Word is out on the streets of Karachi: if you have a gun, keep it hidden. Long racked by violence, Pakistan is trying once again to crack down on its “Kalashnikov culture.” Firearms have been abundant since the 1980s, when the United States sent huge supplies of weapons through Pakistan to arm the Afghan rebels. On Feb. 15, the military government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf announced a major “deweaponization” plan. Its initial goal is to stop licensing new weapons and ban the public display of guns. Later the military will begin rounding up illegal weapons. “The brandishing of weapons gives an impression of lawlessness,” says Gen. Rashid Qureshi, a spokesman for Musharraf. Over the next six months, says Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider, Islamabad will regulate the manufacture of weapons in northern tribal areas–and cancel the licenses on thousands of automatic weapons given out by previous governments. The state also will start a gun “buyback” program. If guns are not turned in, Haider says, “we will [eventually] want to take them forcibly from people after giving due warning. We don’t like killing; we don’t like arms.”

There are plenty of Pakistanis who do. Previous governments have also tried to crack down on crime–but in a country awash in weapons and old hatreds, it is hard to contain violent impulses. Sunni and Shiite Muslim sects are always at each other’s throats, as are various mafia gangs and tribal warlords, who kill one another over property or revenge. Political disputes often end in bloodshed. Ordinary citizens, who might have settled a grievance in the past with a punch or insult, now pull out guns. Thousands of people have died violently in Karachi alone since the mid-1980s–and Pakistan’s overall crime rate continues to rise. The country’s Human Rights Commission says crime increased in 1999 in many categories–murder, kidnapping, robberies, sniper victims, bomb blasts. “No one is safe,” says I. A. Rehman, the commission’s director.

Two weeks ago three assassins walked into the Karachi office of Iqbal Raad–a lawyer defending former prime minister Nawaz Sharif in a high-profile trial–and shot him dead. On the eve of a visit by U.S. President Bill Clinton, the Raad murder was another blot on Pakistan’s reputation for nasty violence. Political leaders are hoping to convince Clinton that the new government is moving to restore order to society. “We’re concerned about the image of our country,” says Interior Minister Haider.

It won’t be easy to wipe out Pakistan’s deeply entrenched gun culture. Feudal landowners and tribal chiefs have their own private armies. Sectarian groups possess sophisticated arsenals. In rural Sindh province, bandits with light machine guns rob and kill people randomly. Even in the genteel capital of Islamabad, many businessmen, political leaders and bureaucrats keep a pistol or rifle for protection. Military officials concede that the gun-loving Tribal Areas, a quasi-autonomous strip of territory straddling the Northwest Frontier and Baluchistan provinces, cannot be disarmed. Darra Adamkhel, a small Tribal Areas town in western Pakistan, may be the largest gun market in the world. Occupying just a square kilometer, Darra Adamkhel contains some 2,600 arms shops and five gun factories. On sale are Chinese- and Soviet-made Kalashnikov automatic rifles ($225 for the real thing; $56 for a knockoff), hand grenades and antiaircraft guns. There are said to be roughly 7 million Kalashnikovs in the Northwest Frontier and Tribal Areas alone–one for every grown man. As Haji Waris Khan Afridi, a 62-year-old gunmaker, shows a visitor his shop, gunfire rings out in the nearby mountains. “Looks like we’ll have good business today,” he says.

Above all, skeptics wonder how the anti-gun plan will work if the government continues to support religious militants. Heavily armed radical Islamic groups use Pakistan as a staging ground for attacks against the Indian-controlled area of Kashmir. Musharraf himself calls the Kashmiri militants “freedom fighters,” and their cause is extremely popular within the Army. When Clinton talks with Musharraf, he’s expected to raise the issue of Pakistani support for Harkat ul-Mujahedin, a suspected Kashmiri terrorist group. Analysts say that if the government places gun restrictions on the militants, there could be serious political consequences for Musharraf–including a rift within the military. “The [militants] might turn their guns on the military rulers,” says Ataullah Mengal, a tribal leader from Baluchistan province. General Qureshi told NEWSWEEK that there will be no exceptions to the new laws.

Nobody expects the anti-gun campaign to soften Pakistan’s rough-and-ready culture any time soon. “We have a long way to go to clean up this mess,” says Aftab Nabi, the police inspector general of Sindh province. Many political and tribal leaders are plainly pessimistic. Some contend that the gun campaign is too mild. Iqbal Haider, a senator from the Pakistan People’s Party, thinks the government should have taken a hard-line approach: cancel all gun licenses and order everybody to turn in his guns immediately. “Weapons have destroyed our culture, our body politic and our values,” he says. Getting rid of a few guns is no substitute for good governance. But it’s better than nothing.