Posted on 04/15/2014 1:23:46 PM PDT by kronos77
A public petition asking to broaden the legislative limits of self-defense has been rejected by the Interior and Justice Ministries, but activists intend to continue the campaign and promise pickets near the government HQ and rallies across the country.
The petition entitled “My home is my fortress” has collected over 100,000 signatures of Russian citizens on a dedicated web-site which officially gave it legislative legs. If the draft was passed any action of a citizen inside his or her home against an intruder would be qualified as necessary self-defense, which, in turn, could lead to the withdrawal of murder charges or of inflicting grievous bodily harm.
Both the Interior Ministry and the Justice Ministry have vetoed the draft, the mass circulation daily Izvestia reported on Tuesday quoting an unnamed source in the special federal group for dealing with public initiatives.
The group was scheduled to consider the petition at a special session on Tuesday, but without the ministries’ approval it will most likely be rejected, the source said.
However, on Tuesday afternoon the working group reported that it had approved the petition on broadening the limits of necessary self-defense, and forwarded the document to the government. “This is the first initiative of three that had gathered the necessary 100,000 signatures on the internet,” the Open Government Minister Mikhail Abyzov told the ITAR-TASS news agency. ............... Gun rights groups estimate the number of civilian gun owners in Russia at about 5 million and the number of registered firearms at about 6.4 million, including over 600,000 non-lethal guns modified to fire special rubber bullets. The overall Russian population is over 140 million according to the 2010 official census. Pro-gun advocates also claim that the number of crimes committed with officially registered firearms is extremely low – only 142 in 2012.
Russian law does not allow civilians to carry concealed firearms, but a long gun can be purchased solely for home protection.
Good that you posted the Parenthetical in the title!
Coulda been “anyplace, USA”.....
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