Speaking to TOI, officer in-charge of the Ishapore arms factory, P K Aggarwal said, “The .22 caliber Nidar is lightest revolver ever made in India with cheapest price tag of Rs 35,000 only. The revolver is capable of firing eight rounds loaded in a revolving chamber against Nirbheek which has only six rounds capacity.”
He said, “Unlike costly titanium alloy used in Nirbheek, for Nidar we developed a total new alloy of aluminum which is called ‘DTD5124’ and its very light and as supreme metal strength.”
Both revolvers were named after a young Indian woman who was gang raped and murdered in New Delhi in 2012. The revolver is only 5.5 inches long, and weighs 8.8 ounces. It’s quite similar to the Smith & Wesson Airlight 317 in .22 long rifle. The price for the S&W and the Nidar are comparable, about $500 – $600.
The Nidar gathered 100 orders on the first day, so this revolver may be a commercial success. From bbc.com:
The manufacturers of Nidar, however, are confident that their product will succeed – Mr Agarwal told the BBC that he expected to sell 10,000 units of the gun this year.
Members of the Indian gun culture applauded the addition of the revolver, but deplore the general state of firearms commerce and the excessive legal constraints in Indian law. From the indiansforguns.com:
The lunching of the new .22 revolver is perhaps the first step in the right direction and we should welcome it. The media should also highlight the right of a citizen as per law of self defence, so that they should know when to use the firearm and for what purpose. Secondly, adequate facilities be made available so that the new license holders can do target practice so that they can effectively use the firearm in an emergency situation.
We are all aware that there is powerful anti gun lobby, consisting of armchair academics and experts who refuses to see the ground reality.For criminals there is no shortage of firearms neither they have any problem of obtaining gun license or all India movement permit. It is all the problem of the law abiding citizen of this country.Let us hope the situation changes in the near future.
A great advantage of Indian gun law: self-defense is seen as a valid reason to own a gun. That’s as opposed to the gun laws in most of the rest of the Anglosphere, with the exception of the United States.
That sad state of affairs was directly created by the British government which gradually, deliberately, and without due process, eroded and destroyed the right to carry arms for self defense in England. Perhaps the one time masters of the subcontinent could learn something from those they once ruled.
©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
Gun Watch
What a great thing! Empower Indian women to be able to protect themselves against rape.
That said I work with Indians all the time and every one I have ever discussed gun rights with have been extremely anti-firearms.
If there is a group of people in need of a tool like this it would be Indian females and I say arm them up.
Too bad. There are a lot of Indians in my gun club.
8.8 oz…. I want one.
How much does a 317 weigh by comparison?
S&W’s website lists the 3″ 317 at 12.5oz empty. Something seems weird here…
It’s made with an Aluminum alloy, S&W 300 series guns use scandium.
The 317 is aluminum, too. The scandium ones usually cost twice as much.
Being an indigenous Indian design, I’m guessing it’s an explosive device that takes the would be rapists down with their would be victims.
It’s not really “indigenous.” It’s a Smith & Wesson 317 clone.
As someone who’s seen and fixed a lot of Indian-written computer code, I expect the explosive description above comes from experience.
During my group-required cultural sensitivity training, demanded by the large Indian outsourcer company, I was taught that Indian culture is extremely tolerant of ambiguity. That’s not good in programming, or in gun manufacture.
No way I ever buy this.
“tolerant of ambiguity”
Ha! That’s some weasely rebranding if I ever heard it. ‘Ambiguity’ in a professional setting is, in fact, ‘incompetence.’ Indian culture is extremely tolerant of incompetence. Sorry, it’s the truth. This is why they can’t even make a freaking anvil for export out of the correct metal (‘grey iron’ is the same as ‘hardened cast steel’ if and only if you are an idiot who also doesn’t give a damn)
“I was taught that Indian culture is extremely tolerant of ambiguity”
OMG, even that statement itself is filled with ambiguity.
It’s built into certain aspects of Indian culture that one is never to disagree with others – to facilitate harmony or whatever. You have to be somewhat careful when you hear “Yes”, “OK”, “I understand”, etc.
For example, “These guns are going to be safe right, and they won’t just blow up in peoples faces?”, “Oh Yes, of course, absolutely”. See? Harmony.
I know a few programmers. For the price of one competent American you can get a whole team f-wits in Bangalore to completely ruin your systems. They have degrees, which they either pulled out of cereal boxes, or they just bribed some guy to get. Especially in COBOL/FORTRAN legacy environments (waaaay more of the world than most folks know). It will be interesting to see what happens as they finally push the last American who fixes all the Indians’ mistakes out.
