India: How’s That Gun Control Working Out?
India has very strict gun control laws. From the International Herald Tribune:
The Oberoi Group employs many plainclothes security officers in its hotels, but these are unarmed, Oberoi said. Obtaining a license for even a single officer to carry a gun is extremely difficult in India, which has tight gun control laws.
It is likely, but not certain, that if the hotel security had been armed, they would have lost the battle anyway, due to the planning and overpowering firepower of the terrorists. That said, they might have been able to put up some sort of resistance or slowed the attack down or maybe, possibly, have saved a few of the nearly two hundred lives lost. At the very least, it might have given the terrorists pause before committing their atrocities. One thing is certain: Unarmed, security didn’t stand a chance and, by extension, neither did the guests.
I guess the point of this somewhat snarky post is that when the law abiding are completely unarmed, the lawless will always have the upper hand. If anything, they are emboldened because they know they face no resistance.
19 Responses to “India: How’s That Gun Control Working Out?”
on 30 Nov 2008 at 11:45 am # Daniel
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/mumbai-photographer-i-wish-id-had-a-gun-not-a-camera-armed-police-would-not-fire-back-14086308.html
Think this could be also part of the problem?
… masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. “There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything,” he said. “At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, ‘Shoot them, they’re sitting ducks!’ but they just didn’t shoot back.”
on 30 Nov 2008 at 11:46 am # MAJ Mike
I travel nowhere unarmed. I exercise my Texas CCL daily. I’ve come to be uncomfortable without my .45 Compact USP or my Glock 19.
The Mumbai incident may indicate a change in terrorist tactics or it may be a one-time thing. Either way, I will not be a victim!!
I’m 58 years old and I’ve accomplished about 99% of my life goals. So I really don’t give a damn.
Omar!! Bring it on!!!
on 30 Nov 2008 at 2:09 pm # Sharpaxe
The issue is not lack of arms, nor lack of training, nor strict gun control laws. It is cultural. India has for generations made legal firearm possession rare, and difficult to obtain. It is their approach to minimizing one element of threat from their Muslim population. That, and Hindu cultural influence, make their citizenry reluctant to use firearms, even legally, and among their armed forces. Ghurkas excepted.
on 30 Nov 2008 at 11:33 pm # Fox2!
The Ghurkas are not Indian, they’re Nepalese. And I suspect that Sikhs also follow the warrior way.
on 30 Nov 2008 at 11:57 pm # HatlessHessian
It’s interesting how so many continue to be confounded by basic exercises like gun control theory. Operationally defined, laws apply to whom? Those that follow them? And what about what we can expect behavior-wise from those that don’t follow laws (aka criminals)? That that the controls prescribed by the laws won’t be followed?
Working in the world of information technology risk for a global financial target, the analog of gun control laws would be security policies. “Thou shalt not FTP company credit card database files out the door to your home PC” for example. This works great, until you have someone who doesn’t care. Policy controls are for policy-abiders and help give guidance, but are useless with those that intentionally seek to cause harm.
What’s curious is where policy controls cause leptokurtic conditions (where outlier risk becomes amplified because of the policy decisions we’ve made). For instance, having everyone plant one type of potato due to its higher yield in Ireland caused millions of deaths when a single blight that only affected that particular variety broke out. Policy controls are often leptokurtic, especially when it removes the capacity for rogue threats (terrorists, hackers, bacteria, viri) to be initially challenged and slowed at the initial ingress. The key to asymmetric defense is slowing that initial intruder ingress and giving yourself time to identify, prioritize and organize an effective response. By removing all forms of resistance (like handgun possession by the citizenry), you allow the first hit of the virus to move terribly quickly and overwhelm your capacity to respond, let alone analyze the direction and ultimate target of the agent.
