How should India prepare to meet another Mumbai-style terrorist attack? How about actually allowing some gun ownership? The Indians have followed along in the style of the British and refuse to allow anyone to carry firearms, including such obvious candidates as hotel, mall and corporate security. Which really worsens the situation, especially since they are such obvious targets. And then the local police refuse to actually shoot anyone with the weapons they do carry. Changes need to be made soon, as this could easily happen elsewhere in India. Here is a run-down of the situation, courtesy of Shikha Dalmia with WSJ Asia:

Although the Indian government repealed[the old British laws banning gun ownership] after Independence, it replaced them with ones almost equally hostile toward its citizens in 1959. It created a new licensing authority and gave it virtual carte blanche to deny permits. It also restricted private manufacturing to primitive munitions that no one wanted while subsequently banning imports, all of which has made guns prohibitively expensive.

The consequence is that India has among the lowest gun ownership rates in the world -- four guns per 100 residents, according to estimates by Martin Killias and his colleagues at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. By contrast, the U.S. has a rate of 90 per 100; Canada, 31.5; Thailand, 16; and Pakistan, 12. But the most relevant comparison might be with Israel -- another country facing a chronic terrorist threat -- where 15% of adults carry concealed handguns, according to John Lott of University of Maryland.

Read the whole thing.