The shocking shooting of a 14-year-old boy by two of his class mates at an elite school in Gurgaon is cause for serious concern. The victim of the shooting was apparently a bully. The boys opted to silence him for ever by shooting him. That a gun was readily available obviously influenced their choice of method to settle scores. The gun belonged to the father of one of the boys, who had left it lying around the house. The incident has provoked a heated debate over who is to blame for the shootout, the parents or the school authorities. Both bear some responsibility for the specific incident but the roots probably lie in the culture of violence that has taken hold of our society. The shooting at Gurgaon is the latest in a series of incidents in which urban Indians have whipped out a gun and used it to settle relatively trivial issues. If in one case it was a man who shot his sister after an argument over car parking space, in another it was a jealous lover shoot his estranged partner’s mother and uncle before turning the gun on himself. Stress, easy availability of guns, and glorification of machismo and violence in movies have resulted in a sharp spurt in urban gun violence in
India.

Unlike in the US, where a person can walk into a gun shop and purchase a weapon, in India one has to get permission from a police commissioner or district magistrate to buy a gun. He has to show proof that there is a threat to his life and that he needs a gun to protect himself. Unfortunately, these procedures are often bypassed. This means that people with contacts can lay their hands on licensed guns. But more worrying is the large number of illegal firearms floating around. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, manufacture of small arms is almost a cottage industry. The authorities need to look into this aspect of easy availability of arms.

The latest shooting of the teenager at Gurgaon is a wake up call. Police have said they would look into how the licence was issued. Howevere, stern measures by the government are essential to put an end to the availability of firearms, legal and illegal. We need to take steps to end the culture of violence before it influences our youth irrevocably. Parents and teachers must work together to teach children that violence does not provide solutions to disputes, that it is simply not an option, however fashionable it may seem to be.