Ditto. BTDT, got the t-shirts.
While the British invented bureaucracy, the Indians have perfected it and turned it into an art form. And it shows in their code.
I’ve owned 2 Ishapore Lee Enfields in .308. I was not impressed and they were a lot cheaper than R. 35,000.
I’m going to pass – now if it was a reproduction Enfield, I’d raise a brow.
Is 35000 Rupees a lot of money in India? I know it’s over $500 here in the US, which for most is probably about a week and a half’s pay, but how many weeks pay is that in India? 6 months? Women in India need these guns sooner than waiting 6 months to save up to afford to buy it.
Shoot, Armscor makes a .38 for less than half the price of this. If Armscor would make a small .22 for the same price as their .38, they’d have to run 3 shifts 24/7 to meed demand.
Rs.35,000 is the average middle class household’s monthly income.
35,000 Rupees?!? Do you know how many pots I would have to break and skeletons I would have to kill to get that much loot?
Ha! A hook shot is a much better deal..
Sir! we have a blip on the gaming radar!
What is it?
Not sure sir, but judging by this telemetry, its a older model, late 80s early 90s.
Carry on then.
Or you could ask Ganondorf to raise taxes on the Zora because they benefit to greatly from Zora Privilege.
Kidnap the princess! Because that works out.
You win!
‘It’s quite similar to the Smith & Wesson…’
Does Smith & Wesson just not hold any patents anymore? Every revolver not named Ruger, Chiapa or Charter Arms is just a Smith clone. (I’d list Colt, but they don’t make them anymore.)
Most of Smith & Wesson’s revolver patents probably expired before Bill Ruger made his first gun…
Has nice grips, not ugly, more just plain looking. 8 rounds of 22 if well placed can do some damage.
Have a 6 round 38 revolver from Rock Island Armory. Colt Detective rough clone. snub nose. When I want to carry a 38 special I will carry it. Don’t carry a handgun that can’t be easily replaced in event of DGU. Surprisingly, has a pretty good trigger pull, has some heft to it, Came as a drab dark grey finish, applied Lube Frog inside, and frame as well. Turned into a nice matt black, put a Houge grip on it and not a bad looking revolver. Doubt India revolver would be anywhere as solid as RIA, but 1st rule of armed self defense is have a gun.
American born women sometimes take for granted our freedom guaranteed by The Bill of Rights. There is a “war of women” but it is sure not here in the USA.
Eight rounds of .22LR should work fine if you start at the belly button and work up to the eyebrows. Even with multiple assailants you will probably, hopefully have a shortage of targets by the time you pause to reload.
I have that same Rock Island M206. for the money its a FANTASTIC revolver. I paid $239 brand new. I have a youtube video of me hitting a 2 liter pop bottle at 100 yards with it (not on the first shot, but i did it) I have shot +P through it with no problems (Not that I recommend it). I have carried it concealed on occasion but its a tad heavy. All that to say that I was very impressed with the cheap little .38 special.
100 sales in a country of over a billion shows how anti-gun most Indians are. “If you cannot train yourself to defend yourself without a gun you do not deserve to live” are words I heard from someone….
Someone who’s never been knocked down by someone before either, I assume.
Not anti-gun – gun-unfamiliar. The rest of the article points out how hostile the government is to gun rights. Can you imagine what an America with no 2A, a history of invaders using firearms to suppress the native population (well, this one we have), and Shannon/Bloomberg/friends in charge since independence would be like? That’s what they are facing there. Buying a firearm just isn’t on the radar.
Now, stack that with the price. Don’t think in American earnings. A well paid employee makes somewhere in the $20k range. Between bribes for permits, training, and ammo, I’m guessing this weapon would come out to a $1k investment. I am pretty comfortable, but dropping 5%-plus of my annual income into a gun is a hard thought. Dropping that much for a .22 revolver is a world I can never imagine.
Dropping that much money into something so long vilified is a mental hurdle – 100 isn’t bad for preorders. As the mentality gradually shifts, things should get better.
If we are seeing 100 preorders in 20 years for more reasonably priced guns, yeah, then I’ll be disappointed.
AS someone who has spent literally hours on the phone with outsourced computer,motor club and phone “help” I make it a point to avoid anything Indian. I guess if this is all the average Indian can get-fine. Are they planning on shipping this anywhere else?
I like Indian food
Interesting reader comments below this news article…
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/agra/Heavy-start-for-Indias-lightest-gun-100-place-order-for-Nidar/articleshow/50825812.cms
It certainly is a different culture there.
OTH this sounds familiar…
“Gun proliferation must be stopped at this stage itself. These things remain unchecked and soon we will have many people gun totting people on the streets. Its going to be a nightmare.”
