Ethnic Tension Drives Russian Crackdown on Rubber-Bullet Guns Dimitry Kostyukov for The New York Times Last year, Russia strengthened laws against owning handguns that fire rubber bullets at high velocities, known as traumatic, less-lethal or compliance weapons. MOSCOW - It is rare to hear gunshots on the broad thoroughfare in downtown Moscow that leads to the gates of the Kremlin. But in September, a rowdy wedding party led by a red Ferrari sporting streamers in the colors of Russia's mostly Muslim Dagestan republic jetted toward Red Square, firing celebratory shots in the air and even at passing motorists. That they were shooting rubber bullets did not seem to put anyone at ease, and the police arrested 15 smartly dressed wedding guests, including the groom. The matter reached as high as Russia's prime minister, Dmitri A. Medvedev, who addressed the case at a meeting last month. "There are different cultural traditions, but no one has canceled legal norms, so we can say that shooting in the air out of joy is not allowed in Moscow, not in Makhachkala," said Mr. Medvedev, referring to the capital city of Dagestan. The police in New York would have opened fire, he added, and "they would have been justified." Russian authorities are lavishing attention on cases involving these so-called traumatic weapons - handguns that fire rubber bullets at high velocities, known in other parts of the world as "less-lethal" or "compliance weapons" and often used in riot control. With laws on acquiring the guns already strengthened last year, Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, demanded last week that the weapons be redesigned so they could not be retrofitted to fire regular bullets. Behind the focus on these weapons lies anxiety about ethnic frictions. With much of the guns" proliferation now relegated to the black market, there is no easy way to track who is buying them. But an increasingly nationalist society perceives them as spreading primarily among populations of migrants from the former Soviet republics, in particular the North Caucasus and Central Asia - groups that have flowed into urban areas seeking work. In a demonstration of the state of nationalist fervor, a column of several thousand marched near the Kremlin on Sunday, chanting "Russia for Russians!" and "Russian order!" It was the first time the annual "Russian March" had been sanctioned in the city center. Alexander Kots, a crime reporter for the popular tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, said that the growing focus on migrants made the weapons seem more dangerous. "The situation isn't necessarily getting worse, but the guns attract attention because they are in the hands of migrants," he said. It makes people very uncomfortable. Russian authorities wield tight control over firearms, and researchers with the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey estimate that there is one traditional or less-lethal gun, bought legally or on the black market, for every 11 Russian citizens, about one-tenth the ratio in the United States. Last year's new regulations on ownership have cut legal sales severely, said Anatoly P. Damaratsky, the general director of the New Weapons Technology Company, which makes the OSA traumatic weapon, a snub-nosed pistol whose name translates as "wasp" and which packs the legally allowed limit of 91 joules of power. "Of course you can kill somebody with this gun," Mr. Damaratsky said. But we clearly say not to shoot anyone in the head, and not to fire it at a distance closer than one meter. That already isn't self-defense. It's a crime. Even in cases when the shooter is not a migrant, they can still draw blame. Aleksandra Lotkova, 20, a telegenic law student and a native Muscovite, is facing prosecution for shooting several attackers from a Streamer traumatic pistol that she pulled from her purse during a brawl in the Moscow subway in May. She said in an interview that she had bought the gun because she was mugged when she was 17 and that she carried it at night because migrant workers were living in her neighborhood on the outskirts of Moscow, housed in barracks near construction sites. "It's not very calm to walk around here, especially late at night," Ms. Lotkova said. She said she pulled the weapon when she was threatened in the subway late at night. "The one who caught my attention was a young man," she said. He stood and waved his knife at me. He was drunk, aggressive and was yelling, "I'm going to kill you all." " Ms. Lotkova's first shot merely knocked the man back, but a second rubber bullet pierced the lung of another attacker, leaving him hospitalized. The prosecutor's office has brought tough charges, requesting a 10-year sentence for causing grievous bodily harm, her lawyer said on television on Friday. Some news outlets have adopted Ms. Lotkova as a populist hero, demanding that the courts either charge her attackers or declare that she was acting in self-defense. It was a similar street confrontation - and a similar weapon - that in 2010 set off the largest nationalist riots Russia had seen in years. In that case, a young man named Yegor Sviridov was fatally shot during a fight with a group of young men from the North Caucasus, prompting an explosive protest on Manezh Square, outside the Kremlin's gates. The authorities scrambled to soothe that anger; Mr. Putin, then prime minister, visited Mr. Sviridov's grave carrying a fat bunch of roses. Virtually any discussion of guns winds back to the subject of ethnic tension. At a recent meeting of Russian gun owners, who hope to lobby for more liberal laws, the headline speaker, an actor named Ivan I. Okhlobystin, opened with a joke about migrants from Dagestan. I'm sorry! I was stuck behind a wedding, they were shooting!" he said to applause and laughter.