The National Assembly Standing Committee yesterday continued to debate the promulgation of a law on the use and management of weapons, explosives and supportive weapons.

Most lawmakers agreed that the law was necessary and should be based on the current ordinance in use.

The committee stated that a draft law was ready to submit to the National Assembly for consideration.

While agreeing on the necessity of the law, a report from the Committee for National Defence and Security stressed that the current ordinance comprised a variety of contents, including a ban on personal weapons ownership, rules on using weapons and supportive weapons related to the right to live and the right to inviolability of the citizen’s body, regulations on research, production, manufacturing and trading of weapons, explosives and supportive weapons.

Therefore, the report said, the draft law was aimed at ensuring human rights and civil rights and solving issues that emerged in the four years since the ordinance on weapons, explosive and supportive weapons was introduced.

The issues included some limitations especially in State management of weapons and explosives that led to an uncontrollable situation in transporting, trading, stockpiling and abuse of weapons and explosives in mining and fishing.

Supportive weapons were also uncontrolled, leading to an increase in violence against officials and public security guards.

The report claimed that currently, many laws had provisions for the use and carry of weapons and supportive weapons while provisions for the management of the use of weapons and supportive tools were limited to bylaws.

According to statistics from 2012 to present, police of all levels have been equipped with more than 337,430 weapons and support weapons of different types. Licences and certificates for the use of weapons and supportive weapons have been issued to more than 321,600 security officials and organisations. 

About 1,897 guns of all types and 22,264 kg of explosives and 100,969 detonators were seized during the same period. 

VNS