One recent morning, Dibendyu Dutta rose at 6 a.m. to catch a three-hour train back to the city of his childhood, Kharagpur. He made for his family house, retrieved a case and brought it to the local police station. He handed over the case the police. Ten minutes, some questions and a few signatures later, it was time to get back on the train to make it home in time for dinner.

The case? It contained a gun, and Dutta, like the estimated 6 million registered gun owners in India, was performing a civic duty that would make many Americans cringe: He was forfeiting his weapon during election season. Bureaucracy! Government arms seizures! Are you weeping yet, NRA?

Dutta’s journey provides some insight into India’s high-scrutiny and rather strange gun laws. Yes, Americans might find the questions about liberty, security and paternalism familiar. But in India, the paternalism still rings of colonial indignity — and the bureaucracy seems very strange indeed. There are some 34 million illegal firearms dotting the national landscape, according to Gun Policy, feeding conflict zones in the northeast and here in West Bengal, and a thriving illegal trade along the Bangladesh border. In other words, the vast majority of India’s gun owners hold them illegally, sans license, registration or baroque, election-season forfeitures.

Rakshit Sharma, secretary general of the National Association for Gun Rights India (NAGRI), tells a common story of bribery associated with getting a gun. The airline captain, who’s enjoyed shooting in Florida among other places, says it took three years to get licenses for his small revolver, handgun and other inherited family arms. “If my family knew the right people, I would have had it within a week.” Sharma says he doesn’t want laws relaxed, “just a bit more logical.” The system is, he says, “archaic, draconian, colonial.”

http://www.ozy.com/pov/how-to-get-a-gun-in-india/68778