Legal Foundations of State Policy on Self-Defense Weapons: In Quest of a Balance between Public and Private Interests

The debate on the right of citizens to carry short-barreled weapons, including firearms of limited destruction, has been going on for more than 30 years. The essence of these debates goes far beyond the limits of administrative law, since it is not limited only by the administrative law mechanism for implementing the procedure for acquiring, carrying and using weapons, acting as part of the public legal mechanism for ensuring personal security, security of the society and the State. The relevance of the issues of civilian arms trafficking is aggravated by the complication of the criminal situation during periods of social or economic upheavals that determine the choice of the trajectory of development of state policy for arms trafficking as an area of public law relations.
The arguments of supporters and opponents of the use of firearms for self-defense are usually accompanied by arguments based on faith and beliefs rather than on facts and measurements.
The purpose of the study is to summarize the legal and empirical resources characterizing administrative law foundations of state policy in relation to lethal and non-lethal self-defense weapons; to assess domestic legislative decisions and determine the directions for further administrative law development of state policy regarding arms trafficking, the expediency of using short-barreled weapons, including firearms of limited destruction, as selfdefense weapons.
The interdisciplinary approach made it possible to combine the results of legal and other humanitarian studies. In particular, the achievements of branches of legal sciences of Russian law are brought together: administrative law, theory and history of law, criminology and criminal studies, sociology of law.
In conclusion, the paper provides the results of a theoretical study with due regard to the historical, delictological and sociological context of the problem. The author substantiates the necessity of changing the legal foundations of state policy in the field of trafficking in self-defense weapons and gives appropriate proposals.

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