[*]http://en.rian.ru/society/20120731/174886698.html
[/*][/list]‘Nanny State’ Wants No Firearms for Russians‘Nanny State’ Wants No Firearms for Russians

© RIA Novosti. Vladimir Vyatkin
19:35 31/07/2012MOSCOW, July 31 (RIA Novosti, Alexey Eremenko)Related News[*]Non-lethal firearms are here to stay[/*][*]Russian justice minister says 'no' to non-lethal weapons[/*][*]Russian TV journalist shooting may expand weapons ban - senator[/*][/list]
In December 1917, weeks after coming to
power, the Bolsheviks launched a drive to confiscate all firearms from
the hands of the Russian populace. They never gave them back.
Old habits die hard, and Russia’s restrictive gun legislation was
never seriously softened over the past 100 years, despite regular calls
to the purpose, the latest of which came last week from a pro-Kremlin
senator.
Those who oppose firearms are wary of the temperamental populace, predicting shooting rampages and an increase in murder rates.


But some skeptics claim the real reason the Kremlin is not allowing
the public to own firearms is fear that armed citizens will turn their
guns on the country's notoriously corrupt bureaucrats.
“They’ll just start killing off officials,” said Mikhail Pashkin, head of the Moscow Police Labor Union.


Human losses from grassroots purges could potentially stand at
several millions, too much for the demographically challenged Russia,
Pashkin predicted in a bout of a policeman’s deadpan black humor. Some
14,000 murders and attempted murders were committed in Russia in 2011,
according to the Interior Ministry.
Smile and Carry a Handgun


The discussion on gun control in Russia was revived after Senator
Alexander Torshin of the ruling United Russia party proposed last week
to legalize selling handguns to citizens.
In his report to the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the
federal legislature, Torshin cited the example of the former Soviet
Republic of Moldova, where after handguns became freely available for
purchase in 1995, murder rates dropped by 20 percent.
There are six million guns already in private hands in Russia,
Torshin said. But most of them are hunting guns not made to be concealed
and therefore not a handy means of self-defense, he said.
Handguns “will make our society better,” Torshin said last week, media reported. “Look at America, everyone’s smiling there.”


Torshin called for a referendum on the proposal, but the Kremlin was fast to put a damper on his pitch.


“[The proposal] was not discussed and is only being worked out at the
lower level, and the question is not on the agenda now,” Izvestia
quoted presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying last week.
The proposal stood little chance anyway: the most recent poll, held
last year by the independent Levada Center pollster, showed that 80
percent oppose the free sale of firearms, while only 13 percent support
it and six percent are undecided. The survey covered 1,600 respondents
nationwide and had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.
Torshin’s proposal likely stems from gun industry lobbyists looking
to tap a lucrative market with the help of legislators, said Alexei
Mukhin of the Center for Political Information think-tank.
There are almost 11 million prospective buyers who can afford
firearms, which could create an industry worth 1 trillion rubles ($31
billion) in five years, Torshin said in his report.
‘Tyrannical State’


When the Second Amendment granted Americans the right to bear arms
back in 1791, it was so they could protect themselves from the “tyranny
in government,” not highway robbers, according to one of its authors,
Thomas Jefferson.
No opposition activists in Russia have been bold enough to come out
and claim that they need guns to keep the much-lambasted regime of
President Vladimir Putin in check, not even after the Kremlin
intensified a crackdown on political opposition in recent months,
following a string of mass protests in Moscow that ended in riots on
Bolotnaya Square in May. The police searched the homes of opposition
leaders and charged, seemingly at random, a dozen riot participants.
However, many anti-Putin champions advocate lax gun rules, including
famous whistleblowing lawyer Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin’s number one
political enemy who campaigned for handguns for citizens as early as
2007.
“I used to advocate strict gun control, but I’m changing my mind
now,” said Gennady Gudkov, a State Duma deputy with the oppositional
Just Russia Party and a former KGB colonel.
“I guess this way, the government will finally be forced to develop
some respect for its citizens,” said Gudkov, a co-organizer of the
recent mass protests.
“I believe legislators think it'd be a shame if somebody else besides
them had weapons,” agreed Rafail Ruditsky, who sits on the federal
council of the Civil Arms Union, a pro-gun public group that helped
create Torshin’s report.
A recent spell of Kremlin-backed legislation has vested the state
with additional powers to curb most forms of grassroots activity,
including non-governmental organizations, unsanctioned public gatherings
and the Internet, which has replaced kitchens as the primary venue for
criticizing the government. Radical legalization moves, such as free
firearm sales, are unfeasible in this political environment, experts
said.
In any case, both Ruditsky and Gudkov insisted that handguns are only
needed to let private citizens protect themselves from criminals – even
though crime rates have been decreasing since 2007, according to the
Interior Ministry.
Mukhin of the Center for Political Information also denied that gun
restrictions are political, calling them “plain common sense.”
The “tyrannical government” of the Second Amendment referred to
Britain, a foreign power that threatened the very existence of the
newborn American state – something that Russia is obviously in no danger
of, Mukhin said.
At the same time, the country runs a risk of destroying public peace
by making handguns accessible to millions of emotionally unstable
Russians with no gun culture and many issues waiting to burst, he said.
The Enemy Within


Firearms are not necessarily a political risk, said Ruditsky. He
pointed out that during the riots in Moldova after the disputed
parliamentary elections in 2009, when the crowd stormed governmental
offices, not a single shot was fired despite much of the populace
carrying handguns.
But things are different in Russia’s North Caucasus republics such as
Dagestan and Chechnya, where most people already own firearms, albeit
illegally. While not resulting in a significant amount of gunfights
among ordinary citizens, the practice has placed the police force under
constant attacks, mostly blamed on a resilient Islamic insurgency.
Terrorist attacks in Dagestan have grown 50 percent over 2011, with
103 murders and hundreds of other assaults committed by extremists,
regional police said in February, the latest statistics available.
“A policeman can get killed over an illegal detention there,” said Pashkin.


Similar cases already pop up across Russia, the most famous being the
“Primorye guerillas” who hunted allegedly corrupt policemen in the Far
East in 2010, killing two and injuring several others. Four members of
the gang are currently on trial in Vladivostok.
The “guerillas” – who won the sympathy of 47 percent of Russians,
according to a poll by Levada in 2010 – mostly used hunting guns, not
handguns. However, in June, a Chechnya-born pensioner used a handgun to
kill a district head in the Volgograd region, who allegedly harassed his
business, turning himself in afterward.
“Politics are secondary here,” Ruditsky said about handgun sales.
“But what do I care if a criminal is dressed in rags or a police
officer’s uniform?”