President Medvedev really is an amusing character. He talks about the need for serious reform of the Interior Ministry, and then the very next day backs one of the dumbest and most corrupt initiatives pushed by those crooks in uniform, which they’ve been trying to ram through for several years now. Yesterday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev instructed Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev to draft, within 10 days, a new and stricter set of rules for handling traumatic weapons (less-lethal firearms that shoot rubber bullets). According to the president, the problem of their use is "highly relevant": "Recently there have been a whole series of crimes involving traumatic weapons." On that same day, Leonid Vedenov, deputy head of the Russian Interior Ministry’s public order department, proposed setting up special training courses that would be mandatory for anyone wishing to purchase a traumatic weapon. According to him, such courses for owners of traumatic weapons should be organized along the lines of driving schools. "In our view, the system should be the same as when obtaining a driver’s license, because a weapon is an inherently dangerous item and should only be placed in the hands of those who have undergone special training," he said. from here As it is, the possibilities for civilian self-defense in Russia have already been reduced to a minimum, and now they want to pile on special courses too. I honestly can’t imagine how they could make the rules for using traumatic weapons any stricter. Unless they add a requirement saying, "Upon seeing an attacker, load the weapon, stick the barrel in your mouth, and pull the trigger." I suspect the next step will be support for another ultra-idiotic Interior Ministry initiative: creating ballistic registries for traumatic weapons. And after that, just like in the USSR, they’ll ban karate. Or rather, not ban it, but license it. Because, you know, "incidents have increased..." As Parker says in situations like this: "very good business." On every fence you see ads saying "medical certificates for driver’s licenses and weapons permits." There’s a whole bunch of idiotic, corrupt driving schools attached to the traffic police (GAI, the old name for the State Automobile Inspectorate; yesterday I read that even the Anti-Monopoly Service had opened a case against them). And now there’ll be courses for traumatic weapons too. The extra absurdity is that getting a permit for a traumatic weapon is not much more difficult than getting one for a smoothbore firearm. I personally bought a "Makarych" firing rubber bullets (it won’t even shoot through a champagne bottle) and a Benelli M4 at the same time. And now they’ll say: the shotgun is fine, but please take a course for the "Makarych."
Makarych
M4 A monstrous stupidity, and a great money-making scheme for the guys who’ll be licensing these courses. If anyone needs to be sent to weapons-handling courses, it’s the cops themselves. Medvedev says, "Recently there have been a whole series of crimes involving traumatic weapons," but he should also take a look at how many crimes have been committed by Interior Ministry personnel using their service weapons, and in how many of these "traumatic weapon crimes" police officers were involved. It’s enough just to recall the killing of a snowplow driver in Moscow. Even if the issue of some kind of courses for traumatic weapons—or weapons in general—is raised, the Interior Ministry shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near them. How about adding three optional lessons on "safe weapons handling" to the school life-safety curriculum (OBZh, a standard Russian school subject on basic safety and emergency preparedness)? Everyone’s happy, it’s useful for everyone, and kids would find it interesting. The same goes for driver’s licenses, by the way. It’s long past time they were issued through schools and universities. If an educational institution can award a degree to a doctor or a nuclear physicist, then it can certainly teach someone to drive without extra oversight from the traffic police. Someone please tell President Medvedev that if he wants to preserve even a minimal level of support, then he must NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, support initiatives put forward by the Interior Ministry. NEVER, and NONE OF THEM. Every initiative incubated inside the monstrosity that is the Interior Ministry in its current form is corrupt and harmful.