#
Before you listen to this episode of the Seen and the Unseen, I have a recommendation for
#
Do check out Pullia Baazi hosted by Saurabh Chandra and Pranay Kottaswane, two really
#
good friends of mine, Kickass podcast in Hindi.
#
I want to begin this episode by asking you three questions.
#
The first one involves a thought experiment.
#
Imagine I invented a device called the Bomzuka.
#
The Bomzuka is a briefcase sized weapon of mass destruction and it costs only a thousand
#
rupees if sold over the counter.
#
If the buyer of the Bomzuka presses that button, the Bomzuka explodes with enough power to
#
wipe out everything within two square kilometers of the explosion.
#
Basically, you can blow up a neighborhood.
#
So my question to you is, should the government ban the sale of the Bomzuka?
#
My second question involves an object that everyone is familiar with, a kitchen knife.
#
A kitchen knife can also be used to kill people.
#
It can't quite destroy an entire neighborhood, but you can take a life or two or three.
#
My second question to you is, should the knife be banned?
#
I rather suspect that I have the same answer to these two questions as most of you do.
#
On the question of the Bomzuka, the weapon that costs a thousand rupees and can blow
#
up a neighborhood, yes, I believe the government should ban it.
#
On the question of the knife, which is so useful to us, even essential to us in so many
#
ways, no, I don't believe a knife should be banned.
#
Ban the Bomzuka, don't ban the knife.
#
But this now brings me to my third question for you.
#
If the Bomzuka and the ordinary kitchen knife are part of a continuum in terms of the damage
#
they cause, somewhere in that continuum is a line that we draw in terms of whether we
#
Where do we draw that line?
#
And why do we draw that line?
#
Welcome to the Seen and the Unseen.
#
Our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral science.
#
Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
#
Welcome to the Seen and the Unseen.
#
I hope you had time to think about that third question I asked.
#
In case you haven't, pause this episode and think about it for a moment.
#
Where do you draw the line between the kitchen knife and the Bomzuka and decide that a weapon
#
My answer is that we draw the line depending on how much damage a weapon can cause.
#
With a knife, you can kill at most two or three people before you are stopped, perhaps
#
With a Bomzuka, you can kill hundreds of people, even thousands in a crowded neighborhood or
#
a mall or a marketplace.
#
Where would I draw a line in between?
#
Among potential weapons that exist at the moment, I would draw the line at a gun.
#
As we have seen in recent years, it takes one nutcase to pick up a gun and go on a killing
#
spree that can kill 10, 20, 30 people.
#
Also, guns are widely used by people to kill themselves, as they are an easy, relatively
#
friction-free way to commit suicide.
#
So I draw the line there.
#
And I'd argue for the status quo in India where you cannot buy a gun off the counter.
#
Now, it might seem odd to you that a libertarian like me holds such a position.
#
After all, libertarians in the USA argue vociferously for gun rights.
#
Well, yeah, but I'd argue that there is context there in terms of how the USA evolved, the
#
distrust of the state that is embedded in their culture, as it should be in every culture
#
in fact, and that context doesn't quite apply to India.
#
Also, my friend and a frequent guest on the show, Shruti Rajgopalan, once drew a 2x2 matrix
#
for me on a piece of paper and showed me two kinds of equilibria.
#
In one equilibria, criminals plus cops have guns and so do common citizens to defend themselves.
#
In another, neither criminals plus cops nor common citizens have guns.
#
The other two possibilities are situations where cops and criminals have guns but citizens
#
don't to defend themselves and citizens have guns but cops don't.
#
The argument could be made that both of these are unstable situations and you need to be
#
in one of two equilibria, either everyone can have a gun or no one has a gun.
#
The USA is in the first equilibrium, India is in the second and while I don't have enough
#
knowledge to take a position on the US equilibrium, I believe that India needs to stay in the
#
So, my position that the sale of guns should not be legal applies to India for now, which
#
is the society I live in and know and think I understand, so I speak in this context alone.
#
Now, my guests on the show are two men who have both studied law and economics and they
#
both disagree with me in different subtle ways.
#
Shubho Roy is a fellow at the NIPFP, Sudhanshu Neema works at the Centre for Civil Society.
#
In the conversation you are about to listen to, both of them are going to make great arguments
#
against the position I just outlined, they might convince me or they might not.
#
But before we go to the conversation, let's take a quick commercial break.
#
Like me, are you someone who loves fine art but can't really afford to have paintings
#
by the artists you like hanging on your walls?
#
Well, worry no more, head on over to indiancolours.com.
#
Indian Colours is a company that licenses images of the finest modern art from some
#
of the best artists in India and adapts them into objects of everyday use.
#
These include wearable art like stoles and shrugs, home decor like cushion covers and
#
table runners and accessories like tote bags.
#
This allows art lovers to actually get fine art into their homes at an accessible price
#
and artists get royalties on sale, just like authors do.
#
What's more, Indian Colours now has an exciting range of new products including fridge magnets
#
with some stunning motifs and salad bowls and platters made of mango wood.
#
Their artists include luminaries like Babu Xavier, Vazvo X Vazvo, Brinda Miller, Dilip
#
Sharma, Shruti Nelson and Pradeep Mishra.
#
They accept bulk orders for corporate and festival gifting but even if you want to buy
#
just for yourself or a friend, head on over to indiancolours.com, that's Colours with
#
And if you want a 20% discount, apply the code IVM20, that's IVM for IVM Podcast, IVM20
#
for a 20% discount at indiancolours.com.
#
Shubho, welcome to the scene in the unseen.
#
So, Shubho, tell me, I mean, what's your answer to the three questions I posed?
#
I would like to squirm around and say the question of banning is a very simplistic understanding
#
You would argue that the Indian army should have the bombsuka and that goes on to say,
#
for example, nuclear weapons, which is, you don't.
#
But at the end of the day, if you take a nuclear weapon, bombsuka or some of the weapons that
#
are there, while it is licensed, it's at the end of the day in the hand of one individual.
#
Somebody in the army, somebody in the air force or maybe a group of people in the air
#
force or army when it comes to nukes, because we keep them disassembled, have the system
#
And those are individual citizens of India who have access to weapons of mass destruction.
#
Yes, they have joined the army, but we should not think that the army has complete control
#
And on the other hand, on the knife, if you gave a knife to a three year old child or
#
a five year old child or your child, you would be put away for child endangerment in any
#
So you see at both ends, there are exceptions and we should start thinking about from this
#
context that the context of ban, absolute clear ban is kind of extreme in law and usually
#
does not serve a purpose.
#
And that is why, for example, we have legislatures to debate these issues multiple number of
#
times and come with graded intervention.
#
So even a knife to a child is illegal and you should go to jail for child endangerment
#
if you leave a large number, let your child play with knives.
#
And on the other hand, even a bombzooka is not illegal in the hands of a fighter pilot
#
or a soldier or somebody who has been licensed and has the power to do that.
#
Those person could still go on rampage, but we have created systems and processes hopefully
#
And so these are the two extremes, but at neither extremes do you get a clear ban or
#
I think when I use the term ban, I mean, these would be commonly understood exceptions.
#
I mean, everybody gets it that, okay, the army has got to have weapons and you can't
#
give weapons or even anything that could potentially be used as a weapon to a child.
#
So these are kind of understood.
#
And also the fact that the army has these weapons and it consists of individuals who
#
could also have homicidal urges and go berserk is not really an argument for letting everybody
#
Because the probabilities rise exponentially if you let the common citizenry.
#
So all I'm saying is that there's a grading.
#
And in that grading guns, I think now I would argue that the guns come in somewhere in that
#
grading where in the Indian context, we have kind of done it very dumb, that we have done
#
it very simply and said ban.
#
Instead of that, I would say you do grading for similarly for guns and the guns fall in
#
that continuum and depending on the usage of the gun, depending on who has the gun,
#
And as you pointed out correctly that the American system is one end of it, no licensing,
#
no registration, but the Indian system is at the other extreme of it.
#
That unless some civil servant is convinced that your life is in danger, you cannot purchase
#
It is not a judicial process.
#
It is not a process which is subject to review in the normal system that we understand it.
