December 27, 2005 – You know, it’s amazing how stupid Governments can be, especially when they’ve been caught red-handed siphoning off millions of taxpayer dollars into their party coffers.

Such is the dilemma of the Liberal Party of Canada, who currently are running the minority federal Government, headed by Prime Minister Paul Martin MP.  The other main Canadian political parties, the Conservative Party, the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois finally lost patience with the Government at the end of November.  This was after a public inquiry came to the conclusion that a Govt.-run “sponsorship” programme, designed to promote the idea of Canada in the separatist-leaning province of Québec, had instead been used to divert millions of dollars of taxpayer funds via a complex system of fraud involving advertising agencies into the Liberal Party coffers in Québec.  Although Martin represents a constituency in Montréal, the inquiry came to the conclusion he probably wasn’t involved in the fraud.  However, the opposition parties decided to call a motion of no-confidence, which they easily won because of the minority position of the current Government.  And thus a General Election had to be called.

Move on to December 9th, and with the Liberal Party facing annihilation in seat-rich Québec and also in much of western Canada, the Prime Minister decided to respond to public concern about a spate of homicides in Toronto by promising a national ban on handguns, in an attempt to curry favour with voters in the large province of Ontario.  And to no-one’s great surprise, this was met with adulation by the Liberal Mayor and Liberal Premier of the province.  Outside the community centre where he made the announcement, things were not quite so rosy, as a local girl pointed out that the ban would not prevent criminals from obtaining guns.  An article appeared in the Toronto Star indicating that one of his own MPs in Ontario wasn’t particularly happy about the idea, and neither was a local criminologist.

Although the Toronto Star predictably editorialised in favour of the ban (with some caveats), the rest of the press editorialised against it for the most part: 

This is laughable – Toronto Sun
It’s hard to fathom how the ban will reduce crime – Globe and Mail
Resources should be devoted to catching real criminals, not meaningless bans – Calgary Herald

What would we have given here in the UK for such editorials when the handgun ban was announced here?  (Which according to the Home Office has not succeeded in reducing armed crime, have a read of the summary on page 31 – and table 2.1 on the next page, particularly the  “all weapons excluding air weapon” part, which shows a steady rise since the handgun ban in 1997 – it had actually been falling prior to the handgun ban).

However, perhaps the biggest indication that the Prime Minister was in trouble before his proposal had even gotten off the ground was demonstrated by provincial governments immediately after the announcement.  The Prime Minister indicated that the ban would work by putting an “opt-in” provision in the Criminal Code that provinces and territories could sign up to: by the end of December 10th, the Governments of Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan had announced that they would not be opting in!  Bear in mind that both British Columbia and Saskatchewan have Liberal Governments.

Even the police have their doubts, as Tony Cannavino, the president of the Canadian Professional Police Association: “disagreed that a sweeping ban on handguns would be very successful in combating urban violence, considering that most guns used in shootings are obtained illegally”, although as you would expect, he welcomed the idea of spending more money on law enforcement activities.

In the face of all this, even the largest anti-gun organisation in Canada, the Coalition for Gun Control appeared to be hedging its bets, as the head of the organisation, Wendy Cukier, indicated that the CGC have taken no position on the proposed ban.

This is perhaps not surprising, when the specifics of such a ban are looked at in detail.

The first problem is that it’s not really clear what impact such a ban would have.  The Prime Minister and the Mayor of Toronto have been saying that: “half” of handguns used in crime in Toronto were stolen from legal gun owners, however this is a misrepresentation of an investigation conducted by the Toronto Police.  According to those statistics, in fact only 16% of handguns seized by Toronto Police were listed as: “stolen”.  The statistics also involve a guesstimate of how many guns seized with obliterated serial numbers originated in Canada; not exactly scientific.  A small fraction were: “too old” to trace, so they probably pre-date licensing laws that were introduced in 1934, or are maybe war trophies that were never declared.  12%, (or a quarter of the guns the politicians say were stolen) are listed as: “not registered”, but not smuggled or stolen.  This probably indicates they are air pistols or antiques or something along those lines.  Even if the guns are listed as: “stolen”, they could have been stolen from dealers, not individual gun owners.

