How many units of weapon did the public authorities award and whom did they award it?
10:59, August 24, 2015 | News, Own newsFollowing the discussions related to the legality issues of the weapons seized at the place of the Syunik Marz (Region) Governor S. Khachatryan under the murder case of the Budaghyans brothers, we hereby decided to find out the number of the units of weapon awarded, the awarding authority and the awardees. We submitted relevant inquiries to the RA President’s Staff, the National Security Service and the Police under the RA Government, the RA Government and the RA Ministry of Defense. The inquiry requested information on the weapons awarded since 1992 so far /as of June 29, 2015/. According to the information provided by the public agencies, a total of 2291 /two thousand two hundred and ninety-one/ weapons have been awarded in the past 23 years. Most weapons, namely 873 units, were awarded by the Defense Ministry. The Police awarded 787 units, the RA Government: 418 units, the National Security Service: 174 units, and the smallest number of units, 39, was awarded by the RA President’s Staff. By the way, the RA President’s Staff has awarded the weapons since 1998. All the state entities mentioned that they were unable to provide the data of the persons who were awarded with the weapons by referring to various legal regulations. Hence, the National Security Service referred to Article 8(1)(1 and 2) of the RA Law on Freedom of Information: “1. Information holder, with the exception of cases defined in Part 3 of this Article, refuses to provide information if it: 1) contains state, official, bank or trade secret; 2) infringes the privacy of a person and his family, including the privacy of correspondence, telephone conversations, post, telegraph and other transmissions.” As for the other public agencies, they referred to Article 23 of the RA Constitution: “Everyone shall have the right to respect for his private and family life. The collection, maintenance, use or dissemination of any information about the person other than that stipulated by the law without the person’s consent shall be prohibited. The use and dissemination of information relating to the person for purposes contravening the aims of their collection or not provided for by the law shall be prohibited.” Thus, the approach of the public authorities suggests that the names and surnames of the persons awarded weapons constitute privacy data. Certainly, we will examine this issue and try to understand the logic behind this approach in terms of legal rationale. Nevertheless, we do believe that the RA citizens should know that apart from the security, defense and law enforcement representatives, some other RA citizens are also eligible to carry arms and can use them in certain situations.