#
You don't get a reasoned order as to whether your life is in, why your life is not in danger
#
So it creates a large amount of discretion to that entity which gives you the license.
#
So we do not have a situation where, as you pointed out, nobody has guns.
#
We have a large number of guns in the Indian system floating around.
#
So the interesting statistics here is that there are about 97 lakh registered guns in
#
India, which is one per hundred.
#
I didn't know this, that's a lot of guns.
#
Wait, there are around 7.1 crore total guns in India, which gives you a number of five
#
US is the other extreme just for context is 120 per hundred, but there are many countries
#
What we get is around six crore guns in this country, which are unregistered.
#
And these people who own them, not all of them are criminals or horrible people.
#
But because we have created this extreme ban, there are a large number of people who have
#
guns because they've inherited it or when the law came in, they had the power to hold
#
They didn't hand it over because they didn't want to or for whatever reasons.
#
And now they are completely criminalized.
#
If they even come willingly to hand over the guns, they are open to prosecution under the
#
Arms Act, which carries seven years of imprisonment.
#
And which is very dangerous because it's not even a compoundable offense that you can go
#
and say, look, I willingly gave up my gun, so please don't prosecute me.
#
You are totally at the mercy.
#
And this point is very interesting.
#
We have a gun to population ratio of five guns per hundred people, not that gun free
#
So I have a couple of points to make here, questions to ask, one is that it is implied
#
in the statistic that, listen, actually, it's not that hard to get a gun in India.
#
And I understand that, that you can, if you want, go out in the black market and figure
#
out a way to get a gun.
#
But there is a transaction cost, you have to make a certain amount of effort.
#
Not everyone does that.
#
And so, you know, it is much harder for you to get hold of a gun on impulse, whereas otherwise,
#
you know, you could just take it out of your drawer.
#
Also the point is that a lot of gun killings, a lot of gun deaths rather that happen even
#
in the U.S., are not sort of shootouts we see in the news.
#
They could be domestic disputes and very often, and this is a huge problem, they are suicides.
#
There happens to be a gun in the house.
#
And again, a gun is an easy way to commit suicide.
#
On an impulse, you can take a gun, put it at your head and press the trigger.
#
And that happens a lot apparently.
#
And it's much harder to actually go to a bridge and jump off or hang yourself with all the
#
elaborate apparatus that involves and the fact that there's a little more effort involved
#
in that makes it a little less unlikely.
#
So I mean, I've kind of made two separate points, what do you feel about them?
#
So on the point that it is a little difficult to get it and makes it difficult for impulse
#
buyers to get it, I agree with you there.
#
But if you had a fairly robust registration system where there was no discretion on that
#
part, like whether you are facing a threat or not, but there is still objective checks
#
that you don't have any previous criminal convictions.
#
You don't have domestic violence complaints against you.
#
You do not have X, Y, Z things against, you're not on parole or something like that, or you're
#
not being charged and tried.
#
You can create those checks and balances to make it a little more difficult to make impulse
#
And it still allows people, but once you have made a purchase, you're not completely criminalized.
#
Today, if you are under stress or think that something bad will happen, you buy the gun
#
and now you're a criminal forever.
#
So now you have to hide it, you have to be unsafe about it.
#
But on the other hand, if you did that, all of that, and for example, do a seven-day gun
#
safety course, go and do a medical checkup, go and get a NOC from your wife, spouse, or
#
anybody who's living with you at home.
#
These are some of the systems which other countries do, which sometimes when we look
#
from India seems like a ban, like Canada does it.
#
You have to get a psychiatric checkup before you get it.
#
And they talk to you and they check that you are not there, your family has to, people
#
living with you have to give an approval or no objection.
#
And that allows, for example, to take care of the first problem, which is the impulse
#
On suicide, I think, yes and no to that extent.
#
There are many other ways to go and they are very painful.
#
And if you're a libertarian, you would argue if you want to finish off your life, it is
#
I don't subscribe to that point of view, but I think suicide is a mental health problem.
#
And there are reasons for suicide.
#
Japan has the highest suicide rate in the world, in the developed world, not much access
#
People are putting themselves out with carbon dioxide, with a lot of other jumping off buildings.
#
So when you have a suicide epidemic in a country, you should start looking at what are the cultural
#
reasons which cause it.
#
I think the US is also going through some problems which create the suicide epidemic
#
that you see in the US.
#
I think it is the retrenchment of the workforce, which is not in the knowledge economy as production
#
And JD Vance writes interesting things about why we are getting this problem in the US
#
because even mass shootouts are fairly recent phenomena in the US 80s, 90s.
#
They had guns for hundreds of years, 1776 onwards, they have been owning guns.
#
We didn't have this problem.
#
We have some deep cultural problems there.
#
Similarly what we have in Japan probably, which leads to suicide.
#
So we have to start thinking about that point that yes, self harm is a problem with guns.
#
There are a lot of ways to go out yourself and there I agree.
#
But that is still from a libertarian point of view.
#
That's not a good argument because if you will harm yourself, for that people who don't
#
harm themselves should not leak a gun.
#
One of the easiest ways carbon monoxide poisoning, just turn your exhaust, put a pipe in your
#
exhaust and put it in your car.
#
Sure, that's fair enough.
#
And the one point where you've got me is a libertarian point of view, where I do believe
#
that if you have the right to life, you have the right to kill yourself.
#
And I also believe that suicide is not necessarily a mental health problem.
#
It can under certain circumstances be quite rational to choose to go out.
#
So I buy that part of it and that's a separate argument entirely really.
#
But the consequentialist argument against guns would involve that suicide rates go up
#
and however high the Japanese rate might be, we don't know the counterfactual or what
#
it would have been if guns were more freely available.
#
But we have, and I'll come to this a little later when Sudhanshu also joins the discussion
#
perhaps that though I'm waiting for you to kind of let's squeeze this argument dry.
#
But you know, the experience in Australia, for example, after they did their gun buy
#
back and they changed their gun laws is that there are multiple studies which show, which
#
I'll cite, which showed that the rates of suicides drastically went down.
#
Obviously, it's not a magic bullet if I may use that phrase.
#
But we'll come to that.
#
I also wanted to address what you sort of said about, okay, here's what we can do with
#
You are not arguing they should be just sold over the counter like random medicines, like
#
an aspirin or something, but that they should be licensing.
#
I have sort of two points to make.
#
One is that we don't really have state capacity in India for anything.
#
So if you are going to say that these are the checks, like if I want to buy a gun, these
#
are the checks and balances.
#
Number one, there isn't that state capacity to make sure I jump through all those hoops.
#
So the system will be perverted in some way.
#
Like for example, today you can go to the RTO and get a driving license without actually
#
And I've seen that happen enough and that's a failure of state capacity.
#
And failure of state capacity is essentially ubiquitous everywhere except when it comes
#
to pure rent seeking when there is no lack of it.
#
And the other issue there is that, especially with regard to India, when state capacity
#
is low, we have seen that any system that can be gamed will be gamed.
#
So if you, for example, make it a requirement that, okay, you have to get a psychiatrist
#
certificate before we get you the gun, come on, you know, there'll be the shop setup where
#
an agent will get you a psychiatrist certificate and take 1000 bucks or whatever it is.
#
And so that's that's one objection, the state capacity objection.
#
And my second objection is also that, look, I live in India, I mean, I've lived in India
#
all my life, obviously, and I'm 45.
#
And I've never felt the need to have a gun for purposes of self-defense, because any
#
dicey situations that I have got myself in, I mean, I've never seen a gun really in civil
#
There's never been like a shootout where I'm like, if I had a gun, I could intervene now.
#
That's one that if you make guns freely available, you might create a situation where I might
#
feel that need, but then you would be shifting from this equilibrium in India where nobody
#
has guns to the sort of US equilibrium where because anybody can get a gun, you also feel
#
the need to get a gun to defend yourself.
#
And I am like, why move from this equilibrium to that one?
#
These are sort of my two points, state capacity and the equilibrium.
#
On the question of state capacity, I would argue that lack of state capacity, if it is
#
taken as a reason for accepting reduction of freedom, then you have to argue that it
#
is okay for Gurgaon police to issue an advisory that women will not travel after eight o'clock
#
because Gurgaon police is undermanned and so they are unable to work.