Hardly a convincing statistic, especially as only a fraction of guns used in crime would be seized.  Even the police are not certain that the guns themselves are actually “crime guns”, they are merely listed as: “potential crime guns”.   It really is the vaguest of estimates, based to a significant degree on guess work.  Even if taken as the gospel truth, it still indicates that 52% of seized handguns originated in the United States.  Certainly it cannot be taken as representative of the situation of Canada as a whole, as some anti-gun commentators have tried to do.

Another statistic not receiving as much press comes from a joint task force organised by the Ontario Solicitor General of six regional police forces in Ontario, including the Toronto Police Service as well as Canadian Customs and the US agency, ATF, called “Operation Gun Runner”, which in a nine-month period in 1995 seized 193 handguns from illegal dealers across Ontario.  166 of these were found to have been illegally smuggled into Canada from a wide variety of sources.  Not a recent statistic, admittedly, but in fact the handgun laws in Canada are more restrictive today than they were in 1995.

The second problem with this proposed ban are the physical complexities of actually implementing it.  There are roughly 530,000 handguns in Canada, about 166,000 of which are are already prohibited (any handgun with a barrel of 105mm or less, or .32 or .25 calibre), but grandfathered to their owners (who can transfer them to owners of other prohibited handguns).  There are 183,000 people licensed to own handguns in Canada (compared with 57,000 who owned them in GB – so in other words six times as many owners per capita, roughly).

This figure compares with just over 200,000 handguns that were legally possessed in Great Britain prior to the handgun ban here, about 160,000 of which were surrendered for compensation (the rest were either deactivated, exported or were exempt for various reasons, for the most part).  The handgun ban here cost £97 million back when the figures were tallied around 1999.  Take into account inflation and the much larger number of handguns in Canada, then if you assume 80% of them are turned in for compensation as was the case here, you come up with a figure around $600 million!

That is a gigantic sum of money, and no doubt if spent on traditional crime reduction strategies in Canada would have a far more profound impact.  Evidence of just how out of touch the Canadian Liberal Party is with this reality can be seen in their own press release.  This indicates that they reckon the total cost will be only $150 million – which is less than the cost of our ban even though we had less than two-fifths as many handguns!

However, in his address at the Elmbank Community Centre in Rexdale, Ontario, the PM said that the Government would spend $1.9 million to: “give hope” to the community.  As we would say in Britain; pull the other one, mate, it’s got bells on!

We can only hope that the Canadian people will vote the Liberals out on January 23rd.  Because truly, among hair-brained “gun control” schemes this has to be one of the most stupid ever.

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” – President Abraham Lincoln

June 18, 2005 – Over the years I have been running this website, I have occasionally received e-mails from irate supporters of the Government, who complain about my portrayal of Tony Blair on this website (especially the tagline, which they appear to especially dislike).

But the beauty of the internet is that very little is ever forgotten, and it’s at times like this I’m glad I did use the tagline that adorns every page on this site, simply because it’s accurate.  [later removed – Ed.]

Under the guise of “violent crime reduction”, the Government, in fact Tony Blair personally – introduced a Bill that among other things will prohibit the import, manufacture and sale of “realistic imitation firearms”.  (You can read the explanatory notes by clicking here.)

What is a “realistic imitation firearm”?  Well, it’s basically anything other than a firearm that strongly resembles a make and model of firearm.  This runs the gamut from airsoft guns to deactivated firearms, to model kits, prop guns and many types of blank-firing gun.  Of course, upon the Prime Minister’s announcement in Parliament on June 8th, these types of gun largely became worthless (or certainly will become worthless) due to the proposed prohibition of sales.  This may not bother the casual owner of an airsoft gun they bought at a model shop for £10, but for people who collect guns in this category, it means they were more or less instantly deprived of thousands of pounds.  Dealers are of course even worse off, unless they manage to shift their stock before the prohibition comes into effect.