Subsequently, handgun restrictions are useless in having zero compliance by rogue agents they’re intended to target, and are truly deadly by allowing rogues to ingress with no resistance. Any advocacy of handgun control and restrictions is an argument made by a fool or worse, one who seeks incidents like this one to further exact sacrifices of individual liberties and attain greater power.
on 01 Dec 2008 at 12:05 am # HatlessHessian
Just a follow-along comment and recommendation to my earlier post… in this post-9/11 world, we all need to adapt and change our personal strategy. As a game theorist would point out, our opponent is using a different strategy and is counting on us acting in our honorable civilized ways to exact the greatest toll.
As the Flight 93 passengers figured out, the correct response is total resistance. Do not cooperate. You are dead already if you encounter these new terrorists using their revised strategy. You and I are Austrians with 100 years of honorable military traditions using formations, rules of engagement, etc. having just encountered Napoleon who throws it all out the window and fights dirty. Worse yet, our enemy is optimized to exploit our rules of engagement and honor to greater detriment.
Use that assumption against them. Fight dirty and resist. When the western world decides to do this, it resolves the imbalance of the asymmetry and eliminates the advantage AQI and other terrorists have. I pray that this responsibility ends on none of us here, but if it does, take honor in knowing your response seriously screwed up their best plans and probably saved 100 lives in the short run (and millions in the long run) for every one of ours sacrificed.
on 01 Dec 2008 at 12:12 am # Curtis
India is more unique than those of us in the more homogeneous West. There, I wanted to say more unique forever!
If they have guns on the street they know that the Muslims will slaughter the Hindus and they will slaughter the Christians. They have empirical evidence that these religious nutjobs will kill anybody at the drop of a hat in huge numbers. Typically, the nutjobs burn whole trains of innocent people to show their appreciation for their god’s favors.
The local law cannot even trust its ‘armed’ minions so all to often they issue pistols and even submachine guns but no ammo. It is even worse than the Barney Fife charade. At least Deputy Fife got to carry one bullet in his shirt pocket for his giant pistol. They don’t trust ANYBODY with guns and ammo, even the army.
And you look at the casualties recently in both Iraq and Afghanistan and come to realize that a lot of Americans are being killed by Afghani Policemen or Afghani soldiers who just suddenly turn their guns on the infidels.
on 01 Dec 2008 at 2:17 am # Kevin
If the hotel security had been armed, they would have known that and gone for another hotel that was unarmed. Good and bad.
on 01 Dec 2008 at 3:03 pm # Bob Robertson
“Terrorism” is a distributed problem, best answered by a distributed answer. There is nothing as well distributed as an armed populous.
In terms of India, it was the British after the revolts of 1857 that disarmed them. The fact that they are still disarmed is just fear. Fear of each other, fear of what happens in Hollywood movies.
Yes, there are strong religious rivalries in India. That’s why no group can be disarmed and remain safe. The “burn whole trains” thing just disgusts me.
Obviously, such a thing is not as likely to happen if the people in the train can shoot back.
on 01 Dec 2008 at 3:07 pm # junyo
If the hotel security had been armed, they would have known that and gone for another hotel that was unarmed. Good and bad.
Unfortunately that is the nature of a deterrent, the threat is rarely eliminated, simply displaced. The better security provisions in the West don’t eliminate violence against Western targets, it just moves it to the second and third world. Even if every security guard in India had his own Abrahms, they would’ve attacked Bali or Fiji, or the next most lightly defended spot with a decent sized Muslim population (in a large enough sample size there will always be a few kooks/extremists) and available Westerners.
One thing I found funny was the newspaper accounts of how outgunned the police were because they were carrying “WWI era rifles”, which I take to mean Lee Enfields/SMLEs. I can assure you that, while it wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice as a MBR today, anything an Enfield’s chambered in would ruin a terrorist’s whole day, and from a pretty good distance. There’s not much that works as good cover against .303 Brit or 7.62×51 in a modern urban environment. Give me and three random adults an Enfield with half a magazine (5 rounds) against someone with an AK, and I’ll call the odds even to favorable that any given friendly survives the encounter, and approaching mathematical certainty that the bad guy doesn’t. Which makes the police’s actions especially inexcusable considering the numbers they had on the terrorists, even with one bullet apiece and some cover this should’ve been over in a few minutes.
on 01 Dec 2008 at 6:39 pm # George
Coming from a country on its way to being defenseless, I feel for those East Indians who are forced to rely upon state police and other state security agencies. This model has been proven … over and over again … to be worthless. Missing essential intelligence, the only recourse is to react. That was difficult enough at Columbine or l’Ecole Polytechnique; appropriate, aggressive reaction by armed forces was impossible in Mumbai.
