Labour’s Gun Policy Backfires

Posted on August 20, 2001 by cybershooters

What does £100 million buy you? Not a lot if you spend it on banning handguns, as the Government is rapidly discovering. According to their own statistics, published by the Home Office, serious offences involving the use of firearms increased by 31% in England and Wales from 1998/99 to 1999/2000. In the period 1997/98, 54 people were shot dead in England and Wales, by 1999/2000 the figures had risen to 62 fatalities. All indications are that the next batch of figures will be even worse.

Of course, anyone who had actually studied the issue knew this would happen, but during Labour’s pre-election “promise the moon” phase in 1997, they got carried away and are now reaping the consequences.

Pistol shooters don’t like the Tories with good reason; it was the party of Michael Howard and Michael Forsyth after all that proposed a handgun ban after the shootings at Dunblane, but they were careful never to suggest that it would have an impact on armed crime generally; they merely suggested it would reduce the likelihood of another nutter using a legally held gun to commit carnage.

But then Labour decided to turn the whole issue into a political football in order to win a few more votes, with the appearance of gun control supporter Anne Pearston at the 1996 Labour Party Conference, together with Tony Blair’s personal pledge to ban all handguns.

And then along came Alun Michael MP, appointed as Home Office Minister of State when Labour came to power in 1997, and currently relegated to the back benches after his disastrous run as leader of the Welsh Assembly. On November 3^rd, 1997 he commented in the House of Commons that:

“There is a danger.

In the last year for which full information is available, there were 398 incidents of theft of legally held handguns. In that year, therefore, there was more than one incident per day–sometimes involving more than one weapon–of guns going from legal to illegal possession. That figure should give pause for thought to anyone who thinks that it is safe to leave handguns in the possession of members of the public.”

The clear implication was that criminals steal these guns and use them in crime – how then how does the Government now reconcile this statement with the reality that 54% of serious firearm offences were committed with handguns according to their own statistics in 1999/2000, a rise from 44% in 1989? (Not to mention their own research that shows the theft figures are flawed). And remember this infamous press release, dated February 27, 1998, that began:

“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.”

If it weren’t so serious it would be laughable.

And what do the police say about all this? The Metropolitan Police limply responded recently that at least armed robbery figures were down. So you’re less likely to be robbed, but more likely to be murdered. Wonderful. Of course, the Police Federation are also strong supporters of the ban, according to the October 1997 issue of Police:

“The Police Federation played a significant role in bringing about this step… we… welcomed the new administration’s swift implementation of its manifesto commitment to enact a total ban.”

Remember, they “played a significant role” in squandering £100 million of taxpayer’s money on a law that has been followed by a sharp increase in the crimes it was supposed to prevent.

And what of the anti-gun lobby, remember the pages of heartfelt calls for a ban in the national press, because even if it saves only one life it’s worth it? Well, according to the Gun Control Network’s website, the increase in firearm-related homicide is not “statistically significant”.

So if your child is murdered by a madman in Dunblane, that’s a tragedy, but if your child is gunned down by a drug dealer in Bolton, that’s not “statistically significant”. A low blow? They’re the ones saying it!

The only real effect of the handgun ban has been to hand the gun lobby a brick bat with which to hit the Government every time further controls are suggested. More controls on shotguns? The proportion of shotguns used in crime is at an all-time low and the handgun ban didn’t work. More controls on airguns? Fatalities with airguns are at an all-time low and the handgun ban didn’t work. A ban on replicas? There are millions in circulation with no idea who has them AND THE HANDGUN BAN DIDN’T WORK!!!!

Of course, the £100 million question is whether the Government is wise enough to learn from its mistakes. Time will tell.

What would Walter Winans say?

On the 23 – 31^st of August this year at Bisley, a most peculiar event will take place, the Commonwealth Shooting Federation championships. That in itself is not peculiar but the circumstances under which they will take place are, to put it mildly, extremely bizarre.

The National Rifle Association, the custodians of Bisley National Shooting Centre, are in very serious financial trouble, with an overdraft closing in on £2 million by the end of the year. As the Commonwealth Games are one of the premier showcases for the shooting sports, especially Target Rifle, the NRA’s favourite discipline, the NRA lobbied hard for the shooting events to be kept in the Games. Eventually the Commonwealth Games Committee agreed, as many of the smaller Commonwealth countries only send teams to the shooting events.

So far so good.

The NRA and the NSRA made an application for funds to the National Lottery in order to do up Bisley to hold the shooting events from the Games in 2002. Originally (according to the NRA) attempts had been made to find a shooting venue close to Manchester where the rest of the events will be held, but this was abandoned and Bisley was chosen.