One would think for such a Draconian prohibition to come about that something staggering had happened recently involving imitation firearms.  No, not really.  Armed crime has been rising for some time, but it’s unclear exactly how much of it is committed with imitations, as opposed to actual working guns.  Criminologists have long disagreed on this subject.  Home Office statistics for the year 2002/03 indicates 1,815 offences were committed with imitation firearms, however, even the Home Office cautions against the accuracy of these statistics, as they often depend on a determination made by a victim of a crime.  In truth, the general moaning of the police about being called out to deal with armed incidents when someone is found waving an airsoft gun about had more than anything else to do with it.  One could argue the police need to come up with better tactics, as there will still be millions of air guns and other types of imitation in circulation, assuming this prohibition works.

Even if one accepts the Government’s argument that there is a problem, it’s hard to see how legislation that causes dealers to dump their stock at firesale prices is likely to help.  Nor is it clear how much of an impact it could have, given that there is general agreement that there are well over a million (perhaps several million) guns that fall into the category of a “realistic imitation firearm” already in circulation.  Moreover, there is no legal prohibition on such a gun being transferred or being possessed by anyone, including a criminal, mentioned anywhere in the Bill, except for the prohibition of sales.

Yes folks, you heard that right, there is no provision in this Bill whatsoever to prohibit people convicted of criminal offences, even armed robbery, from possessing a “realistic imitation firearm”.  Given this reality it is quite easy to categorise this prohibition as little more than a publicity stunt, which will adversely affect collectors, re-enactors, actors and people pursuing various innocent hobbies to a far greater degree than it will impact on Joe drug dealer.  The Bill does contain a slight increase in the criminal penalty for possession of an imitation firearm in a public place “without lawful authority or reasonable excuse”, but so far this law (introduced in 2003 for imitations) has attracted more attention when the police have used it to harass children playing Cowboys and Indians than for any impact on actual armed crime.

Bear in mind this legislation supposedly addresses exactly what the Government said the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 was for; the 2003 Act contained an increase in the age limit for possession of air guns, a ban on self-contained air cartridge guns, a ban on possession of imitations in a public place, etc.  But two years later, here we are again with yet more silly legislation, which also increases the age limit for possession of an air gun (from 17 to 18), increases the penalty for having an imitation in a public place, and also bans another “bogey man” type of gun.

The cry continues: “The gun law isn’t working – what we need is another gun law!”  Sigh.  No, actually what we need is an attempt to address the social problems that lead to armed crime, rather than criminalising people selling an airsoft gun at a car boot sale.  (Shall we take bets on how much time and money the Home Office will spend on making the provisions of this prohibition known when it comes into force?  I suspect the payout will be on “virtually none”.)

Please, go and see your MP and ask them to oppose the prohibitions contained in this Bill and the increase in age limits for possessing an air gun or imitation gun, and to support any amendments that remove them or provide compensation.  You can contact your MP at the House of Commons, Westminster, London, SW1A 0AA.  If you don’t know who your MP is, you can use this tool to look them up.  If you’re not very good at talking to politicians, this discussion document should give you some ideas what to say, but always make the point that you will be personally affected by this legislation.

“Fortunately, in this country there is no necessity to carry a loaded revolver on a bicycle.  An empty one is sufficient to frighten away tramps, if they stop you on a dark, lonely road; or even a short bicycle pump when pointed at them will scare them off.” – from “The Art of Revolver Shooting”, p. 219, by Walter Winans, 1901.

One does not have to read far in the news media from the last few weeks to see that firearm-related offences are a hot topic at the moment.

For example, you can go to the BBC news website, read that article and hyperlink to several dozen others.  People getting mindlessly shot on their way home, people being mindlessly shot in bungled armed robberies, drug dealers seeking revenge on rivals, and so on.

And we can look at the increasing number of offences and see that serious armed crime rose 3% in the last recorded year, i.e. from April 2002 to April 2003.

Now what you might be expecting is for me to point out how serious armed crime is going up, despite all the silly gun laws that have been passed in recent years.  However, there is frankly little point in my doing that, because to begin with, the editorial pages and opinion pages of virtually every national newspaper already reflect this point.

