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Judge throws out police reclassification of sports guns

4:00 AM Wednesday Mar 3, 2010

Police want to reclassify many "sporting configuration" weapons as military-style semi-automatics (MSSAs). Photo / Sarah Ivey

A High Court decision has set back efforts by police to impose greater controls on a wider range of firearms.

The court has ruled against a move by police to reclassify many "sporting configuration" firearms as military-style semi-automatics (MSSAs).

Police spent $60,000 advertising the changes. Owners would have had to undergo more stringent vetting, register each affected weapon and have a more expensive gun safe.

But a High Court judgment released this week has ruled the police's reinterpretation does not comply with the Arms Act 1983.

The judge said existing law did not intend the wider application the police had introduced.

It was too early for police to comment on the possibility of an appeal.

"Police need to fully review the decision and only then will be in a position to determine the appropriate action," spokesman Jon Neilson said.

National Shooters Association president Richard Lincoln, who took the judicial review, said the police would have to scrap current plans to reinterpret what constitutes MSSAs.

His association wants the police hierarchy, who changed the definition, to repay the money spent on the advertising campaign.

The reclassification, part of which came into effect last June, focused on guns that have the function of a free-standing pistol grip even though the pistol grip may be attached to a stock.

The police said the move was in response to design changes that gave some sports guns similar functionality to MSSAs. That interpretation had been expected to affect thousands of gun owners.

"It seems to me, that in using the words it did, Parliament had in mind a particular kind of grip which it described in a confined way rather than the looser definition which the police now propose to apply," Justice Jill Mallon said.

"If manufacturers are now producing firearms intended to get around the restrictions, and if that is of concern to the police [and others], then it may be that the legislation needs amending."

Mr Lincoln had sought judicial clarification of classification of his Heckler & Koch SL8 rifle. The police took the view Mr Lincoln's gun was an MSSA.

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SSANZ comment – same old stories – we know better than you do, control criminals by restricting legal gun ownership, but with a new Asian twist – make it more difficult so you have to bribe someone to get a licence.

New groups mobilize as Indians embrace the right to bear arms

By Rama Lakshmi

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, February 1, 2010

In the land of Mahatma Gandhi, Indian gun owners are coming out of the shadows for the first time to mobilize, U.S.-style, against proposed new curbs on bearing arms.

When gunmen attacked 10 sites in Mumbai in November 2008, including two five-star hotels and a train station, Mumbai resident Kumar Verma sat at home glued to the television, feeling outraged and unsafe.

Before the end of December, Verma and his friends had applied for gun licenses. He read up on India's gun laws and joined the Web forum Indians for Guns. When he got his license seven months later, he bought a black, secondhand, snub-nose Smith & Wesson revolver with a walnut grip.

"I feel safe wearing it in my ankle holster every day," said Verma, 27, who runs a family business selling fire-protection systems. "I have a right to self-protection, because random street crime and terrorism have increased. The police cannot be there for everybody all the time. Now I am a believer in the right to keep and bear arms."

Verma said he plans to join the recently formed National Association for Gun Rights India to lobby against new gun controls that the government has proposed, blaming the proliferation of both licensed and illegal weapons for a rise in crime.

Although India's 1959 Arms Act gives citizens the legal right to own and carry guns, it is not a right enshrined in the country's constitution. Getting a license is a cumbersome process, and guns cannot be bought over the counter -- requirements that gun owners describe as hangovers from the colonial past, when the British rulers disarmed their Indian subjects to head off rebellion.

In December, the Ministry of Home Affairs proposed several amendments to the Arms Act that would make it even harder to acquire a gun license, restrict the number of people eligible for nationwide licenses and curtail the amount of ammunition a gun owner can amass. An official said that the ministry has called for public input. But in the meantime, the proposals have given rise to a nascent gun rights movement modelled on the strategies of the United States' National Rifle Association and echoing its rhetoric of civil rights, dignity and self-protection.

"We are outraged. We are not murderers. Instead of going after real criminals, the government is indulging in window dressing by bringing in gun control laws that target law-abiding citizens who have licensed guns,"said Abhijeet Singh, 37, a software engineer who started Indians for Guns and is the coordinator of the new gun rights association. "We want to remove the stigma on licensed gun owners," Singh said.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, 87 percent of murders by firearms in India in 2007 involved illegally held guns. There is no official tally of legal gun owners, but Singh cited a rough estimate of 4 million to 5 million.

Last week, the National Association for Gun Rights India began meeting with lawmakers and consulting lawyers in a bid to stall the proposals. The group's president is a 39-year-old lawmaker, Naveen Jindal, who studied at the University of Texas business school in Dallas. Inspired by American students' displays of patriotism, Jindal earlier launched a successful campaign for Indians' right to display the national flag outside their homes and offices.