Gun control or not, how will ordinary handguns work against assalt rifles? You all seem to forget that the one terrorist caught was done in by the old techology: a brave policeman or victim, (Remember, 9/11 had a flight go down in Pennsylvania, where the unarmed passengers overwhelmed the hijackers) without a gun. 
 
The fact is handguns (which are used by the underworld in Mumbai, as well as the police), are no match against an assault rifle. The policemen patrol the streets of Mumbai, not the ravines of Western Pakistan or Afghanistan, or for that matter, the valleys of New York: they will not be carrying guns of the assault weapon type, and normally, these weapons would never be used. These are used by armies. 
 
Indian politicians (these venal bastards are worse then terrorists), failed India, when they consume a full fourth of the police power (and the best trained ones) in their own selfish protection (against whom? their voters?), leaving the tax-paying public with an incompetent and bureaucratic intelligence agency. 
 
In India, what matters to these bureaucrats is whether they can survive (Indian bureaucrats are non-sackable, for anything short of murder, and even then probably, they would get their pension!), regardless of not doing a thing all their life. 
 
The problem can be summed as follows: the red-tape that binds India needs a gun to blow off: the local Marine Commandoes were some mile away from the Taj (their barracks were that close), yet their release into service needed a "signed" order! Maybe the bureaucratic rules would have stated, only between 9 AM to 5 PM! 
 
This is the tragedy: the bulky, resource guzzling, non-decisive political and bureaucratic machinery, cannot act, as no one ever takes decisions! he waits for signatures or orders, which take the pressure of performance away from him. After all, doing nothing, means you do no wrong! 
 
But to say that guns would have stopped...after all that I wrote, I believe this is true. In close encounters, some of the dead would have taken out their attackers, for sure, hand gun or otherwise, especially in those hotels, if not the vast open station. After all, a single unarmed policeman held the surviving Satan's gun, and took the bullets, had he got a gun, he might have got the gunman, and why not the other people then? Guns may be in short supply in Mumbai, bravery, is not.

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