Farewell to arms for five years

Organizations defending the right of citizens to own firearms unexpectedly supported a bill that would tighten the conditions for their acquisition. We are talking about the initiative of deputies of the party “A Just Russia – For Truth” to establish a five-year ban on obtaining weapons licenses for “new” citizens of the Russian Federation. The chairman of the Right to Arms organization, Vyacheslav Vaneev, even proposed raising the bar to 15–25 years, but only for those “new” citizens who do not belong to the “indigenous peoples of Russia.” Constitutionalist Olga Podoplelova reminds that “old” and “new” citizens have the same rights and any attempts to put them in an unequal position do not comply with the Basic Law.

Last week, a group of deputies from the party “A Just Russia – For Truth” submitted draft amendments to the federal law “On Weapons” to the State Duma. They proposed a ban on issuing licenses for civilian firearms and hunting weapons to persons who received Russian citizenship less than five years ago. The deputies explained the initiative with the implementation of the SVO and the emergence of “new threats and challenges for the security of the state and citizens.” The chairman of the faction, Sergei Mironov, mentioned, in particular, “the crime situation caused by the dominance of citizens from nearby countries” and “the need to protect the country’s residents from migrants.” “Many young healthy guys come to our country. They don’t want to serve in the Russian army, but they buy firearms regularly, as if for self-defense. I am very afraid that over time they will accumulate a large number of weapons in their hands, and then there will be hotheads who will want to use them for banal robbery and robbery,” Mr. Mironov explained to journalists.

On Monday, the initiative was commented on by the chairman of the public organization “Right to Arms” (which declares its goal to be “protecting and promoting the interests of gun owners”, as well as building a “weapons-friendly environment”) Vyacheslav Vaneev. At a press conference at the Public News Service, he said that all previous initiatives related to tightening the arms trade had caused “enormous damage to the country’s defense capability, the economy and the morale of the people.” However, he is ready to support the initiative of the “fair Russians” – partially.

• Mr. Vaneev believes that the bill should not concern “new” citizens who “are ethnically related to those indigenous peoples who live on the territory of Russia—roughly speaking, Russians, Kalmyks, and so on.”
• But for others, especially immigrants from Asian countries, he proposed introducing a ban on receiving weapons for up to 15–25 years.

He recalled that “the state is now in a state of war,” and expressed concern about “the presence within our territory of a huge number of well-armed groups,” which are “softly treated by law enforcement agencies” in Russia. From his further speech it became clear that he was referring to migrants who, in his opinion, are “under the control of the intelligence services” of the states of origin.

“If the initiative is aimed only at tightening the turnover among the so-called Novorussians who have recently received passports, then this may not be a bad initiative,” the expert concluded.

The head of the public organization “Civil Security” (seeks the legalization of short-barreled firearms) Sergei Grinin said that in principle he does not support restrictive measures on the issue of circulation of legal weapons, but considers the measure proposed by deputies to be justified. At the same time, he is confident that the main problem here is not at all the legal, licensed weapons, the acquisition of which the deputies want to limit. “At one of the round tables in the State Duma, experts from the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced a frightening figure: in Russia, from 5 million to 20 million units of illegal weapons are in criminal circulation,” said Sergei Grinin. Mr. Vaneev added: according to analysts, in 2014 there were about 20 million units of illegal weapons in the Russian Federation, and the average cost of a machine gun on the black market was about $1,500.

Now “the cost of an assault rifle has dropped to 50 thousand rubles, and the number of illegal weapons has increased significantly.” “Any hot spot is a source of supplies of illegal weapons,” agreed Sergei Grinin.

“Such a bill obviously does not comply with the constitutional principle of equality of citizens and the prohibition of discrimination. There cannot be any restrictions for “new” citizens, since citizenship is the same and equal for everyone, regardless of the grounds and time of its acquisition,” lawyer, specialist in constitutional law Olga Podoplelova told Kommersant. “The introduction of bans in this area should rely on statistical information on the structure of crime using firearms. Therefore, we see only another round of migrant-phobia and stigmatization of “new citizens.” Commenting on Mr. Grinin’s words, she recalled that “any attempts to divide citizens into “reliable” and “unreliable” depending on their ethnic origin do not comply with the Constitution.”

Kommersant asked the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Russian National Guard for statistics on crimes involving the use of legal weapons by persons who had recently received citizenship, but at the time of publication had not received a response. The head of the Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption, Vasily Piskarev, considered it premature to comment on the bill of his Kommersant colleagues, explaining that the legal department of the State Duma has not yet issued its conclusion.

Emilia Gabdullina, Alexander Chernykh