Most of the comments sound like good little serfs.
India, for the most part, does not allow weapon imports for the private market. Gun manufacturers have a captive market and so can charge over 500 USD for what you could get in the U.S. market for about 250.
The fact that a .22 revolver can come out and make headlines shows how tight the (legal) market is.
Somewhere near Chennai there is a kid who is laughing cuz he built a .22 revolver for about 900 rupees.
http://3dprint.com/107062/worlds-1st-3d-printed-revolver/
Very interesting information in that link/ Thank-you.
Indigenous Indian manufacture has a well earned reputation as junk.
The Indian made AK called Insas has turned out to be complete
rubbish.
And it is based on an AK for heavens sake!
This is what you get when you insist on local manufacture and keep competition out.
My wife has to deal with an Outsourced Indian Technical Support Company based in Mumbai. Her biggest challenge is the the Indian support people have to have specific direction and instructions to perform the required work. If a situation arises that is not anticipated in the directions/instructions, they have nearly no trouble-shooting skills. They do not ask for help when they get stuck on a problem and will wait until someone else figures out they need help and offers it. It’s an extreme passivity. They just do not get American concepts of urgency in Business and the unacceptability of losing revenue when a key system is not working. ” Yes, I understand.” definitely does not mean for them what we American think it means.
Otherwise, they are nice, polite people to work with.
Oh, the stories I could tell you of working with Indian engineers in Silicon Valley. Very much like the people you describe here. As long as the situation in front of them is within the parameters of the rules and procedures given to them, they might actually create a solution to the problem.
Drop a problem on them that requires that you throw out the rulebook and solve the problem with what you have at hand, against the clock? Fuggetaboudit.
But very polite, nice people. They make the Canadians all look like Terrance and Phillip. The Indians simultaneously marveled and admired my bull-in-the-china-shop manner of solving problems while being horrified at how I would mow down everything in my path to deliver results. And then they’d wonder how we Americans could make up for our behavior by buying everyone beers after we got the solution shipped.
Great post! My wife found-out about some Indian Holiday where the traditional gift is roasted nuts and dried fruit in a gift basket. She has two or three Indians who were shipped over here to do some of the work “hands and feet”. So, she found these nuts and dried fruit baskets at COSTCO and put one on each of their desks with a little note saying “Happy Whatever Day!” and their first name. She said they all acted like she gave them each a $50.00 Gold Piece they were so happy, impressed and grateful. Yeah, they are good people as persons but challenged by American work standards.
Frankly, I had no idea individual Indian persons could actually buy and keep firearms, or that they even had a civilian firearms manufacturer. Learn something new every day!
Not exactly smoothed and dehorned for easy carry and snag-free draw, is it?
If we named a revolver after a rape victim in the US, the liberal media would flip their shit.
Of course they will. They will say that we are thought-raping them, so they need their safe zones and security blankets.
I worked at a well know, Redmond, WA-based software developer/manufacturer for several years as a technical writer. Some egghead believed it would be a great idea to outsource a lot of the help files and user’s guide text for the product our team was developing to India and China. Hilarity ensued.
Also, once bought a Chinese mill-drill-lathe combo – it had the expected mediocre quality and questionable tolerances, but was workable. The mill vise that came with it, in contrast, was a total POS. It was unusable – not even the screws and bolts holding it together met any sort of spec for Imperial or Metric thread pitches. You guessed it – India. They must be making screws on machines that were already worn out when Gunga Din was first published.
I like to tell people that the ChiCom machine tools aren’t really “machine tools” as you buy them. They’re a “machine tool kit.”
You should have access to another set of machine tools to finish the kit you are shipped by the ChiComs.
To be fair (and god I hate to do that with ChiComs) they have gotten their Harbor Freight measuring tools down pretty well.
If I actually have to really measure whatever, it’s with B&S, Mitutoyo, Starrett, or Federal. That said, there’s a lot of stuff where +/- a coupla thousandths is all I need to know, and for knock around in the shop box, I have half a dozen H-F mics and calipers so I don’t care what happens to them, and don’t have to walk to the Kennedy. The ones I have read the same off my standards down to the thousandth as my “real” tools, and for $100, I can replace them all. I’d never use it for calling off tenths, but you know about all that entails anyway…
I’d never build a plane with them, but if it was all I had, I’d certainly build an engine with them and be confident that it would work. The Chinese steal well.
Hey Ishapore – get a clue 7.62mm Lee-Enfield with polystock that accepts PMAGs. Now you have something.
An upcoming smart gun version of this revolver is being developed which will prevent shooting at cows.
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