But you see, newspapers have to make out that the sky is falling, because it makes it sound interesting, and the more interesting it is, the more newspapers they sell, and not only that, but it makes the Government squirm and that means even more column inches in the political columns of the same newspapers.  A good example of this squirming is the curious juxtaposition of Home Office officials pronouncing that armed crime is extremely rare and you shouldn’t be too concerned about it (as one minister points out in the above BBC article), which had been preceded by the Home Secretary announcing that armed crime is such a serious problem that new laws are needed as soon as possible.

However the reality that doesn’t sell newspapers is that serious armed crime is actually falling, and has been falling since November 2002, which is why the Government released the statistics early, although you wouldn’t know that from reading the BBC website.  Tucked away on an obscure part of the Metropolitan Police website is this press release, which indicates that the Flying Squad are being extremely effective at reducing armed robberies in London, and remember that armed robberies are the most common serious firearm-related offence.

Now, speaking as a gun lobbyist myself, the lesson I take away from this is that the mainstream media is pretty useless if you actually need factual information, but that aside, the real lesson here is that armed crime rises and falls due to the degree of enforcement of the law, not the amount of laws that Parliament endlessly pisses out that do nothing but aggravate the ordinary person who is as likely to commit a firearm-related offence as they are to sit in a see-through box held up by a crane for 44 days.  Obviously the police need some laws to enforce, but strangely enough, it’s been illegal to commit armed robbery for a pretty long time.

Of course, anyone who has studied the subject objectively for more than five minutes has already learned this lesson, but politicians need a scapegoat, and gun owners are the obvious choice when it comes to armed crime, by and large.  The current scapegoats being lined up are owners of air cartridge guns, but don’t be surprised if owners of imitations, deactivated firearms and air pistols of other types are next.

So to avoid being a scapegoat, we come to the final lesson for the day, and that is to make your MP as fully aware of your unwillingness as you can, because MPs are responsible for this endless nonsense of laws we are subjected to, and if you don’t like talking to your MP, remember there is at least one thing that an MP is even less likely to abolish than the handgun ban, bans on air cartridge guns, etc., and that is Parliament!

Your MP can be reached at the House of Commons, Westminster, London, SW1A 0AA.

“There are idiots.  And there are Congressmen – but I repeat myself.” – Mark Twain

In the wake of the recent murders in Birmingham, there has been considerable discussion of the issue of the status of imitation guns and air guns in the press and by Government, and as is usual after a tragedy in this country, wackiness is sure to follow.

Two girls are machine-gunned to death, and the Government response is to announce a rise in the age limit for the possession of an air gun, a ban on air guns that use air cartridges and a mandatory minimum five-year sentence for possession of a prohibited firearm. In addition the Government claims that a national tracking database of illegal firearms will be ready by April.

As per usual, when you look at the proposals closely, they don’t make as much sense as the average Daily Mail reader is likely to believe after thinking about them for two seconds.

Raising the age limit for the possession of an airgun is highly unlikely to make a real difference to serious firearm-related offences, although the underlying reason for this change is because of instances of vandalism, rather than gang warfare. However the current age limit of 14 was conceived so as to allow young people to conduct pest control – the current spin is that youngsters can easily be supervised for sporting purposes, and this is true, and it has always been true, but airguns are used for things other than sport. In many rural areas they are a vital tool for pest control, and close supervision of young people engaged in pest control is not practical. In Northern Ireland the age limit is sixteen, and this has been a problem in rural areas there for a long time, and BASC has been campaigning to have it changed for years. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland did propose lowering the age limit for this purpose to 14 in 1998, although the current draft of the proposed new law there does not include it. However it does seem rather bizarre to propose an age limit of 17 in Great Britain when the age limit in Northern Ireland is 16, and that lower limit has already caused problems.

On the issue of mandatory sentences, a “minimum five-year sentence” sounds tough, but in reality it is a largely meaningless statement for a number of reasons. To begin with, it will only apply to people indicted for possession or distribution of prohibited weapons. So anyone dealt with by way of summary judgement for this offence, or who has been convicted of distribution or possession of unlicensed non-prohibited weapons will not be affected. In addition, even if the sentence is applied, sentences usually run concurrently for this offence, so for example, a person convicted of armed robbery will get 4-7 years for armed robbery and five years for possession of the pistol he used, meaning a total sentence of 5-7 years. Armed robbery is the most common of serious firearm offences, and in these cases it will not make an appreciable difference. In addition, a person is eligible for parole after serving only half their sentence, making “five years” in fact only two and a half.