#
So that is first issue that we get that then that is a slippery slope on which you start
#
losing a lot of things.
#
Actually what has happened is because of the ban, we haven't developed state capacity.
#
So the ban then becomes justification for not investing in state capacity.
#
And I would say if you give the people of a, if the government had the choice, you can
#
ban it or you can regulate it.
#
They'll always choose ban because then they don't have to build state capacity to do it.
#
But because of that lack of state capacity, we already have six crore unregistered guns.
#
So I would say that because of that lack of state capacity, we have that problem and I
#
Yes, there were problems.
#
But for example, recently what Delhi RTO forces the driving instructor, one of the RTO officers
#
to take a video of you driving.
#
When I took the driving test recently, they had to make me take a video.
#
And so state capacity develops because we could have said, okay, we'll ban driving because
#
we don't have state capacity for doing that.
#
And you could say that, yes, we'll do public transport, we'll do Metro and practically
#
in Delhi, there's a very good argument to make or in Bombay that why do you need a driving
#
license in Bombay or Delhi?
#
That brings me to the second point about the equilibrium.
#
I would argue that equilibrium you face is because of the places you choose to live in.
#
I choose to live in Delhi.
#
It has got central armed police forces, it has got Delhi police, the best police force
#
It has got large amount of security cordons around the system.
#
So we live under that security umbrella.
#
But what if you are a person who stood for a panchayat election in Kashmir?
#
What if you are a person who stood up against the Naxals in Dantewada?
#
Or you're just the local doctor who's being harassed by goons?
#
People who go out to the villages, people who go out to places where these 6.1 crore
#
unregistered weapons are, they are not in the same equilibrium.
#
In that case, the lack of state capacity supports your point because you're saying that if the
#
state cannot protect me from Naxals in the village where I live, at least give me the
#
right to protect myself.
#
And I would say also state is always an ex post actor.
#
That it comes after you have been shot, it might do some justice and try to put the person
#
If you believe in vengeance, they can put that person to death penalty also.
#
But that person is gone.
#
And that is over for you.
#
So I would always say that you should have a last line of defense.
#
And of course, that should be done reasonably, just like we have public transport in Delhi,
#
but I still want my car.
#
And of course, again, I would argue that there are greater defense requirements for different
#
But it is not always very narrow that you must have a threat, identified threat.
#
For example, we allow, we have created a nice exception for parliamentarians.
#
Parliamentarians can buy guns the moment they become parliamentarians.
#
We don't adjudge the threat of individual parliamentarians.
#
But I would say why just parliamentarians?
#
I think if you're a parliamentarian from Bombay or Delhi, the risk is much lower than if you
#
just even stood for a Gram Panchayat election in Kashmir.
#
Or a headmaster in a school in Dantewada.
#
So you're caught in the crossfire.
#
It's your last line of defense.
#
And you know, 2008, the Bombay attack, it can happen in India again and again.
#
It was very successful.
#
And I am thankful to the Indian state for probably preventing those things from happening
#
But 2008, I talked to somebody who said, this is a normal thing in Kashmir, holding up militants
#
in hotels and then killing because hotels are a good target.
#
Most people are not residents.
#
It's a very common thing to do in Kashmir.
#
And you were in Bombay at the time that affected you personally?
#
I was not in Bombay, but I had worked with somebody who got killed in that.
#
And yes, that kind of changed my perception on this issue.
#
And I started reading more.
#
And then I went from this nuanced position of, from a simplistic position of ban and
#
non-ban and allowed to a more nuanced graded position.
#
So if you are one of those people.
#
The other thing I would say is also in this case is federalism.
#
That you can make laws that, okay, you can't have guns here.
#
You can have guns there, but those are also options to choose for.
#
The U.S. doesn't have a single gun law, by the way.
#
States are even city specific.
#
Cities can have ordinances.
#
I think we should also think of federalism on that way.
#
But again, what the main judgment in the U.S. which created all this dispute was the Heller
#
judgment, which people misquote.
#
The Heller judgment required residents of Washington D.C. if they owned a gun to either
#
disassemble the gun or unload and disassemble the gun or keep the gun loaded and assembled
#
with a lock, physical lock and key on the trigger to prevent it from being used.
#
And the person who wanted was a retired cop who had investigated mafia systems.
#
And he would have had to keep a gun with a physical lock on the thing.
#
And he said that's extreme and the U.S. Supreme Court position is that you can't put so much
#
restrictions on the right to bear arms that it becomes ineffective.
#
And think of it, the Washington didn't ban it.
#
They put so many restrictions that it became even feasible.
#
And I think that is where we should start thinking about that.
#
No, let's not put so much restrictions that none of us can.
#
And I would say also there is shooting as a sport.
#
Most of Indian top shooters, people don't know this, go to Germany to train or to other
#
Bindra went to Germany to train.
#
It's impossible to import a gun in India.
#
High quality guns cannot be imported.
#
And also even trivial things like the import duties on bullets and all of that nonsense
#
even for a sportsman like him.
#
And things like that, it made him cheaper to just go outside and practice.
#
And I think it is good to have an amount of population who are trained in firearms.
#
So there are two aspects to what you just said.
#
One is there is a philosophical argument of we should have the right to defend ourselves.
#
And you turn my point of state capacity against me by showing that, I mean, we have privilege
#
to be in Delhi and Bombay respectively.
#
But if you are in a smaller part of India where there is effectively no rule of law
#
and you can't tell a citizen that the state won't defend you, but you can't defend yourself
#
So that's your sort of philosophical argument if I've stated it correctly.
#
And the practical argument, if one may say, comes from the instance of the 2008 attacks
#
where you're saying that, listen, it is probable that if one of the victims or one of the people
#
who was in that space had a gun, it is somewhat probable that the casualties could have been
#
less because the likelihood of someone fighting back is non-zero and therefore they could
#
Or at least the guards had guns.
#
Even the guards don't have, even private security in India can't get guns.
#
At the most one guy has a smooth barrel shotgun, which is legal and all that.
#
Even private security guards can't have guns.
#
So this is an argument that people in favor of gun rights make whenever there is a mass
#
shooting that, you know, less people would have died if they were guns.
#
So I'm curious that you obviously have to, I mean, there is a trade-off here.
#
You have to weigh the likelihood of the shooter being stopped before he kills so many people
#
with the likelihood of more people dying in a dispersed way, including from suicides or
#
domestic quarrels or misfires if a child gets hit or whatever.
#
You have to weigh those two.
#
Are there statistics that you can use in your favor, leaving the philosophical argument
#
aside, just looking at consequences, are there statistics you can cite in your favor to show
#
that there is a correlation between greater availability of guns and less gun violence?
#
The problem with the statistics in this is, as you pointed out, different cultural, political,
#
So the counterfactuals don't exist.
#
I would argue that when people say guns are banned in most developed countries, they are
#
making a very simplistic comparison with the Indian system.
#
In many developed countries, you're allowed to buy guns for home defense, sportsmen are
#
allowed to buy guns, you are allowed to hold guns for systems with different restrictions.
#
And I would say many of them are far more peaceful than India is.
#
India's homicide rates are pretty high.
#
It's not that low as we would like to think it is.
#
And that's my point on this issue.
#
If we were to be able to do this kind of a calculus and come to the right point, it doesn't
#
It is a call you have to take.
#
And there I would argue, where is the origin of our gun law?
#
Our gun law starts in 1878 after the mutiny, where the sole objective of the British rulers
#
were to take away all the guns from Indians because they didn't like what happened the
#
last time Indians had guns.
#
And that was the philosophical basis for our gun law.
#
People make these other arguments for that.
#
But the philosophical basis was an oppressive state wanting to keep its subjects in check.
#
And to that extent that they can't defend themselves at all.
#
And this is an ideological question to answer.
#
And I would say, yes, we can differ on this plateau.
#
But we should start thinking about it.
#
If we were to do an Indian full ban, I would argue with you.
#
Then put the state capacity to take out the 6.1 crore guns, which are unregistered.
#
And what do you do with the guys who have registered guns?
#
Manu Sharma shot somebody with a registered gun.
#
Interestingly it was registered with his father, who was an MP probably, he got a 22 caliber.
#
And so the people who have registered guns, are we going to do a full blanket ban?
