Well, what do you think? Can you imagine Ghandi carrying a gun? Maybe not, but he still supported the right to bear arms. Here's what he said in
his autobiography:
I used to issue leaflets asking people to enlist as recruits. One of the arguments I used was distasteful to the Commissioner: 'Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity.
I believe Mr. Ghandi's comments were about the refusal of Britain to recruit/conscript Indian nationals during the First World War because of racial policies in place at the time, not about individuals owning firearms. Currently, India - no longer under British rule - prohibits civilians from owning fully automatic firearms.
ReplyDeleteThe United States also controls fully automatic weapons since they have to be licensed, specially stored, and you must submit to inspection. This makes it very annoying to own a fully automatic weapon.
ReplyDeleteIn any case a fully automatic weapon is expensive to fire since it churns out a lot of rounds. It's interesting that Switzerland has about 400,000 fully automatic weapons in civilian homes.
And Switzerland requires military service and training for those weapons.
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