10 December 08 - 09:22Mumbai's Harsh Lesson on Gun Control

People across the globe watched in shock as the terror attack on Mumbai unfolded on television screens everywhere. The meticulous planning and the sheer audacity of the attacks stunned the world and, in the final analysis, set the stage for a pure human tragedy: 195 lives lost, many times that number seriously injured, and hundreds of families scarred forever.

The terrorists targeted iconic landmarks like the busy CST railway terminus, two luxury hotels, a local Jewish outreach centre, a cafe, and a hospital. They placed bombs in taxis and other locations. All of these attacks occurred almost simultaneously, compounding the confusion and completely exposing the inept emergency services.

Now as the citizens of Mumbai go about the business of rebuilding their burnt out landmarks and trying to heal shattered lives, the emotions of a nation turn from horror to anger at being let down by those very people whose duty it was to protect them. But instead of playing the blame game it is time for the citizens of India to pause and try to understand why was it that these merchants of terror succeeded so well in their dastardly enterprise and how culpable are we for creating the circumstances which multiplied the magnitude of this tragedy many fold. After all, this was only a group of ten terrorists and those ten were mostly split into teams of two each, to enable them to cover several locations simultaneously. Why were they not stopped sooner? Did so many people really have to die? (more)

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02 December 08 - 00:52Back in the stone age?

Image courtesy Oleg Volk - www.olegvolk.net

As per this news report bystanders at Nariman House in Mumbai tried to thwart the terrorists attacking the Jewish centre by throwing rocks at them. Rocks!! Rocks versus AK-47's and grenades? Yet people still debate whether armed citizens could have meant a substantially lower body count??!! If just one or two of those bystanders had a handgun or a semi-auto rifle in stead of just rocks, the rabbi and many others who died at that location may still be alive today...

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02 December 08 - 00:35I wish I'd had a gun, not a camera!

"I wish I'd had a gun, not a camera!" These were the words of the Mumbai based news photographer who clicked the photo of one of the terrorists, while they attacked the CST railway station. You can read more of what he had to say here here >>

Disturbingly he had this to say about the armed railway police charged with guarding the railway station - "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything..." This simply underlines the need for more private citizens to be armed and prepared to defend themselves, we should not and cannot depend on the police to come save us in such situations.

Image courtesy Oleg Volk - www.olegvolk.net

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02 December 08 - 00:17If only we had guns!

Image courtesy Oleg Volk - www.olegvolk.net

The dastardly terrorist attack on Mumbai last week (once again) exposed how strict gun control laws directly help criminals target law abiding citizens with impunity. The terrorists came to Mumbai armed not only with AK-47's, grenades and bombs, but also with the knowledge that they could safely expect no armed resistance from the citizens of Mumbai! (more)

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13 October 06 - 09:30Pistol found in unclaimed bank locker

A pistol gifted by a Raja to a British officer in 1920s found in an unclaimed locker of State Bank of India.

The Times of India reports that an antique (sic) pistol supposedly gifted to Lt A B Greenwood, sometime in the 1920s by an unknown Raja was found (along with 261 rounds of ammo) in an unclaimed locker of the State Bank of India's head office at Fort, Mumbai.

An interesting aside - as per receipts found with the pistol, the (highly engraved) custom made gun is supposed to have cost Rs. 300 at the time while the ammunition recovered is supposed to have cost Rs. 200. By the same measure, 261 rounds of .32 cal IOF (KF brand) ammo would cost less than Rs. 9,000 today... of course these days, there is little chance of purchasing any kind of pistol for a proportionate amount of around Rs. 13-14,000!!

Read the full article here >>

Cheers!
Abhijeet

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25 September 06 - 16:47Asif and Abhijeet on CNN-IBN

Asif (a fellow member at indiansforguns.com) and I, were interviewed by CNN-IBN on the 16th of this month. The topic was gun control and why Indian citizens need to have a right to keep and bear arms (RKBA)!

The interview was aired the same evening, you can either read the text transcript on the CNN-IBN site here>>

OR

If bandwidth is not an issue you can see the archived (low res) video on their site here >>

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25 September 06 - 00:00Over 3 lakh unlicensed guns in Delhi

Dug this out from an old post of mine at Yahoo groups to quote elsewhere, but then decided it should be posted under the RKBA section as well...

Over 3 lakh unlicensed guns in Delhi
Maneesh Pandey
11 May, 2003 TNN

NEW DELHI:Ninety per cent of the crimes in Delhi are committed using unlicensed guns. From the rudimentary desi katta - a rusty pipe attached to a crude wooden grip and a trigger - to the more sophisticated 'Star' guns smuggled in from China and Pakistan, the illegal gun market is thriving like never before.

Officials say legal firearms are used only in stray cases of suicides and domestic violence. Delhi Police estimates that the number of illegal guns is five times higher than the 55,000 licensed guns in the city.

Ooooh!! I love it when the cops say things like that!! But is anyone in parliament listening!!!

Cheers!
Abhijeet

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08 July 06 - 01:49Microsoft is a software pirate!

Oooh! I simply love this one! PC Welt (a German magazine) carries this amazing article titled "Did Microsoft use Warez for Windows XP?". For the uninitiated warez refers to pirated / cracked illegal copies of software. You can read the original article in German here or the English version here.

In a nutshell, someone at Microsoft used pirated software to make some of the audio files for the Windows Media Player tour. What's ironic is that Microsoft, the quintessential retailer of proprietary "closed source" software and a rabid anti-piracy advocate has been caught in the act of using a pirated copy of a US $400 audio encoding software.

And don’t take my word for it, see for yourself: -

Open notepad in Windows.
Select open and goto your Windows Directory (usually C:\Windows\).
Open the "Help" sub-directory.
Open the "Tours" sub-directory.
Open the "WindowsMediaPlayer" sub-directory.
Open the "Audio" sub-directory.
Open the "Wav" sub-directory.
Select any one of those files.

Instead of playing them in MediaPlayer or any other audio software, open the file in Notepad. Now scroll all the way to the bottom.

See those strings "SoundForge 4.5" and "Deepz0ne"? Yep, this means that the file was created with a cracked version of Soundforge, cracked by a cracker called Deepz0ne. Good show Microsoft! Always knew we could rely on you guys for ethical business practices! LOL

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