I do hope that the ostriches will see the light … some time. America has a fighting chance. I don’t think Canada or the former Great Britain does. Even Australia is becoming more restrictive.
Shine a bright light on the inconsistencies. Maybe the rest of the Western world will catch on?
Regards.
on 01 Dec 2008 at 8:32 pm # Henry
If the hotel security had been armed, they would have known that and gone for another hotel that was unarmed.
Yes, well, that’s also the explanation of why they raided Mumbai instead of Dallas. Sucks to be India, but works for me.
It sounds like the reason the “armed” police didn’t shoot may very well have been because they were carrying big, empty guns.
on 02 Dec 2008 at 1:44 am # Zach
I agree that they would have chosen a “softer” target than a hotel with armed security. They had plenty of time to case their targets. They probably would have gone after a school or some similar “gun-free zone”.
on 02 Dec 2008 at 2:53 am # RP
junyo - I saw video of one of the shootings. Two police were behind a concrete barrier and were holding Enfields. They made no attempt to fire - they just stayed behind cover. An Enfield would be plenty against an AK47, especially if range is on your side.
It’s weird though. I travel to India pretty often (as recently as September) and I see lots of cops carrying FAL’s. I’ve even seen a few carrying FAL’s in that area of Mumbai. Not sure where those guys were that night. An FAL would’ve made quick work of the thugs.
on 02 Dec 2008 at 2:43 pm # SPG
Out of curiosity has here been an instance where an armed citizen prevented a terrorist attack from occurring?
on 02 Dec 2008 at 10:31 pm # Justin
Spg -
Have you ever heard of a little place called Israel?
These exact types of machine gun terrorist attacks were previously commonplace in Israel. The Israeli’s found the best deterent was it’s citizens having conceled weapons. It provided immediate response to such situations. The Isreali’s actually asked it’s citizen’s to please carry weapons to protect itself. Since this change there have been many documented instances of citizens killing terrorists and it has virtually eliminated the gun attack style of terrorism. The scum terrorists now have to shoot missiles cowardly into public areas.
on 03 Dec 2008 at 1:43 am # Mohit
Having lived in India and several parts of the US, both metropolitan and rural, I have seen various perspectives on the gun control issue. Sadly, the officers with weapons did not have the training required for the brevity of the situation. After seeing this debacle play out, I am leaning towards the opinion that other brave and able individuals may be more capable than the police officers, anti-terrorist squad, and perhaps even the commandos who were finally brought in. Given the extremely high level of corruption and bureaucracy in the Indian government, there are many who choose not to go that route as they know it will eventually shroud their beliefs and ethics.
Being a hero should be an option, not for that reason alone, but for than the desire to retain humanity and stop evil in its tracks, albeit facing the risk of death. As an Indian immigrant and now a citizen, it has taken me a while to understand the reasoning behind the 2nd Amendment. The notion that the government always operates at the highest competence and the best interest of the people is an ideology, but not always a reality. I guess the right to bear arms works to ensure that in the States, and now India has to learn from that.
on 03 Dec 2008 at 6:18 pm # Saladman
They’re saying ten men pulled off that rampage. 170 killed, hundreds injured. With those kinds of numbers, a security guard or armed private citizen wouldn’t have to win, wouldn’t have to even survive. They just have to die fighting. One bad guy down would have been a more than even trade, and would have made a real difference.
on 03 Dec 2008 at 7:18 pm # Mamba1-0
I think it would be interesting to find out how many extremely wealthy Indians (and there are many) and Bollywood stars have armed bodyguards/security. As corrupt as the Indian government is, I’d think that enough monet would circumvent a lot of anti-gun laws.