The Government appears to be portraying this measure as one of deterrence, however most criminals have an inkling of what I’ve said above and will know it is largely meaningless, and in any event, it is hard to see how it would have dissuaded the killers in Birmingham, given that the prospect of four life sentences for murder and attempted murder did not.

On the subject of the “illegal firearms database” which supposedly is to be in place in April, this appears very unlikely as the Government only advertised the job for the feasibility study a couple of weeks ago. It seems highly unlikely it will go from a feasibility study to full operation by April, especially since section 39 of the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 requires a central database of all shotgun and firearm certificate holders, and the Government has announced they do not expect this to be in operation until 2004!

Another suggestion, this time by the police, is for a firearm amnesty. However, it is implausible that criminals will voluntarily turn in their guns, and this is readily proven by the fact that the last amnesty was in 1996, and armed crime has been rising ever since. Home Office guidelines in fact mean that there is in effect a permanent amnesty in place allowing the surrender of unwanted guns to the police, so in essence what the police are proposing is to publicise that. It may be worthwhile in some respects, but it is not going to reduce armed crime. The example given by the police of a successful programme in West Yorkshire is misleading because there is no evidence that any of the guns handed in there have been used in armed crime, or were going to be, although armed crime has dropped in that area.

Shooters should be increasingly concerned by the comments being made by the police, most especially by the Association of Chief Police Officers, because ACPO is a taxpayer funded organisation. In one week an ACPO spokesman claimed that 60% of firearms recovered by the police were converted imitation firearms. The next week, another spokesman said it was 70%. The following week, the same spokesman said it was 75%. I frankly don’t believe them, and the fact that they are unable or unwilling to produce the underlying statistics upon which these percentages are based supports that view. ACPO already found themselves in hot water last year, by attempting to claim that “50%” of guns recovered by the police in London were converted Brocock air pistols. In fact, it turned out that this statistic was based on converted guns only (i.e. excluding factory-made firearms that fire live ammunition), and the number of guns the percentage was based on was less than 20.

However, the Government appears to be using this “evidence” and some other anecdotal support in aid of their idea of banning air cartridge air pistols, which apparently can be converted to fire live ammunition too easily for the Government’s liking. In reality the evidence to support this is very weak indeed, and in any event, it is illegal for any criminal to possess any air gun under the provisions of section 21 of the Firearms Act 1968 (which makes possession of any firearm by a criminal illegal) and also anyone who converts such a gun to fire live ammunition commits an offence under section 5(1) of the Act, punishable by up to ten years imprisonment. Making it illegal again seems to me rather pointless – it already is illegal. The only effect will be to put legitimate companies out of business, because of the acts of criminals. It seems rather odd to punish law-abiding businesses in this way, through no fault of their own.

The Government has also proposed making it an offence to have an imitation firearm in a public place without reasonable excuse – in aid of this view Home Office minister Bob Ainsworth MP gave on Radio 4 the example of how a police officer could not arrest a person carrying an air gun who may be committing acts of vandalism until he witnessed an act of vandalism being committed. Mr Ainsworth appears to have not read the Firearms Act 1968, which says quite plainly that is an offence to have a loaded air weapon in a public place without lawful authority or reasonable excuse. Once again this an example of bait-and-switch, perhaps it should be made an offence to have an imitation firearm in a public place without reasonable excuse, but as Mr Ainsworth’s explanation points out, the Government is exaggerating what effect this is likely to have.

The real solution is actually quite obvious, and that is to enforce the law as it currently stands. When armed robberies reached an unprecedented level of nearly 6,000 recorded offences in 1993, the Metropolitan Police tasked the Flying Squad with cracking down on these criminals, and lo and behold, in 1994 the number of armed robberies fell to 4,104 recorded offences. In 1996, the Met disbanded the unit so that they could “share their experience” with other units, and armed crime has risen ever since.

