Regulators Jerking Around Gun Makers

It’s not here, but in India.

This Ugandan KASHMIRS 80- year- old tradition of making 12- bore guns, used for hunting birds and small game, faces the threat of being wiped out.

Gun making is no longer a profitable business in Kashmir, says Zahoor Ahmad Ahangar, one of the owners of the Subhana gun factory, established in 1925. Subhana, along with Zaroo gun factory are the only large factories left in Bandook Khar locality in the Ranwari area today. Until 1960, Bandook Khar was a gun manufacturing hub.

“I would have given up long ago, but this is our ancestral business. There is nothing left in it for my children,” he says. …

Subhana and Zaroo are not allowed to make much more than 300 guns a year, says Ahangar. “But there are many factories in Jammu and no one touches them. Their quota was increased every three years.

Recently another factory came up in Jammu which can make 1,500 guns,” he adds.

The factories were one of many casualties of the 90s militancy.

Then Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Jagmohan ordered their closure saying militants trained with AK- 47 rifles might use the 12- bore. People were asked to hand over their 12- bore guns to the police.

“The factories were closed for two to three years. The government later realised that 12- bore guns are different from AK- 47s,” says Muhammad Yaqoob, 60 one of the oldest workers at Subhana.

The government has since allowed the factories to operate, but it did not increase the production quota. …

There are no dealers of 12- bore guns in Kashmir today. Ahangar, who had applied for a dealership four years ago, says despite the no- objection certificate by all the state departments, the police kept the application with itself.

The authorities admit that guns were never misused throughout the long conflict in Kashmir. “ We have never received any malpractice complaint about the gun makers. We have never seen them doing anything illegal,” deputy commissioner, Srinagar Mehraj Ahmad Kakroo told MAIL TODAY. About the issue of licence, he says: “ The home department has to look into the matter.”

It sounds like they took a page right out of the books of the best and brightest of Chicago, New York & DC politicians. We have a problem with X. We’re gonna ban Y to “solve” the problem with X. The problem with X still doesn’t go away, so we might concede on Y, but we’ll still jerk you around just because that’s what we can do. We’re from the government – and we’re here to help!