So the NRA and NSRA received a grant for £6 million, which they split between themselves. Unfortunately for the NRA, they had not realised that “matching funds” were needed in order to secure the grant, and had to dig deep to find the money, several hundred thousand pounds. Of the £3 million, most was spent on new facilities for the shotgun events, but most of the NRA’s matching funds were spent on Melville range in order to hold the pistol events.

Now this is where things start to get a bit bizarre. You see, pistols are banned in Britain and so the improvements have been accomplished for the purpose of holding two pistol events, the Commonwealth Shooting Federation match this year, and the Commonwealth Games next year.

One might think the NRA has some pretty serious funds to spare that they can spend money on a sport that is banned. Er, no.

It has now transpired that the NRA expected to recoup the funds they spent from various sources, such as Sport England, the Ministry of Defence (for future range rental fees) and the City of Manchester. But, apparently there are no written contracts to that effect. After all, the NRA is a very trusting organisation.

Problems arose because the chosen venue for the Games, the City of Manchester, was less than welcoming to the idea of shooting events. Although they eventually agreed to them, they have been less than forthcoming with money with which to stage them. Not surprising, you might think, given that they are taking place some 200 miles away from Manchester.

Sport England have also said no money will be forthcoming. The MoD, one of the most cash-strapped agencies in the UK, have also, not surprisingly said “no”. Hmm, what, other organisations are not as trusting as the NRA? Stop me before I choke on my own sarcasm.

The pistol events

In years gone by, shooters would drive down to Bisley, get out of their cars (or buggies, going further back) with their pistols and ammunition, sign in for the relevant competition and start shooting. Walter Winans, one of the greatest pistol shots of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries described shooting at Bisley in great detail in his book The Art of Revolver Shooting, published in 1901. In one passage he states:

“I always have my Bisley sights made solid with the revolver, without any screws, and have some made to shoot higher, others lower, each on a separate revolver. If I find that the light, or my shooting, does not suit one sort of sight, I take another revolver. I have some fifteen revolvers prepared in this way.”

Capital thinking, Walter.

This year and next year, things will be slightly different. Competitors will have to arrive at Heathrow Airport. Prior to arriving, they will have been issued a visitor’s permit with the authority of the Secretary of State attached. Competitors will surrender their pistols to Customs. From there, they will be taken by secure transport to the armoury at Bisley Camp. On the day of the competition, and for brief practice sessions, their guns will be given to them by the armourer who will supervise them while they shoot, together with range officers who also have the authority of the Secretary of State.

Want to spectate? You’ll have to get a ticket from the NRA to allow you onto Camp. If you want to watch the pistol events, you will be separated from the shooters by a glass partition behind the firing point (paid for by the NRA, incidentally).

One wonders whether the NRA wouldn’t have been better served by getting heavily into debt attempting to stop pistols from being banned in the first place. To quote Walter again:

“The place to practise is at home; there is no economy in paying half-a-crown for every six shots at Bisley, when you can shoot as much as you like at home for nothing.”

I may be wrong, but I don’t think Walter considered Switzerland to be “home”. Oh well, Walter, rest in peace, but while you’re spinning in your grave, take heart in the fact that the NRA has at least named one of the pistol, er, gallery rifle ranges after you.

“Only quite recently there was a report of a mad dog in a crowded street of New York. The policeman on the beat killed it at the first shot, and did not hit anyone in the crowd. If a London policeman started ‘loosing off’ a revolver in a crowd, I fear the ambulance corps would be kept busy!” – Walter Winans, “The Art of Revolver Shooting”, p.224, 1901

Time to vote

Posted on May 15, 2001 by cybershooters

Another General Election is upon us, and frankly I have yet to recover from the last one. Shooters lost a great deal in terms of our freedoms prior to the last election.

Unfortunately, there is very little chance of a change of Government, and even if there were, the likely replacements, the Conservatives, are what got us in this mess to begin with, with laws like the Firearms (Amendment) Acts 1988 and 1997.

Labour has undertaken to bring forth a consolidating Firearms Act sometime in the next Parliament, that in itself is welcome, however, it is a sure bet that the Bill will contain various other provisions not currently in law, such as tighter controls on shotguns.

So how do shooters decide who to vote for, given that in many areas, both main candidates are anti-gun or at best don’t care about the issue?

The first thing to realise is that your vote does count. The recent fiasco in the United States illustrated that clearly. If shooters vote en bloc they can facilitate change, but once again, who do we vote for?

The dynamics of this election are a lot more complex than the general media appears to realise. There is a real battle going on here, but it’s not between Labour and the tories, it’s between Labour and “New Labour” as Blair likes to term the party nowadays. New Labour forms an identifiable chunk of the Labour party, and in most cases, the MPs who represent that chunk are in far more marginal seats than most of the rest of the party. This is because many of them have been elected in seats that were formerly under the control of the tories. It is these seats that Tony Blair is keen to keep in Labour hands, and it is these seats that are the most vulnerable. If these seats were to be lost, the Labour Government would survive, but there is a real chance it would veer off to the left.

