legitimate reason for carrying a gun in public and is killed by over-enthusiastic citizens? Who bears the blame for that?

Question: Since there are already fairly effective procedures involving security at airports and Underground stations and the like, might the model be adopted more extensively and be perhaps more effective than arming everyone indiscriminately? Might trained security personnel in plainclothes be a better option to take out armed maniacs and possibly terrorists as well?

Final Question: Of course, perhaps gun owners prefer the status quo, as in the US, of virtually unrestricted firearms ownership, and take the risks as they come. But while gun owners themselves are welcome to run the risk of dying, do they have the right to risk the lives of others, many of whom may hate and despise guns?

Could we have a few answers, please?

Shooting Blanks

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Some time ago in the paper I’d read about a man in Uttar Pradesh state in North India who had sixteen children. Uttar Pradesh is India’s most densely populated state (allegedly, one in every six Indians lives in it) and is also one of the poorest, least developed and with one of the lowest human development indices in the world.

Now this guy with the sixteen children was poor to begin with and of course had no means to feed and clothe, let alone educate, his gigantic brood (why he bred so many is a question only he can answer, but in the villages of India, where there is no such thing as either electricity or any facility for entertainment, all there is to do, after dark, is screw, which might have something to do with it). And when some local hoodlum-turned-politician (a criminal record is almost a prerequisite for a political career across North and West India) came calling, he went to the man and whined about his sad lot and asked what he was to do.

Said the politico, blithely, “Don’t worry; we’ll give you a reward. The nation needs people to have many children.” And after hearing this fandango of rubbish, the stupid man went away content for the moment – only to begin haunting government offices demanding his reward. And the clerks, for a laugh, kept him going from office to office and assuring him that his work would be done. I have no information on whether this character actually ever received anything for his pains, but I’d be inclined to doubt it.

The problem was, of course, that the man hadn’t kept his news to himself; his entire village had got the information that having large numbers of children would fetch one an award, and they were therefore breeding like rabbits. Of course, they had always bred like rabbits; but now they had incentive.

Wow!

I tell this story just to show the essential irrelevance of population control efforts in India; when politicians are just out for votes at all costs and logic, there is little chance of any real action of any type.

Another thing I remember was the time I tried to get vasectomised. Vasectomy is something the Indian government is allegedly promoting as a permanent solution to the population conundrum. Vasectomy was supposed to be promoted by offering cash incentives to men who wished to be vasectomised. I didn’t want to be given cash; since all of you probably know my view of kids by now anyway, all I wanted was to be vasectomised (this was back when I was still having sex on a fairly regular basis) so that I wouldn’t risk fathering some mass of cells which would have to be scraped out of a possibly unwilling uterus. I was even willing to pay for it. But I was informed thatunless I had two children already and was accompanied by a spouse willing to agree to the process, it was all unethical and the surgeon concerned wouldn’t even dream of doing it. So much for birth control.

And this finally brings me to the point of my story. Very recently I read of a scheme promoted by a bureaucrat a year or two ago in the Chambal area – a river valley shared between the states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh (again!) where those who agreed to get vasectomised would get a gun licence as an incentive. Apparently, some smart bureaucrat (the news item mentioned his name but I’ve forgotten it) noticed that in his bailiwick, despite the cash incentive, just eight men had got vasectomised in all the past year. He reasoned that a gun is basically a great big phallic symbol. Of course it is; the ultimate phallus, shooting death instead of life; and all the rationalisations and arguments for private gun ownership are basically arguments that try and work their way round this central fact.

Therefore, he announced a scheme whereby you could swap the small phallus for the great big one; get yourself sterilised and get a gun of your very own.

He wasn’t mistaken. You must understand that despite the propaganda of gun lobbyists like this one, gun ownership is quite common in India and in absolute numbers (given the huge population of this nation) this must rank as one of the most heavily weaponised countries on earth. I myself know of a street in Kaiserbagh in Lucknow that is lined by gun shops on both sides, and in North India you can literally see people who can’t afford a pair of decent shoes or a cheap bicycle who are the proud owners of shotguns costing well over twenty thousand rupees. In much of North India, in fact, the so-called “dushmandar aadmi” (a “man with enemies”) is the only man of consequence, so gun ownership is a sign of manhood. So this bureaucrat decided that gun licences (which aren't that easily obtained in India) would be popular bait, and he wasn’t wrong.

People lined up to be vasectomised. They were all registered, and promised gun licences…and nothing happened. The police objected to the idea of approving gun licences at random, and who really can blame them? The concerned bureaucrat was transferred to another posting. The new man feigned ignorance of the entire scheme, and claimed he could find nothing of it in the files. And the vasectomy recipients are now, of course, seething at the perfidy of the government, and are now claiming that their relatives tease them because they only have a few kids each and have thrown their “manhood” away.

Can you imagine any of their acquaintances agreeing to any new incentive scheme for sterilisation? I can’t!

You know those popguns with a cork on a string? Somehow, I can’t get the image out of my mind...