Firearm laws may get more stringent

KOLKATA: The Union home ministry has proposed stringent punishment, including jail till death, for those illegally manufacturing “prohibited” arms, and for members of crime syndicates carrying such arms, in the proposed changes in the Indian Arms Act, 1959, according to senior officials familiar with the matter.

One of the officials cited above, privy to discussions on the proposed changes, said on condition of anonymity that the quantum of punishment for most offences has been doubled in the proposed Arms (Amendment) Bill, 2019.

The draft of the proposed law, reviewed by HT, covers five new areas -- illegal trafficking of arms, tracking arms and their components from manufacturers to end users, organised crime, organised crime syndicates, and celebratory firing --- with varying punishment for these offences.

Under penal provisions, the ministry has sought to amend Section 25 (1AA) of the Act, to give a punishment from the usual life term of 14 years to “imprisonment for the remainder of that person’s natural life” for manufacturing, selling, repairing and possessing prohibited arms. The draft says that minimum punishment under this section will be 14 years; under the current law, the minimum punishment is seven years and the maximum is 10.

The ministry has also proposed a new section, 25 (6), with a minimum punishment of 10 years in prison and maximum punishment of life imprisonment till death for using prohibited fire arms or ammunition by members of organised crime syndicate. This section also gives seven years in prison to a life term for NEWDELHI: The Washington Post review of the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill bemoaned that its 57-year-old star Roger Moore had “the pie-eyed blankness of a zombie” and was “not believable anymore in the action sequences (or in the romantic ones)”. Years later, Moore admitted that he was “only about 400 years too old for the part”. But a new technology has arrived that could remove all possibility of this ever happening again.

In the coming weeks, two films will attempt to solve a problem that has plagued mankind in general and movie stars in particular for an eternity: ageing. With The Irishman and Gemini Man, the Academy Award-winning directors Martin Scorsese and Ang Lee will unveil before the world technology that could perhaps reshape the future of filmmaking.

Both films utilise a tech

THE PROPOSED LAW COVERS FIVE NEW AREAS INCLUDING ILLEGAL TRAFFICKING, ORGANISED CRIME AND CELEBRATORY FIRING