Endlessly we hear in the news concerns expressed about guns being carried as “fashion accessories” and drug dealers shooting each other, and various colourfully named police programmes such as “Operation Trident” which aim to tackle various offences. The problem is that this type of firearm-related crime is focused on by the press, but in fact Home Office statistics indicate that 53% of serious firearm-related offences are armed robberies, and the rise in those offences from 2000/01 to 2001/02 was 34% (from 3,965 to 5,323 offences). This is the real problem, and this appears to be the only problem that the Government has not thought up some silly scheme to deal with. If police forces set up task forces to deal with armed robbery along the lines of Roy Penrose’s successful attempt in 1993, armed crime would drop, and it would drop markedly and rapidly, provided the funding is in place to enable the police to do it.

I am often reminded of Alun Michael’s press release of 27 February, 1998, which begins with the sentence: “The Government fulfilled its pledge to remove all handguns from the streets of Britain today as the final phase of firearms surrender came to a close.” As we know now, this claim was a wild exaggeration, and the current claims being made by the Government are wild exaggerations. In fact it is simply window dressing, which does not address the actual problems.

You need to write to your MP and urge them not to support this foolish legislation when it comes before Parliament unless it is amended into something likely to be effective, and urge them also to put their name to Early Day Motions 488 and 503, which help make the point.

Australia

The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard is probably the most anti-gun politician to ever make it to the Prime Minister’s office in any Commonwealth country.  He is on record saying that he hates guns and can’t understand why anyone needs one, and his CV includes pushing Australian States (who are responsible for domestic gun law in Australia, rather than the central Government) into enacting a ban on all semi-automatic long guns and pump-action shotguns in 1996 (with some limited exceptions for occupational purposes and certain clay events).  Not surprisingly, because the people who handed their guns in were the honest, law-abiding people of Australia, the ban wasn’t effective at stopping firearm-related crime, and large rises in armed crime, particularly in Sydney, coupled with a nutcase shooting up a classroom in Victoria have led to another knee-jerk gun ban in Australia.

Starting on July 1st, people who legally own revolvers that have a barrel length less than 100mm, semi-automatic pistols with a barrel length less than 120mm, or pistol magazines that hold more than ten rounds of ammunition, or any handgun with a calibre more than .38″ (with some exceptions up to .45″ for people who use them in certain sports) will have to hand them in.  They will be compensated, although the basis of the compensation is still unclear.

It’s not clear what effect this ban will have or is supposed to have, other than buying handguns off shooters who will go straight to the gun shop and buy a replacement with a longer barrel.  Several States in Australia opposed the plan after pointing out the failure of the 1996 ban and that the proposed ban would simply be a replacement programme for shooters.  Also they don’t want to pay the compensation bill.  However, after revising downward how many guns were going to be handed in, and how much compensation would have to be paid out, the Federal Government managed to twist the arms of the States into agreeing.

When Canada pulled the same stunt in 1995, they were at least wise enough to grandfather the handguns that were already in circulation at the time.  How making an Australian shooter turn in his S&W model 10 with a 2-inch barrel and making him buy one with a 4-inch barrel will make the public safer in Australia is truly one of the most bizarre questions criminologists will ever have to answer.

The only silver lining here is that this idea appears to have hurt the Government politically; the anti-gunners know it’s pointless; the pro-gun people are even madder now than they were in 1996; and the average person in the street is wondering why their tax money is being spent on another gun ban when they only just paid for one back in 1996 which was portrayed as the solution to the problem.

France

A Senate committee reported late last year on problems with the law there; for the most part they appear to have agreed with shooters that most of the problems are in the administration of the law by the police, and that the current regulation of firearms in myriad categories through a maze of endless decrees since 1939 needs to be consolidated, with particular attention to using the category system of the European Firearms Directive.

Sounds good, but a new internal security law will actually make the situation worse by giving the Minister of the Interior greater power to shift guns from one category to another.

Hopefully when a specific firearm-related Bill comes before the French legislature, it will reflect the views of the Senate Committee on Law and Internal Security.

“Legislate in haste, repent at leisure.” – trad.

