Chase Episode 3: The Last Gun Maker of Longding

Far away from the mainstream, approximately 30 km from Burma, tucked away in the pristine hills of Arunachal Pradesh’s Longding district, live the Wancho, a tribal people with Naga origins. Here, opium sprouts out of the fertile earth and in the hands of the people are guns and gunpowder.

Director and reporter Avalok Langer’s The Last Gun Makers of Longding takes you into a restricted area that’s difficult to access and offers you a very special privilege: a 200-year-old gunpowder recipe that is special to the Wanchos of Arunachal Pradesh.

While making guns was once a standard skill in the area, today in modern Arunachal Pradesh, it’s a dying trade. At one point, Langer asks the gunsmith who has lost count of how many guns he’s made if he could make an AK-47. The good news is that the gunsmith says no. That doesn’t mean he can’t make a gun though.

Ever been inside an indigenous gun-making workshop? Let Chase, a collaboration between ScoopWhoop and Newslaundry, take you there: