When the Islamic terrorists opened fire on the innocent people in Mumbai, India, at the end of November—including American and British tourists and businessmen, they also opened up a worldwide re-examination of government policies which disarm the citizenry and leave them prey for criminals, terrorists and genocidal governments. Whether any of the editorials and commentaries which are appearing in the news media around the world, and on the Internet, will be read by or influence the anti-gun officials in India or at the United Nations remains to be seen.

However, the terrorists apparently delivered a sobering lesson to many peace-loving citizens. Peace, like freedom, is not free. Someone has to pay for it.

From Canada’s National Post come these thoughts from a column by George Jonas which was headlined “…Guns don’t kill people, terrorists do.”

Jonas wrote in the Dec. 13 column: “The terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month claimed some 500 casualties, dead and injured. Among the many questions raised by the outrage, there was a purely practical one: Why was the attack so successful? How could so few terrorists claim so many victims?

“One obvious answer is firepower,” Jonas answered that question. “Guns were illegal in the hands of both the terrorists and the victims. The victims obeyed the laws, the terrorists didn’t. The police had guns, of course, but instead of protecting people, they stayed away until the massacre was practically over. Gun laws—surprise, surprise!—weren’t strong enough to defend victims, only strong enough to keep victims from defending themselves.”

Then Jonas referenced the column by Richard Munday in The London Times, the original draft of which that was submitted to The Times appears on Page 4 of this issue.

“India’s gun control, one of the strictest in the world, goes back to the 19th century when Britain introduced it to forestall a repetition of the Indian Mutiny. ‘The guns used in last week’s Bombay massacre were all “prohibited weapons” under Indian law,’ wrote Richard Munday in the Times Online, ‘just as they are in Britain.’ The terrorists were successful because they didn’t obey the gun control law rooted in the Raj, while their victims did.”

But then Jonas turns his prism on the issue to a more global perspective.

“India isn’t alone,” he wrote. “Many countries, including Canada, have gone out of their way to make criminals as invincible and victims as vulnerable as possible. This isn’t the aim, of course, only the result,” Jonas noted.

“Guns don’t kill, people do.” The gun lobby’s old slogan is true enough, but it’s also true that guns make people more efficient killers. That’s why gun control would be such a splendid idea if someone could find a way to make criminals and lunatics obey it. Since only law-abiding citizens obey it, it’s not such a hot idea. It’s more like trying to control stray dogs by neutering veterinarians.

“The police carry guns for a reason: They’re great tools for law-enforcement. No doubt, guns make criminals more efficient, but they make crime-fighters more efficient, too. Letting firearms become the monopoly of lawbreakers, far from enhancing public safety, is detrimental to it. What you want is more armed people, not fewer, on the side of the law. It would be hard to imagine a Mumbai-type atrocity in Dodge City—or in Edwardian Europe, for that matter, where gentlemen routinely carried handguns for protection.


“Some regard carrying guns uncivilized,” Jonas continued. “I’d hesitate to call an era of legal guns in the hands of Edwardian gentlemen less civilized—or less safe—than our own era of illegal guns in the hands of drug dealers and terrorists. The civilized place was turn-of-the century London, where citizens carried guns and the police didn’t. In any event, a constitutional guarantee to one’s ‘security of person’ shouldn’t depend on how fast a 911 operator can pick up the phone.

“Society needs crime control, not gun control. Munday writes that ‘violent crime in America has plummeted’ in the past two decades after the majority of states enacted ‘right to carry’ legislation and issued permits to carry concealed weapons to citizens of good repute. I think there were many reasons for the decline, but ‘right to carry’ certainly wasn’t detrimental to it.

“There are Second Amendment absolutists in America, and libertarians elsewhere, who regard a person’s birthright to own/carry a firearm beyond the state’s power to regulate. I’m not one of them. I think it’s reasonable for communities to set thresholds of age, proficiency, legal status, etc., for the possession of lethal weapons, just as they set standards for the operation of motor vehicles, airplanes and ham radios. But it seems to me that, within common sense perimeters, you’d want to enhance, not diminish, the defensive capacity of the good guys, and increase rather than decrease the number of auxiliary crime-fighters who are available to be deputized when the bad guys start climbing over the fence,” concluded Jonas before also citing the Ghandi quote about colonial British gun control laws in India which Munday cited in his London column.

Perhaps this report from The Times of India newspaper also will shed some light on why the terrorists were able to wreak such carnage in Mumbai.

“The state constabulary was grossly unprepared to deal with the worst-ever terror attacks on the metropolis because of an acute shortage of weapons and ammunition.

“Official records show that for a force of well over 1.8 lakh, the home department procured a meager 2,221 weapons—577 for Mumbai, and 1,644 for the rest of Maharashtra.

‘‘Under the centrally sponsored modernization program, we purchased almost all types of weapons, but for a state like Maharashtra, the number of weapons was grossly inadequate,’’ a senior official told The Times of India.

In the absence of a firing range and of ammunition for practice, members of the law enforcement agencies have not opened fire in the last ten years. ‘‘I’ve been in the police force for a long time, but I had no occasion to open fire for practice,’’ a senior inspector of police said.

As per the police manual, officials ranking from constable to assistant inspector get rifles with 30 rounds each, and those with the rank of police sub-inspector and above get revolvers, also with 30 rounds each.

Jawans with the State Reserve Police Force are given semi-automatic rifles. In addition, AK-47 rifles have been given to officials posted in areas where there is Naxal activity, while officials on VIP security duty are armed with either revolvers or carbines.

The manual also prescribes mandatory training for all officials, especially shooting practice at the firing range. According to a senior IPS official, the norms prescribed in the manual now exist only on paper because of the acute shortage of ammunition for practice and the non-availability of a firing range.

As per the rules, every district should have a firing range exclusively for the police. But official records indicate that more than half the state’s districts have no independent firing range.

‘‘We have constables who have not opened fire even for practice ever since their recruitment,’’ one official told The Times of India.

From Internet blogs it is quite apparent that at least some people are taking the lessons of the Mumbai terrorist attack to heart. Their comments illustrate that at least the public is paying attention to those lessons, even if the politicians and social engineers are not.

What is important to remember is that the Mumbai attack could be replicated in any major city in any country that has rigid laws which deny their people the right to fight back against predators and lunatics.