Shooters, especially target shooters, are facing a catastrophe of major proportions in Europe as Governments react in a predictable knee-jerk fashion to various criminal acts in which firearms were used.

The first crime committed was the shootings at Nanterre in France, where a man named Michael Durn opened fire at a local political meeting with two semi-automatic pistols, killing eight people and wounding thirty more.

After being arrested, Durn escaped from interrogators and jumped to his death after crawling through a skylight.

Upon further investigation, many facts came to light:

He had been seeing a psychiatrist for several years, even prior to applying for authorisation to possess firearms.  Not only that, but he was under care because he suffered from a condition where he had fantasies about killing himself.  And even more incredibly, he had threatened his psychiatrist previously with a pistol, but the police took no action.  On the day of the killings in Nanterre, his authorities for his pistols were expired, apparently due to the licensing department being unable to process applications in a timely manner.

One might think that here were enough facts to lead to a thorough public inquiry, but with an election looming in France, and crime being the major issue, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin announced a far-reaching decree (gun laws are made by decree in France under a 1939 law) that would effectively ban all handguns that fire cartridges more powerful than .32ACP (with the exception of .32 S&W Long and .38 wadcutter), as well as all military-calibre firearms and many other things besides.  Not only that, but many common sporting types of ammunition such as .357 Magnum and .38 Special would be reclassified as “military-calibre” as well, extending the ban to many types of lever-action rifle that are currently unlicensed and commonly owned in France.

This decree was announced three days before the first round of the French Presidential election.  Not surprisingly, shooters were unimpressed, and this is undoubtedly one of the factors that led to Jospin being defeated by right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen, who condemned the new decree immediately after it was announced.

Shooting is a more popular sport in France than in Britain, and there are currently 140,000 shooters who are licensed, the vast majority of whom would be affected by the new decree, and they are authorised to own somewhere around half a million guns.  It is unclear how many guns that do not require licensing would be affected, but it is a substantial number.

All the guns affected would have to be turned in when the shooter’s license expires, or by the middle of next year at the latest – without compensation.

French shooters are slightly more fortunate than we were because they can convert their guns into something that is not banned, for example by rechambering their military-calibre rifles to a non-military calibre, or by altering their semi-automatic rifles so that they do not function semi-automatically (this is illegal under British law).  However, it is hard to see how handguns could be modified, short of deactivating them, and these form the bulk of the guns affected.

Prohibitions of this type without compensation are almost certainly illegal under Article 1, Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and it will be interesting to see how things unfold in France.  At the moment things appear to be going pretty badly although shooters have won a small victory because the bans in the decree have run out of time to be enacted by the current government.  It will be up to the new government to move them forward.

Notably the police, although heavily criticised for their mishandling of Durn, have also criticised the new proposals, pointing out that the facilities for storage of guns handed in do not exist, and that the Government did not consult at all with them before announcing the decree.  I suspect also privately they are worried that the guns they carry are next up for the chop, not a popular idea given the levels of violent crime currently in France which have left several police officers shot dead.

Germany

The situation in France is bad enough, but it has been made worse by the killing of sixteen people in a school in Erfurt, Germany, by a disgruntled former student, Robert Steinhäuser, who then committed suicide.

The emotional outpouring in Germany has been great, and it remains to be seen what the German government will do.  As in France, there are elections underway in Germany, although the tragedy occurred so closely to the start of the election campaigns that the politicians have not been able to coherently respond so far.  The right-wing wants a crackdown on violent films and videogames; the left (and the media) want a crackdown on guns.

The facts appear to be that Steinhäuser had planned his crime almost a year in advance; although he obtained a gun license and bought his guns legally he did not declare them to the police as he was required to do.  The Erfurt city government has been criticised for not enforcing the law correctly, for example by not following up on gun sales frequently enough to ensure they have all been declared.  More relevantly, the pistol used in the killings was acquired privately.  The seller declared the sale to the authorities as he was required to do, but still Steinhäuser’s failure to declare the purchase was not followed up, even though the authorities had that information to hand.  Legal action against the Erfurt city government seems likely but whether or not that has any relevance to shooters is open to question.