#
I'm okay with a full blanket ban.
#
But then no guns with cops.
#
No exceptions to the ban by, oh, you are in personal danger, so you can get a gun.
#
Go and get a security guard for a cop to guard you.
#
But despite these statistics of how many guns we have and five for every hundred and so
#
on, would you broadly agree or disagree with the contention I made at the start of the
#
episode that we are in an equilibrium where nobody has guns, which seems broadly and again,
#
I am obviously biased by my privileged existence in Bombay where I don't see guns around me
#
at all and don't feel the need for one.
#
And it's possible that in other parts of India, it's obviously not like that and guns are
#
a part of everyday violence and people are defenseless against it.
#
So is my contention about that equilibria false to begin with?
#
I would say it is true for certain parts of India, but not true for large parts of India.
#
If you go into the badlands of UP, Bihar, which has a border with Nepal from where guns
#
If you go to Kashmir where Pakistan has pumped guns into the system.
#
If you go to North East where again the insurgencies have pumped guns from Myanmar, China, Bangladesh,
#
Because we have a single Indian arms act all over the country, same law, that is you and
#
I are beneficiaries of the equilibria here, but that reality is not the reality which
#
And that is something we should consider and point out and I'm okay for if you think of
#
graded in terms of geography also, that you can't have guns here, you can have guns there.
#
There are some problems with that also because people move freely, but it's not a reality
#
And the other question about the murder rate question, more than the absolute number and
#
this is probably a very charge point, it's also important who gets killed.
#
If murder rate goes up but a few more bad people are getting killed, people who are
#
threatening other people getting killed, is that a horrible thing to be in?
#
I mean if the data existed, I could consider that argument, but if it's a hypothetical
#
that you're proposing, then it's, you know, I wouldn't even know how to, like I came across
#
some limited studies and again I haven't, to be very honest, I did the lazy thing of
#
just Googling online for arguments against gun rights.
#
I found some studies cited, so I've just copy pasted the conclusions here.
#
I haven't looked at the studies myself to see the methodology as I would do.
#
I've looked at one or two, there's another thing that happens.
#
If you have relatively freer ownership of guns, violent break-ins fall.
#
Okay, because there might be the chance that the house owner has a gun.
#
And this has been studied when looking at smaller communities in the U.S. with freer
#
This is interesting, what you're saying is you're changing the incentives for criminals
#
because they don't know who might fight back and also you're changing the incentives for
#
even terrorists for something like the 2008 attacks.
#
I would say terrorists is difficult, like if you have committed to kill yourself, you
#
You will do it and if somebody has a gun they'll take you down and hopefully that is the outcome
#
But yes, there is a lot of petty crime or petty violence that happens in India.
#
I would call it petty because in the sense that the person who's doing it is in larger
#
numbers to the victim and is just, you know, taking advantage of his size or numbers, lynchings,
#
breaking-ins, things like that, where the person is just knows the other person is weak.
#
And there I think gun changes the dynamic and so you have to start looking at those
#
Let's say the murder rate goes up a little bit, but violent break-ins go down to go down
#
How do you calibrate that?
#
Yeah, and that is a trade-off to also start thinking about.
#
I'll cite some figures anyway and I think when Sudhanshu comes in, he'll have counter
#
So in 1983 there was a cross-sectional studies of all 50 US states, which showed that the
#
six states with the strictest gun laws, according to the NRA, had suicide rates that were approximately
#
3 out of 100,000 people lower than in other states.
#
And that these states' suicide rates were 4 out of 100,000 people lower than those of
#
the states with the least restrictive gun laws.
#
Then there's a 2011 study that found that firearm regulation laws in the US have, quote,
#
a significant deterrent effect on male suicide.
#
A 2014 study found in the US found that children living in states with stricter gun laws were
#
And I don't know how they define this or find that out.
#
I'm just sort of quoting what I found.
#
Now in Australia, interestingly, where they changed the gun laws and they brought back
#
a lot of firearms and so on, 2004 study found that in the context of these laws, overall
#
firearm-related deaths, especially suicides, declined dramatically.
#
I haven't seen the study.
#
I don't know what they mean by dramatically.
#
The interesting part in this is the firearm-related deaths.
#
Murder rate, how much did it fall, is an interesting question.
#
So London is now the knife-injury capital of the world.
#
It is an interesting part to that.
#
That's an interesting title for a city also.
#
We are the knife-injury capital.
#
And another 2006 study in Australia found that after the law was enacted in 1996 by Australia,
#
the country went more than a decade without any mass shootings.
#
And gun-related deaths, especially suicides, declined dramatically.
#
But as you've pointed out, you shouldn't look at gun-related deaths.
#
You should look at the overall death rate.
#
So what I'm going to ask you to do, Shubho, before we bring Sudhanshu in to argue with
#
both of us and convince us that we are wrong, is I want to make sure that I've given you
#
a chance to sum up your position as completely as possible and not kind of leave anything
#
So if there's a further argument you'd like to add, please do that.
#
And state your position for me once that, I mean, obviously, we can't use the term
#
ban now because that's too simplistic, as you pointed out.
#
How do you think gun availability in India should be regulated and managed?
#
What's your whole view on this?
#
I would say we have to go from that spectrum, that you can't give a knife to a child and
#
you can't say that the Indian army cannot own bombs with us.
#
And in that spectrum, we have to start thinking about it.
#
What bans also do is make us intellectually lazy.
#
We don't think about it.
#
So when you start having, I would say that my position is we should have a graded approach.
#
And of course, depending on situations, we should allow people to own guns.
#
The Indian law does it, but it gives too much discretion on the part of the officer who
#
We should have a system by which you can challenge it or show some systems.
#
And we don't have checks and balances on it.
#
So once your threat to life is established, you can get a gun without training, without
#
safety checks, without any ability to whether you'll store the gun properly or not.
#
And we need to move from that and say that you have to do all these other steps.
#
And then we will get into situations where we start dealing with guns as a system.
#
So for example, I would like to add something, when we are celebratory firings in India,
#
you have to charge the people under nuisance because we have created this myth that India
#
We don't have a crime of illegal discharge of a firearm or a dangerous discharge of a
#
While Manushamma went to jail, his dad did not go to jail or anything because the gun,
#
there is no crime for handing your gun to the son because we presume that it's banned.
#
So therefore it is not a crime for a registered user to hand his gun to the son or even leave
#
it in a place where his son can access it easily.
#
Not only do we pretend it's banned, you're saying the Indian state is in a state of denial
#
about the gun ownership that is already there and therefore we can't have effective laws.
#
And therefore when things really go bad, we are unable to then deal with it.
#
Can you sue him under arms act?
#
And that is some of those issues.
#
So you should do, for example, bullet controls.
#
How many bullets do you have?
#
If you fired a bullet, give me the casing, show me where you fired it.
#
You have to do all of that.
#
And then you can arrest and prosecute a lot of people for violating those, even if you
#
might not have the full evidence of murder.
#
At the end, Manu Sharma was convicted because spent cartridges were found in his car which
#
matched the bullet that was shot through Jessica.
#
And your argument is that in the kind of regulated environment you envisage that would always
#
You would be able to trace every gun and every bullet back to the owner.
#
They wouldn't be the black market, whatever exists of it.
#
And therefore, you know, you would have a very good handle on things.
#
UK does it very simple.
#
They shoot a sample one and they keep the ballistic marks.
#
This will be expensive.
#
I'm not saying this alone.
#
We'll have to build state capacity to do it.
#
But we can't live in the denial of that system.
#
You know, if he had that, the Manu Sharma case wouldn't have had, he almost got away
#
He got acquitted by the trial court because he could not recover the gun.
#
But if he had the bullet and that bullet matched his gun or matched his father's gun, I think
#
there should be some actually some presumption which would lead to some at least lesser.
#
That says you go for seven years, eight years of conviction.
#
You hand over gun to your child.
#
You go for some time of conviction.
#
You do celebratory firings.
#
So we have to do graded.
#
And once we do graded, we'll get into a lot of trouble.
#
But those trouble will then clear up all these obligations and processes where sometimes
#
the Indian law gets into a vacuum.
#
What do we do with this fact about gun ownership and systems?
