Now comes a story from the Moscow Times about how air gun pellets have virtually vanished from the shelves of stores in Moscow. This was in response to an "unofficial" request from the Interior Ministry to stop sales of air gun pellets until they can finish registering owners.
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| Customers in a Moscow gun shop examining air pistols |
Foreigners are barred from owning lethal weapons and air guns. But Russians who cannot own lethal weapons have been snapping up air guns in recent years.A spokesman for the Interior Ministry denies that there is an unofficial ban saying that those properly licensed to own air guns can obtain ammo in Moscow. Outside of Moscow, the Interior Ministry request is being ignored according to many sources.
The bill passed last summer tightens regulations in the field, obliging prospective buyers to undergo police-supervised training and purchase special boxes with locks to store the weapons. The law also places limits on the sale of air guns.
But the Interior Ministry has said it would push for a blanket ban on air guns, insisting that their non-lethality status encourages abuse that can actually result in deaths.
There are Russian groups fighting back on this de facto ban.
But the current ban on ammunition represents an abuse of power by the Interior Ministry, said Sergei Zainullin, deputy head of the All-Russia Association of Civilian Weapons' Owners.I'm glad to hear that there is organized opposition to this. However, I have to wonder how effective it can be in Putin's Russia.
"The right to bear arms is an unalienable one, just like property rights, and can only be limited through legislation, not emotions," Zainullin said by telephone Sunday.
As an odd postscript to this story, the Moscow Times reports there was a bill introduced in the Duma by a group of legislators from the Kemerovo region that would issue air guns to ambulance workers for protection. It makes me think of the old saying about bringing a knife to a gun fight. Perhaps with all the millions of Makarovs sitting in military warehouses in Russia, they could be issued something a bit more effective than a pellet gun in order to protect themselves.
In a lot of countries is well neigh impossible to train with a real rifle (this was a big problem for the IRA, which would have to sneak its people in and out of e.g. Libya without getting on U.K. law enforcement radar). It occurs to me that you can learn and experience more than half of what you need to know by initially training with an air rifle ... so perhaps these governments want to make sure that their people will remain ineffective if they in some future disturbance get their hands on real rifles.
ReplyDelete@hga: You have a good point there. One of the Russian bloggers mentioned in the Moscow Times story thought it was no coincidence given they have Duma elections in December.
ReplyDeleteThough Russians of a certain age learned all about AKs while in school back in the days of the USSR and the Young Pioneers.
"The right to bear arms is an unalienable one..." It makes my heart glad to hear someone say these words who is not of the United States. These days it seems like we here in the U.S. are the only people who know this. I'm glad that the idea isn't quite dead in the rest of the world.
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