The real problem for shooters, not just in Germany but worldwide, is that Germany is the main centre for the manufacture of firearms and accessories used in the target shooting sports.  Not only that, but the headquarters of the International Shooting Sports Federation are in Munich, and Germany is also the largest region for the International Practical Shooting Confederation in Europe.

Prohibitions in Germany on the scale of those seen in the UK or those proposed in France would be an absolute disaster for the sport.  It would be the equivalent to the sport of football of the Chancellor of Germany telling FIFA that football was to be banned there – even worse in fact, if you also assume that Germany were the major centre for the production of footballs!

Compounding the difficulties for shooters in Germany is the fact that on the very same day that Steinhäuser was on his rampage, the lower house of the Bundestag was passing a new gun law, which among other things restricts further the number of guns a person can own, and introduces a police permit requirement for airguns, starter pistols and similar items.

The upper house is scheduled to vote on the Bill at the end of May, although it could be delayed as a result of the tragedy in Erfurt.  No amendments have been announced as of yet although there seems to be consensus on raising the age limit for a license to be issued to a higher age, such as twenty-one.  (Steinhäuser was nineteen at the time).

The FCC reports

Not to be left out, our very own Firearms Consultative Committee finally issued its eleventh annual report, which actually isn’t that bad except for Chapter 2.

The report recommends in this chapter a ban on rifles with a muzzle energy of more than 10,000 ft/lbs (i.e. things like .50BMG calibre rifles) and also a ban on long-barrelled revolvers.

It is, however, completely devoid of any rationale as to why they should be banned, and it is noteworthy that the FCC came to the conclusion they should be banned on a “majority vote”, which means the police want them banned, but the shooting organisations don’t.

The report harps on at some length about how .50 calibre rifles are designed for “anti-materiel” use, but totally fails to mention that armour-piercing ammunition is already banned, as it is in every other EU country, and without AP ammunition, these rifles are not significantly more deadly than many other types of rifle commonly used for hunting and target shooting.  The use of a muzzle energy figure to determine lethality is, at this level of power, seriously flawed and unscientific.

The report mentions the use of such rifles by terrorists in Northern Ireland – where it is very difficult indeed (more so than in GB) for a licensed shooter to own any sort of centrefire rifle, let alone a .50, and given that terrorists have illegally imported and used any number of firearms it is laughable to draw a comparison between licensed shooters and the use of firearms by terrorists.

Also mentioned is a comment that the committee felt that these rifles are not “appropriate for civilian target shooting”.  Pardon?  Since when did the police and the Government decide what is “appropriate” for a person to do in a supposedly free country?  Using a water pistol for target shooting is arguably not “appropriate” either, but no-one suggests they ought to be banned!

No clear case as to why long-barrelled revolvers should be banned is made in the report, the committee simply recommends that they should be banned.  It appears the “third way” nowadays actually translates into: “my way or the highway”.

Obviously such a ban is an utterly ludicrous suggestion, and the fact that shooters are buying such guns merely illustrates how totally foolish the handgun ban was to begin with anyway.  There is no way of actually defining such guns in legislation without banning all rifles, otherwise they would have been banned in 1997.  The report proposes a ban on firearms with revolving cylinders, which would catch some types of rifle while leaving long-barrelled pistols using other action types unaffected, making a complete nonsense of any such prohibition.

This is all worth writing to your MP about, by the way!  The Government has yet to respond to the report so the more letters the better.

Suggestions such as this recall to mind the comments made by then Chief Supt. Brian MacKenzie in 1996 following the Home Affairs Committee recommending that handguns should not be banned.  He stood up at a meeting of the Police Superintendent’s Association and referred to the HAC report as a: “…load of rubbish that should be thrown in the bin.”

Hmm, well, six years after the event with both reports in my hands I’m pretty certain which one I think should be on its way to the landfill…

The Home Office attitude was that a public inquiry was unnecessary since, as a senior official stonily told us, “There is nothing to learn.”  The 1988 Act, he was happy to say, was preceded “by no research at all,” nor could he “point to any specific section and say that it addressed a particular problem.” – Jan Stevenson commenting on the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988 in the May 1996 issue of “Handgunner”.