40m civilian-owned firearms in India: UN
United Nation’s India Armed Violence Survey said that roughly 40 million civilians owned firearms are in India, out of an estimated 650 million civilian guns worldwide.
According to the report, 62 per cent of murders by firearms are committed only in three states Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh.
“About 6.3 million of the 40 million firearms just over 15 per cent are licensed. From 1999 to 2008 the total number of reported deaths from firearms, including suicides and accidents, fell by nearly half, from 12,147 in 1999 to 6,219 in 2008. Murders by gunfire in India totalled 4,101 in 2008, or 12.2 per cent of all 33,727 murders that year. Unlicensed firearms account for 86 to 92 per cent of reported firearm-related murders, depending on the year,” it said.
Just three states Bihar, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh accounted for almost two-thirds (62.4 per cent) of all victims reportedly murdered by firearms in 2008.
Assessing the human cost and political priorities the UN reports says that “criminal violence caused more than 14 times as many violent deaths as terrorist activity in 2009, when there were 32,369 homicide victims and 2,231 deaths linked to terrorism,” it said.
According to the report terrorist violence between 1994 and 2009 resulted in 58,288 deaths, an average of more than 3,600 per year.
More than half of the dead, 52 per cent, were reportedly civilians and members of the security forces. Between 1988 and 2009, the Kashmir conflict caused at least 42,657 deaths, according to official data (more than 80,000 according to other sources).
The Maoist (Naxalite) insurgency has intensified in recent years.
The UN reports also says that the rates of violent crime reported in 2009 varied greatly across the country, ranging from fewer than 10 reported crimes per 100,000 people in the north-eastern state of Nagaland to 111 reported crimes per 100,000 in the southern Union territory of Puducherry.
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