#
We have this denial of we are living the ban is officially on paper, but there are six
#
crore guns on the market and we have to just deal with the problem.
#
And first level of dealing is let's accept it and let's make reasonable laws around it.
#
That's an excellent argument.
#
And you've given me a lot to think about, but we are going to have a lot more to think
#
about after a quick commercial break when we are joined by Sudhanshu Neema, who thinks
#
both me and Shubho are wrong.
#
Hey everybody, welcome to another amazing week on the IBM podcast network.
#
If you're not following us on social media, you know what?
#
I'm tired of asking you to follow us.
#
This time I expect you to follow us.
#
Please make sure you follow us.
#
If you're not following us, I'm not going to talk to you anymore.
#
Seriously, I'm sure many of you would like that, but that's the only threat I have.
#
We'd also like to thank our sponsors on the network this week.
#
We're really grateful for your support.
#
This week on Cyrus's, Cyrus is joined by Prakash Malia.
#
Prakash is the managing director for Intel India's sales and marketing group.
#
Prakash and Cyrus get into talking about Prakash's travel habits and also talking a little bit
#
about Prakash's hobby of photography.
#
So really fun conversation.
#
On Agla Station Adulthood, hosts Ayushi and Ritasha talk about confidence and self-esteem
#
and how it's different from self-awareness.
#
On the Boundless podcast, Natasha shares the problem of being a brown immigrant in a foreign
#
land and how to cope with it.
#
She also recites a poem on being average and calls it a new voice.
#
This week on Gaby City, Farhad and Sunet Roo take us through the deep understanding of
#
being intimate with other people and recreating those spaces.
#
On States of Anarchy, Humsani is joined by Ameya Naik to discuss international law and
#
how it measures up in current geopolitics.
#
On Football Shoot Ball, hosts Gaurav, Karthik and Sivar talk about Jose Mourinho's shock
#
appointment as the first coach.
#
And of course, the big game last Saturday, Man City vs Chelsea.
#
On The Habit Coach, Ashwin talks about voting and acknowledging the choices that we make
#
with a mindful approach.
#
On Pragati Podcast, we have repeat guest Ameya Naik who talks to Pawan about refugees, distress,
#
migrants and movement of people across the world.
#
On Ganatantra this week, Alok and Surya are joined by Dr. Srinath Raghavan to discuss
#
politics of the armed forces, nationalism, the impact of social media on perceptions
#
On Storytels and Storysellers, Vineeth is joined by actress and storyteller Asas Channa
#
and also VP Content and Strategies at One Digital Entertainment, Sudeep Lahiri.
#
Together, they talk about the influencer ecosystem and discuss strategies that can help brands
#
collaborate with influencers better.
#
On the Geek Food Podcast, Thinker and Tejas talk about all the notable dragons that we
#
have watched in movies and TV shows throughout the years.
#
And with that, let's get you on with your show.
#
Welcome back to The Scene in the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Shubho Roy and Sudhanshu Neema about gun rights.
#
I started this episode by making my argument on why guns should not be sold openly over
#
Shubho did not agree with me and made a powerful argument about why no gun should be sold in
#
India but with certain restrictions and licensing and so on and so forth.
#
And now I'll invite my third guest on to the show.
#
Sudhanshu, welcome to the show.
#
So let me begin with the stating my position and then we can go forward from there.
#
So my position is anyone above 18, adult, competent, mentally competent, that is, should
#
be allowed to have a gun without any restrictions or licensing.
#
And my argument, barring everything which has been discussed, my argument is specifically
#
is against the state that I have a right to defend myself against the state.
#
So I'm arguing for the hundred million victims of communism who were killed in China and
#
Russia and Cambodia and many other countries, the North Koreans, even the Jews in Germany
#
first were disarmed by Hitler and then were killed.
#
So my argument is for those people and I'm very specific about deontology.
#
I am not going to enter into a consequentialist debate because I think that's a very wrong
#
mechanism to analyze a shoe like rights because, and as you deal with the question of impulse
#
that you could commit suicide on impulse with a gun, that is all well and good.
#
But why should my right be curtailed because of your impulse, right?
#
And on the question of Bamzuka, I say, let everyone have them because once the state
#
comes for you and you're armless, defenseless, there's nothing for you.
#
The state can starve you to death as we have seen in the Chinese regimes.
#
They can kill you with guns like we have seen Hitler do.
#
They have gulags, special prisons for you.
#
They can, they can do anything to you.
#
And what will you defend yourself with sticks?
#
So I'll unpack the points you made for the benefit of my listeners, especially deontology
#
and consequentialism and basically you can make two kinds of moral arguments.
#
I'm simplifying massively, but one is you can come from first principles and say that
#
these are my first principles and my entire moral view of the world flows from those.
#
And the other is that I don't really have any first principles except that we should
#
do the greatest good of the greatest number or whatever, or we should look at spreading
#
So we should look at the consequences of things.
#
So for example, a consequentialist looking at gun rights would then try to gather data
#
and figure out what kills more people or less people and whether banning guns helps or it
#
And of course, as Shuba pointed out, the data is very muddy.
#
It can be misinterpreted in different ways.
#
And this is, this does become a problem with social science that because you don't know
#
the counterfactuals, you can't do testing under controlled circumstances.
#
What inevitably happens is that every ideological party will find some data that appears to
#
So even in terms of consequentialism, even if you were to say that, I believe in that
#
is really difficult to come to a conclusion if you're willing to reasonably consider
#
both sides of the argument.
#
But what you're saying is I don't care about consequentialism, what you are coming from
#
first principles and your first principles are based on the individual's right to self
#
autonomy and to defend herself from the state.
#
And also we can go into the question of how guns are regulated currently.
#
As Shuba pointed out, my concern with licensing or any form of registration with the state
#
is that once the state decides, like on one hand you are saying that this person running
#
the country is a dictator.
#
On the other hand, you're saying that you should not have guns without permission of
#
So in case of let's say Indira Gandhi during emergency, all those people who are forced
#
to sterilize should not, they have guns.
#
How would they defend themselves once the state comes for you?
#
And if they know you have a gun, be it by registration or licensing, they will have
#
your addresses, they will link it to other, you know, and they will come for you first.
#
So disarm you first, then go for the rest of the population.
#
So that is one set of arguments.
#
Second guns also different people who don't have guns.
#
So for example, it increases the cost to criminals.
#
So if a rapist in Delhi is looking for a new victim, the cost goes up because they don't
#
know whether this person may or may not have a gun.
#
So the incidence reduces similar to what happens with invention of car alarms.
#
Even cars which don't have alarm, the theft goes down.
#
It just does because criminals have to consider the possibility that this car might be alarmed.
#
And second, we have seen.
#
So for example, in US, Chicago tends to have the, you know, most regulations on guns.
#
And it's also the city with highest numbers of homicides in the US.
#
Whereas if you look at other parts of US where guns are open carry, mass shootings are much
#
less homicide rates are down.
#
So even from a consequentialist point of view, we can discuss, but, you know, here I would
#
say that the causation can also go the other way.
#
For example, you know, Chicago might have more laws restricting guns because they have
#
a greater problem with crime to begin with.
#
And if Shubham, come in here, please.
#
So it's very interesting.
#
I've been reading the Illinois gun control laws and it makes a very interesting point
#
In Chicago, you can keep a gun with yourself.
#
You can keep a gun in your car.
#
You can't get up on the public transport with a gun.
#
You can't enter an office or a public building with a gun.
#
Now what it plays out is very interesting.
#
Let's say you have a nine to five job.
#
You take the metro to the job and then you come back and you walk a little bit from the
#
No, because you'll have to get on the metro, which is illegal to carry a gun.
#
You have to get into the office, which is again illegal.
#
Now if you are the gang banger and you're just standing outside your street corner entire
#
day, you don't have a job.
#
You are trying to say, sell drugs.
#
Yes, because you're not going to get up on the metro where there's a metal detector.
#
You're not going to get into office, which has a metal detector.
#
Again, at those points, you would be prosecuted for violating Chicago laws on guns.
#
And therefore you have created this perverse system where citizens with nine to five jobs
#
with normal people, no guns.
