In Pakistan’s firearms scheme, the phrase “prohibited bore” denotes automatic rifles, sub-machine guns, and similar high-calibre weapons whose licences are issued only by the Federal Government. For many years, there was a tightly controlled, if narrow, process by which civilians could be considered for such licences, subject to strict checks. Since the Ministry of Interior’s 2017 suspension of new licences, however, that avenue has effectively been shut for ordinary citizens. What remains is a regulatory posture that offers these licences to a small circle of parliamentarians, judges, senior bureaucrats, and military officers while excluding the rest of the population.
That turn raises an immediate legal question: can the executive, by notification or administrative direction, take away a statutory route that Parliament preserved in the Pakistan Arms Ordinance, 1965, notably under Sections 11-A and 12? The Supreme Court has made clear that executive power cannot be used to undermine the statute it implements. See Mustafa Impex v. Government of Pakistan (PLD 2016 SC 808). When administrative action directly conflicts with the enabling law, courts treat it as ultra vires.
Article 4 of the Constitution underlines this basic rule: “to enjoy the protection of law and to be treated in accordance with law is the inalienable right of every citizen.” A blanket suspension, applied indefinitely and without transparent, published criteria, risks falling foul of that protection. The Court’s jurisprudence repeatedly insists that executive action must be fair, reasonable, and within legal bounds, see Benazir Bhutto v. Federation of Pakistan (PLD 1988 SC 416). An administrative regime that arbitrarily excludes the public from consideration for licences is difficult to reconcile with these principles.
The matter acquires greater gravity when read alongside Article 9: “no person shall be deprived of life or liberty save in accordance with law.” The Supreme Court’s ruling in Shehla Zia v. WAPDA (PLD 1994 SC 693) shows that the right to life is not merely biological existence but includes the security and dignity that give life meaning. Where criminals routinely possess and use prohibited-bore weapons in urban public spaces, a policy that leaves law-abiding citizens effectively unarmed, at least in terms of means comparable to criminal firepower, raises hard questions about whether the State is meeting its protective obligation under Article 9. That is why Pakistan’s higher courts have taken notice of the issue and sought explanations from authorities.
Statutory law amplifies the point. Sections 96–106 of the Pakistan Penal Code codify the right of private defence: Section 96 states that “nothing is an offence which is done in the exercise of the right of private defence.” Section 97 extends this protection to both person and property. These are not abstract propositions. They assume a baseline of effective defence. If an ordinary citizen is confronted with an attacker armed with an automatic rifle and the legal framework denies any realistic, lawful avenue of comparable defence, the practical effect is to hollow out the protection the Penal Code purports to give.
There is also a constitutional equality problem. Article 25(1) says that “all citizens are equal before law and are entitled to equal protection of law.” The test for acceptable classification is well settled: distinctions must rest on an intelligible differentia and bear a rational nexus to the object of the law. See Elahi Cotton Mills v. Federation of Pakistan (PLD 1997 SC 582). Allowing a select class of state actors to keep or obtain prohibited-bore licences while denying the same to private citizens does not, on its face, suggest a principled connection to public safety. Absent a convincing justification, the arrangement looks less like regulation than privilege.
Property rights matter here, too. Articles 23 and 24 protect the right to acquire and hold property and prohibit deprivation except by law and with appropriate compensation. Firearms lawfully acquired prior to 2017 are property. Converting them or forcing surrender for a token consideration widely reported to be around Rs. 50,000 in some measures invites scrutiny under the standard articulated in Messrs Shirin Javed v. Province of Punjab (2012 SCMR 1748): deprivations must be lawful and fair.
Nor is this purely theoretical. The safety calculus on our streets is sobering. Local police and civil society reports show hundreds of armed incidents in recent years; Karachi and Lahore have recorded significant numbers of fatal attacks and injuries linked to armed robberies. Those facts matter because constitutional review of restrictions on rights applies a proportionality lens: regulations may be justified, but they must be necessary and the least restrictive means available. A rule that disarms citizens while failing to remove illegal arsenals from criminal hands risks failing that test.
A candid analysis must also confront the legitimate counterarguments. Empirical studies from other jurisdictions associate greater availability of high-calibre firearms with rises in homicides, domestic violence fatalities, and accidental shootings. Pakistan’s porous borders, weak regulatory enforcement, and informal markets make diversion a genuine risk. There is also a principled objection grounded in the modern state’s monopoly of legitimate coercion: the more the State cedes to private arms possession, the harder it becomes to sustain a coherent public order. Examples from abroad are mixed: Australia’s post-1996 reforms, which paired strict bans with buybacks and an effective registration system, are credited with substantial reductions in firearm deaths; by contrast, the United States’ looser regime coincides with persistently high gun violence rates. These international comparisons counsel caution.
But caution is not the same as paralysis. A middle way exists: one that neither confers blanket privilege nor renders ordinary citizens defenseless. The UN Firearms Protocol (2001), to which Pakistan is a party, points the way; it emphasises authorisation, marking, and record-keeping as tools that prevent diversion. Practical measures workable for Pakistan could include stringent licensing focused on demonstrable need, comprehensive background checks, mandatory safe-storage requirements, time-limited renewals, mandatory dealer records, NADRA-linked registration, and pilot ballistic-tracing programs in major urban centres. These mechanisms enable traceability, the single most effective tool for linking crime guns to lawful commerce and locating points of diversion.
If courts are persuaded that the current regime is arbitrary or ultra vires, they have remedial options that preserve public safety while vindicating rights. Judicially crafted relief can be narrowly tailored: declare any unlawful suspension void to the extent it frustrates statutory purpose; direct the executive to publish objective licensing criteria within a set timeframe; and order pilot programs for registry and ballistic tracing subject to periodic review. Such remedies balance deference to state discretion in matters of security with the constitutional duty to prevent arbitrary deprivation of rights.
The debate thus should not be framed as a simple binary armed versus disarmed but as a question of how best to marry the State’s duty to protect with citizens’ constitutional entitlements. Pakistan’s present course, an effective prohibition for most, coupled with selective privilege for a few, sits ill with that duty. A carefully regulated, transparent, and traceable framework for licensing can protect life and property without surrendering public safety. That is the balance the Constitution requires, and that is the balance our law should strive to achieve.