#
Criminals or people who don't have a job or a life, which is productive, who are just
#
hanging around selling drugs or doing other activities or unemployed, they can have guns.
#
That is the twisted things we create when you have these street gun laws.
#
And again, that's why I was also pointing out if you have different gun laws across
#
this country, we have to start thinking of some common minimum ones.
#
Because otherwise you will create these incentives and these incentives play out very easily.
#
We think, oh, we have banned guns on metros.
#
Therefore we have made metros.
#
Yes, you have made metros, but you have made the walk from the metro to the home very unsafe.
#
And there's no this one-to-one correlation between the law and the outcome you will get.
#
You will get weird outcomes because people are game theory animals and it creates these
#
So Chicago is a very interesting situation.
#
If you read the law, you realize, oh, oh my God, if you're a complying citizen and you
#
have to really have a normal life, you can't carry a gun.
#
So now both of you actually don't agree on this because Shubho says that they should
#
Therefore it would be that if the citizen needs correctly, if I'm not sure if I'm stating
#
this not quite accurately, but what I understand of your view is that look, the citizen has
#
a right to defend himself from the state as well as others.
#
And therefore it is perverse for the state to control the means of this defense by having
#
Yes, that would be one of my argument.
#
Also I would like to point out on the question of statistics.
#
So when we were discussing a statistic earlier, it's very easy to get a statistics on how
#
many mass shootings and how many people are killed.
#
But what statistics you can get on how many people were saved because of guns.
#
So let's say a person comes to me with the intention of robbing me, I pull out my gun.
#
Now I'm not going and that person runs away.
#
I'm not going to go to the police and report this crime.
#
It's not even a crime because it didn't happen to begin with.
#
Now how many people are defended like that every day?
#
And that hypothetical, we have instances where sometimes this mass shooters are shot by a
#
person who had a gun legally, but we cannot get that statistics on how many people were
#
saved millions and millions of them every day.
#
And if you're in a country like in Latin America and Brazil and Chile or Honduras, you have
#
to have a gun because otherwise the state has no capacity to defend you.
#
But if I'm being robbed, the government is not going to defend me.
#
As our friend points out, a gun in hand is much better than a cop on the phone.
#
But yeah, that is correct question that I want individuals to be able to defend themselves
#
against the state regardless of time and place and whatever.
#
And I do not see any reason why that kind of restriction should agree, especially given
#
the evidence that in the 19th century alone, we have a hundred million people killed by
#
That's a fair point, but you know, I get the point about, we don't know the counterfactuals
#
of, you know, if you defended yourself against a robbery and the guy ran away, we don't know
#
the good that the possession of guns did.
#
But what we do know is that we can look at a few cases.
#
For example, you can look at Australia, which changed his gun laws and you can look at the
#
crime rates before and after that.
#
And obviously the rates that I just quoted were only of gun related deaths, not deaths
#
So it's not the full picture.
#
But, but one can look at data like that and come to some understanding, maybe the US states,
#
which have different laws are a kind of sort of natural experiment by itself.
#
So home breaking rates go down.
#
That's NRS favorite one, but yeah, it's a tough statistic to counter.
#
And it's also a much more personal point.
#
Like if you break into my home, that is a violation, which is far more stronger as a
#
violation that, that, you know, if you, and if you have returned to a home that has been
#
broken in, it is such a shock.
#
So it is, I have not been victims of crime that much, but one small theft at my home
#
probably because the door was left unlocked by Misty, but it was such a shock.
#
They took away something like a broken microwave, which was not working.
#
No monetary loss, but it was such a shock.
#
You get this thing that this is my home, my castle, violated and that is a situation which
#
So I'll come back to you for a moment, Shubho, because I want to sort of understand your
#
Sudhanshu's argument in a sense is simple to understand because he's saying I don't
#
care about the consequences, I just care about first principles and these are my first principles
#
and so I'm saying that individuals should have the right to protect yourself.
#
Now while you agree that it is hard to take a consequentialist position on this because
#
the data is quite muddy and all of that, at the same time, you're not quite coming from
#
first principles because you are arguing that the state should have gradations of licensing
#
My point is that even when I come from first principles, I come from first principles,
#
not first principle and I would say liberty is one of the principles, but there is also
#
that we live in a society, we'll have to manage our differences in society.
#
We have to create disincentives to use violence as the first resort or extreme violence as
#
the bombzooka case in the first resort.
#
So we'll have to come across, these are two contradictory principles that I want maximum
#
liberty but I also don't want to live on a hill 20 kilometers away depending on the range
#
of your bombzooka away from everybody else.
#
That is not a good life, I love urban living, I love the fact that we can drop into a meeting
#
and all of that and the bombzooka kind of makes it impossible if there is freely owned
#
Because somebody having a bad day, as you pointed out, there are suicides, somebody
#
having a bad day may decide not only will I go, I'll go with everybody around me.
#
That is a very dangerous situation where I go.
#
So I think that is where my principle is.
#
But Sudhanshu's point about the state going crazy, there I would say that even if you
#
have registration, if there are substantial number of guns, taking it away is difficult.
#
Today, for example, it is very easy to take away guns, the registered guns because 97
#
lakh guns, it is okay to take away.
#
But it is infeasible for the government, for example, to take away all the cars in Delhi
#
Where will you store the cars?
#
There are so many cars.
#
So I think if you have a distal level of ownership which is quite high, then even if the government
#
knows that these people have guns, you still have to come and take it away from me.
#
And that becomes difficult.
#
And I think once that has become a large enough population, I think what went wrong in Germany,
#
in China, in Russia, also I would say was not enough people had guns.
#
So the few that had guns, the state had enough capacity to take it away.
#
I would say if a lot of people have simple weapons and I don't think weapons of mass
#
destruction or things like that because you can't use them in an urban setting anyway.
#
So state also can't use it in an urban setting without setting of civil war and all of that.
#
Then it's okay because still some cop has to come up and knock and say, I want to take
#
And then if they are doing to every household, to your neighbor, to you, then the questions
#
come why, how are you doing it?
#
And then it breaks out in the open.
#
But if there are only one in hundred people or two in hundred people who have guns, that
#
is the number that's possible because what is happening cop has come to somebody's house.
#
But if you have to take away everybody's gun, then it becomes a higher barrier to that question
#
of you know, state going awry and going bad.
#
But by that time, I would say by the time things have rolled to that level, where state
#
is now going to put people into concentration camps, guns are not the only defense against
#
I think establishing rule of law, establishing democracy, those are hard work.
#
And I think in some ways, I fear that we might become lazy about that then because we have
#
guns, we don't take interest in the state.
#
That is a counterfactual I would think or a hypothetical we have to think about it.
#
We have to, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
#
So we'd have to be vigilant at all levels.
#
So whenever a gun legislation is issued or any other legislation is issued, like the
#
debate that we had about the terrorism law or any of these other laws, those are the
#
things we should work towards to keep the state in check.
#
By the time you have left it to the level that Hitler is things are doing or by the
#
time Pol Pot has come, things have gone too far.
#
And I think there, the United Nations system is a little better.
#
We have now a system of crime of genocide where other countries come and intervene.
#
Although defective, I think it was not there in the First World War, it was after First
#
World War, it was not there.
#
Because after Second World War, we realized the problem and there is some level of pressure
#
not to do that from the states and other states have to come together to prevent one state
#
from going really rogue on its citizens.
#
But yes, so I think two counters to that.
#
One is let's have enough guns so that it becomes infeasible for a state to collect back all
#
But yes, if you kill somebody, I should be able to trace where it came from.
#
I don't want to live in a world where the state can raise up its arms and say, I don't
#
Just like if a car hits and I have the number plate and you can't find the number, the owner
#
That is not a level of freedom I want to give because I'm balancing multiple values and
#
multiple first principles.
#
So Sudhanshu, I have a critical question of my own, but first I'd like you to respond
#
to Shubho's implication that you are giving undue primacy to one first principle that
#
of liberty and not considering the other things that we should value and balance that against.
#
So yes, I personally give most amount of value to first principles that is liberty.
#
Second on the question of large enough number of guns, I would like to point out the Japanese
#
were interned in US and they had a large enough number of guns and had the right for hundreds
#
of years at that point in time.
#
Plus the question of that estate will go gradually from one point to another.
#
I don't think that that is how it works.
#
Indira Gandhi, the judgment was announced against her at maybe in the afternoon to three
#
We had emergency on that day and we live under the same constitution.
#
We live under the same government and we never know.
#
I mean, as recently government has set 28,000 troops plus in Kashmir recording this on August
#
five, but the episode will be released much later, but we're recording this on August
#
So you never know how much estate will estate will never go gradually that, you know, we
#
are going to come for you and we know this many of you have guns and we'll send this
#
many people to that is not how it's going to happen.
#
It is going to happen in a moment.
#
In a fraction of a second, somebody like Indira Gandhi will rise up and say the country is
#
Your fundamental rights are suspended.
#
Your right to life also does not exist to begin with.
#
And we have instances where Supreme court has gone on to the extent of saying that,
#
yes, when you are killed under emergency, you have no right to life at all and you have
#
Now that situation is somewhat corrected, but that is not, uh, if the government has
#
large enough majority as the present government has, or any future government may have everything
#
is possible in this country and any other country whatsoever.
#
So just thinking that if people has had large enough number of guns and we have instances
#
in us where the military has fought civilians on us soil with large enough number of guns
#
and killed maybe 2000 of them, we have had multiple such instances, not just one or two.
#
Like, uh, so, uh, in, I think in the seventies, militia formed two, 3000 people, um, in Midwest
#
in U S and they were trying to campaign against the federal government in U S the U S government
#
just send army military to deal with them.
#
And they of, of course had higher grade weapons.
#
Guns were killed and that, that effectively nullifies the argument that once a large enough
#
number of people have guns, that is not how it's going to work because the state will
#
always have more capacity than an individual, especially when it comes to violence.
#
So in which case, why bother at all?
#
That's what I'm saying.
#
Everyone should have guns.
#
So I think there again, if everyone has guns, then the paranoia of the state may also lead
#
I have a fear that 28,000 troops have been sent to Kashmir and everybody in Kashmir explores
#
their bombs because it end game for everybody.
#
The problem with that level of mass destruction is that you create these end game situations
#
where you can't walk back from or deescalate from because of that, uh, level of weapons
#
of mass destruction being available in citizens and because today any nuclear weapon or something
#
goes through a multiple filter before somebody.
#
Even to that extent again, countering my own point, yes, there are weapons of mass destruction
#
in the hands of individual citizens in the army, but they have been trained, there's
#
a protocol, there's a way to launch them.
#
That gives a lot of time to think about launching weapons of mass destruction.
#
So I think that is how weapons of mass destruction should be used.
#
They should be used as deterrent and there should be protocols and systems.
#
If it is in the hands of citizens, sadly that structure collapses that.
#
So I might panic one day, I might think the world is coming to an end, which happens.
#
A lot of times people start thinking you get cults who commit mass suicide.
#
Now if they get bombs who cause they want to take the entire town or city with them,
#
So that is the extent I would go.
#
But on the point of Indira Gandhi, I think there was signs.
#
I think if you read history back, she started encroaching rights from the sixties, you know,
#
1969 she nationalized banks, she did a lot of nationalizations.
#
She was doing extreme taxation.
#
I mean, looking back, was 77 that big a surprise?
#
I mean, hit 75 rather, but that's also the hindsight bias kicking in with us.
#
I think we also have to believe contemporary accounts where there are enough people who,
#
you know, would have seen the signs but was still taken by surprise.
#
And also the thing is every state is by its nature looking to consolidate power and oppressive
#
to some extent or the other.
#
So if you want to look for signs, you will always find signs.
#
And then if you are fully armed, then any sign can be a trigger for you to correct.
#
That's how we keep government in check.
#
That's the situation when they would think twice before infringing on even the smallest
#
No, that's fair enough, but I am still worried by the fact that any random guy can take a
#
bomb zooka and decide that I will take everyone with me and press it and thousands of people
#
Above 18 mentally competent, as I said at the very beginning.
#
Oh, but that's not a guarantee that it's, it's no guarantee in life.
#
No, but I would say no, but that was not in, you know, was not crazy.
#
And let's say you were angry.
#
Now the cops are coming and you have a bomb zooka.
#
You are mentally competent.
#
You're going to press that button because you're going down anyway.
#
So you'll be like, whatever, dude, and, and press the thing that would be a very drastic
#
And I'm very sure all humans are, there may be some psychopathic, but all it takes is
#
But you're saying you don't care about one possibility.
#
You can not infringe on my rights.
#
That is my point that just because you have impulses doesn't mean the state can take away
#
Don't look at me like that.
#
Let me ask you the question that I was kind of saving for you.
#
And this is again, something that I am thinking through and chewing because, you know, I can
#
come up with objections to it myself.
#
And it's just a tough question, which is this, that yes, we have a right to defend ourselves.
#
However, in our conception, the classical liberal conception, which at least you and
#
I share, the whole purpose of the state is to defend those rights.
#
And therefore, for that reason, we give it a monopoly on violence and give it the license
#
to do whatever it takes to defend those rights.
#
Now, if in the interest of maintaining law and order, and what I'm now going to say has
#
to be taken with a lot of caveats because immediately slippery slopes form.
#
But if then the state says that my job is to solely look after the rights of my citizens,
#
which no state ever will.
#
The state basically wants to rule you.
#
But if a status is to say that my job is to solely look after the rights of his citizens
#
and the hypothetical possession of bombs because in the general population could endanger many
#
of these lives, which I am supposed to be saving, then I should preemptively act to
#
protect the citizens I am supposed to protect.
#
And therefore I should bomb the bandzooka.
#
Now obviously I know that this kind of preemptive rationale that I am doing it for your own
#
protection can be and would be misused by the state.
#
But leaving that aside, do you think there is some merit to it at all?
#
But then again, the question of where do you draw the line?
#
So UK, for example, as Shubha pointed out, has become the knife capital of the world.
#
In 1953 in UK, they passed a law banning canning of knives in public, which are longer than
#
So my problem is, okay, fine.
#
You want to ban it, ban it.
#
There would be criminals who will obtain access to it anyway.
#
Like, okay, it was illegal for North Korea to obtain nuclear weapons or for Iran.
#
But should the state then have the right to act preemptively to carry out its primary
#
job of safeguarding the rights of its citizens?
#
And if a line has to be drawn so it doesn't become a slippery slope, where would that
#
Like what would the parameters be?
#
I don't want to draw any lines.
#
But since you two are in favor of drawing lines, that answer should lie with you.
#
That being said, I don't think that there is any legal mechanism you can envisage which
#
would ban criminals from owning guns.
#
So you can have all possible mechanisms.
#
As Shubha pointed out, we have 7 crore, 6 crore guns and 97 lakhs are only legal.
#
So you have these 5-6 crore guns which are illegal, which are just floating around in
#
And I, as a law-abiding citizen, am defenseless.
#
And you have been very lucky that you have never faced that situation.
#
I have been robbed on knife point in Pune.
#
And in Delhi, I feel very unsafe.
#
Actually, some of my friends carry knives with them.
#
I know one of them, yes, an otherwise completely sturdy, reliable citizen, but I feel safe with
#
In Delhi, I don't feel safe.
#
And in Paharganj, I am not going to roam around after 11 o'clock because I am defenseless.
#
And I know the state is not going to defend me at all.
#
It's far worse for women.
#
And I wish every woman in Delhi has a gun.
#
That brings to the other point.
#
You can't go to the assistant of people being beaten up also in Delhi streets.
#
Yeah, because you have nothing.
#
You will just get beaten up.
#
Yeah, you might be added to the list of people being...
#
They may not have guns also.
#
But you can't just draw a gun and say, people, let's calm down.
#
Let the cops come and solve this out.
#
Because you can't even say that much when somebody is beating people.
#
Somebody is becoming a fight.
#
And I think that is a thing which is, for example, they're to pass a law to give legal
#
immunity to people who pick up strangers on the road who have been victims of roadside
#
assistance because you would get harassed by the cops when you brought somebody to the
#
The incentives are horrible.
#
And many people still don't know that the law has changed.
#
Even the cops don't know the law has changed.
#
The cops will continue to harass you.
#
So that is an issue that we have.
#
And that is also something we should think about it.
#
But to your point about Bamzuka and Sudhanshu's point there, I would say that is a problem
#
I would say till before the 20th century, you could not really take out percentages
#
of the population of your city or of your country.
#
You know, so as I see individual person, you could not.
#
I mean, with both of nuclear weapons, poisonous, I mean, neurotoxin type, the VX poison chemical
#
weapons and biological weapons now, an individual can take out half of the world or all of the
#
And this did not exist.
#
And my experience from law is that law takes around 300 years to solve a problem.
#
That's the fastest speed law works.
#
Look how long did it take us to find out that everybody should get a right to vote?
#
It took us 20,000 years of civilization, I would say, to come to democracy, still pretty
#
So my rough estimate is it takes around 300 years for law to come to a conclusion about
#
So I think weapons of mass destruction are just too early for us to wrap our head around
#
I think we are doing very good at it.
#
We have only used them twice, 50 years we haven't used them, quite surprising, but it
#
seems there's some sense prevailing.
#
I mean, I suspect Sudhanshu would say that that is an argument for deterrence.
#
And that is what, but deterrence can work between states, which are by and large rational
#
If you give every human being a bombzooka, I don't know what role deterrence plays there.
#
Some nutcase is going to say ki chalo uda do Paharganj ko.
#
And that is the risk we have to bear.
#
I mean, there's no other way.
#
Do you want to draw a line?
#
Then show me where you will draw the line and for what reasons.
#
Then I might be able to agree with you.
#
As far as I see, I don't see why you should not draw a line at, let's say, Majestic, because
#
I could basically set this studio on fire right away.
#
Are you going to ban Majestics or are you going to ban spoons because I'm getting fat?
#
Are you going to ban sugar?
#
Sugar is poison, but bloody hell, people have a right to consume poison, the classic libertarian
#
So, so it's been really stimulating conversation for me and I'm going to take time to process
#
So I'm not going to say I've changed my mind and you've convinced me.
#
And I can't even say that because you guys have actually made slightly separate arguments.
#
But I am, I'm pretty sure Sudhanshu, though I have to say with great regret that I don't
#
think I'll quite go on the line of the bombzooka being available over the counter, but I might
#
get myself to agree with Shubha, but that could be a failure of imagination on my part.
#
My purpose for this episode really was we were chatting over this at dinner the other
#
night and I thought this is a very stimulating discussion.
#
I am being forced to reconsider some of my positions, whether I change my mind or not.
#
Let's put these arguments out there on the table.
#
The final question I'd ask before I sort of end it is that are we discussing that in a
#
utopian world, this should be what the law should be like or are both of you saying that
#
in India today as it is, as things stand, this is our position.
#
This is what we should do.
#
So I would say in a utopian world, but I'm asking about the India of today.
#
Actually in a utopian world, yes, every adult should be able to have a gun, whether they
#
want it or not is their problem.
#
In India, as things stand today, every adult should be able to get a gun because our state
#
is incapable of protecting us and there are already five, four, seven crores illegal guns
#
So I don't see how the number going, maybe 15 crore or 20 crore is going to be a problem.
#
So that's your position that you're not talking about utopia.
#
This is your position now.
#
My position is again, if we do bans, we stop thinking about it.
#
We can't stop thinking about the citizens right to defend themselves at all times.
#
I'm not arguing for changing the law today.
#
All I'm asking is the same point that lot more Indians to pay attention to the arms
#
act to pay attention to the debate.
#
And I'm okay with the democratic debate coming up with some solution.
#
I am unhappy with the presumption that a lot of us Indian elites do that the current equilibrium
#
I'm saying let's have a debate, let's debate and maybe after a debate, we can come back
#
But let us have the debate and I would like that debate to be open all the time.
#
Situation change before the Bombay attacks.
#
I think that situation was different for urban elites, but it was very similar for Kashmiri
#
victims and victims in Naxal prone areas.
#
I think we should have this debate all the time.
#
That is why we have a permanent legislature that we should have this debate and we Indian
#
elites have to carry this intellectualism on this.
#
We can't say the person who says that no, the gun laws in India are bad to just close
#
And I'm thankful that you're opening the debate here and we'll get nuances and my immediate
#
response to that though I meant to end it, but what can I do?
#
My overactive brain keeps ticking and my immediate thought to that not a response, not an argument
#
against it is that affairs in human life and even for states are driven largely by inertia
#
that this is a law that exists is going to continue to exist unless there is a crisis
#
which will make people reconsider it.
#
And the only kind of crisis that I can envisage that will make people reconsider it is if
#
the state is so oppressive that the need for guns is so acutely felt that there is public
#
demand for it, which hasn't happened so far in our history.
#
But then if the state is so acutely oppressive, then there's no point to the public demand.
#
So we're kind of stuck.
#
I would argue the state is that kind of oppressive.
#
Maybe you don't feel it.
#
Maybe a Kashmiri feels it.
#
No, I agree with you and I feel that oppression is normalized.
#
You know, so it is not that, you know, one of you made the point about how everything
#
can change overnight, but I think that oppression is normalized so much that we don't feel the
#
I knew you'd nod your head at that.
#
I see the defense against the state as a smaller debate in the Ghani issue, more against defense
#
against other bad citizens, other individuals.
#
And there, I think, you see the fact that there are five crore unregistered guns.
#
It is that some people are sold it amongst themselves without working about the democracy.
#
But I think the role of elites in this country is, I would say, magnified.
#
We have to make sure the debate happens.
#
And we have to make sure the debate happens.
#
I don't agree with the way you are thinking about democracy, that demand will come and
#
only then the rational solution will come.
#
It's the job of the elites to give good solutions.
#
And to give good solutions, you have to be expert on the topic.
#
And you have to start thinking about it.
#
It's not my primary topic of interest or research, but we have to do this and keep debating them,
#
even if we are not changing any law.
#
So at the time when we change laws, we don't go for some other extreme, like I would say
#
Sudhanshu's extreme, that you have to allow extreme weapons or we can have that debate
#
and then let the democracy decide where we want to go about it.
#
And I'll end this episode with, I mean, since you pointed out the distinction between self-defense
#
against the state and self-defense against others, I'll end this episode by plugging
#
an old episode of mine, which will be linked from the show notes, where the philosopher
#
Jason Brennan made an argument on the show that those rights should be exactly equivalent
#
in any situation where you have a right to defend yourself or others against private
#
So you have this exact same right with no added consideration to defend yourself against
#
Shubho and Sudhanshu, sorry, you want to add a point?
#
I agree with that way of analysis.
#
So I don't see how I can put a primacy over my defense against another individual or my
#
defense against the state.
#
I will treat them equally.
#
Sudhanshu, Shubho, thank you so much for coming on the Scene in the Unseen.
#
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you can follow Shubho at Twitter at Roy Shubho.
#
And you can't follow Sudhanshu because he doesn't want people to follow him.
#
He's kind of a paranoid guy.
#
And do you have one of those six-crore unofficial guns with you, Sudhanshu?
#
You can follow me on Twitter at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A.
#
You can browse past episodes of the Scene in the Unseen at sceneunseen.in, thinkpragati.com
#
The Scene in the Unseen is supported by the Takshashila Institution, an independent center
#
for research and education in public policy.
#
Takshashila offers 12-week courses in public policy, technology policy, strategic studies
#
for both full-time students and working professionals.
#
Visit takshashila.org.in for more details.
#
Thank you for listening.
#
Hi I'm Saryu Natarajan.
#
And I'm Alok Prasanna Kumar.
#
And we are the hosts of the Ganatantra Podcast.
#
On this podcast, we speak to academics, social scientists, journalists and activists to find
#
out what's actually going on in Indian politics.
#
On this podcast, we stay away from personality politics, intrigue and gossip and instead
#
focus on the data, research and analysis that drives all this.
#
So tune in to the Ganatantra Podcast where new episodes are out every Wednesday on the
#
IVM Podcast app, website or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
#
We have guests like Anjali Rehna, Dr. Marcus Rani, Dr. Swati Lodha, Ambhi Parmeswaran,
#
Apurva Damani and many more on our show paperback.
#
And tune in to the Ganatantra Podcast where new episodes are out every Wednesday on the