This would make Labour less popular, but it would also make them more anti-gun, probably. It’s a bit of a conundrum to know what to do.

My personal view remains the same now as it did in 1997. Forget about who leads what party, forget in fact what party your candidates represent. Talk to the candidates from the main parties in your area, and figure out which one is the most pro-gun. If none of them are, attempt to convince them. Then vote for the best one.

Unlike in the US, there is no party where pro-shooting philosophies can be clearly identified. The UK Independence Party sometimes makes such noises, but sometimes it makes anti-gun noises, and in any event they stand little chance of gaining real power.

Also, unlike in the US, the power to make gun laws rests almost entirely in Parliament. Local politicians can do very little about it, the worst they can do is to prevent planning permission being given to shooting ranges or gun shops.

You have to vote carefully, to make a long story short. Many shooters seem to think that voting tory is the only real option, it’s not, and it is a serious error to think this in my opinion. The tories have never had a minister as pro-shooting as the current Minister for Sport, Kate Hoey MP, for example.

Certainly a narrowing of the massive Labour majority in the Commons will benefit shooters though, because the smaller their majority the harder it will be for them to get anything extreme through. Unfortunately, until we can convince the tories of the error of their ways, gridlock is the best option in the “big” picture as it’s called. Achieving that though I think is difficult.

So remember to vote, but be careful who you vote for, and be sure you talk to the candidates in your constituency before you vote. It is easy to do, they will soon be assailing you with hotlines you can call, knocking on your door etc., take the time and make the effort.

The future of target shooting

I have been inspired to write on this subject by a recent article in Target Sports magazine by Richard Munday, who is a well-known and respected member of the shooting community, in addition to being President of the British Alpine Rifles.

Richard in his article bemoans the lack of attendance of the events at the Imperial Meeting at Bisley in the short-range (gallery rifle etc.) events, and suggests alterations to them and new events to encourage attendance.

I think Richard has the right idea, but as I have mentioned to him before, I think we are barking up the wrong tree. The events at Bisley and a lot of other places are in essence the old course of pistol fire adapted to gallery rifles (for those of you who don’t know, these are .22 rimfire or pistol calibre rifles such as the Winchester M1894 or Ruger 10/22). I personally think it is a serious error to even attempt to adapt these courses of fire for gallery rifles. It makes some sense for muzzle-loading pistols that are still legal and air pistols, but not for rifles.

The problem I perceive is that the old pistol courses of fire where in decline long before the handgun ban anyway. ISSF disciplines have grown ever more esoteric and the events ever more poorly attended. Even when I go to events that are supposedly to ISSF rules now, most of the equipment used is not to ISSF rules or if it is, totally outside the bounds of anything remotely competitive in ISSF competitions.

For example, at the Imperial Meeting, most of the 300m events can be shot with Target Rifles, which are not to ISSF rules. Pistol competitions I go to in mainland Europe feature mainly customised 9mm pistols, similar to the SIG-Sauer P226 Sport reviewed on this site, rather than the high-end .22 pistols you see at the Olympics and ISSF championships (you do see them, but only about 20% of shooters have them).

10m air pistol for example is an ISSF event, one would expect with the handgun ban that it would have become massively more popular, but no, most people seem to have gravitated to rifle sports or they have adapted the ISSF 25m courses of fire for use with multi-shot air pistols!

Frankly, the courses of fire are simply ultra-dull, they weren’t too exciting with centrefire pistols, even less exciting with .22 pistols, and coma inducing with gallery rifles.

This is not to say they cannot be challenging, but the reality is that with a rifle at 25m the margin of victory is usually only a few points (especially with the ISSF pistol targets). For a typical club shooter to be able to put up nearly a perfect score without too much practice underlines how dull it is. Richard even makes the point himself in his article, with a picture of himself with a perfect score on a duelling course of fire. Could he have done that with a pistol, I wonder?

Certainly some of the new shooters at my local club do find it interesting, but most GR shooters were originally pistol shooters, and while ISSF disciplines adapted to rifles can be made artificially more difficult with smaller bullseyes, tighter time limits and so on, I think it a rather pointless exercise. There is little point in adapting declining disciplines to try to appeal to equipment that makes them relatively unchallenging when compared to the pistol equivalent.

A different approach

My personal view is that clubs like Wrexham R&PC have got a better idea.

Wrexham have adapted the Sportsman’s Team Challenge from the US for gallery rifle competition. The Team Challenge has three stages in which steel plates on racks must be knocked down. .22 rifles are used in two of the stages, and it is this that Wrexham have picked up on. Several other clubs are also taking a similar approach.

This to my mind is vastly more interesting, for various reasons. It’s challenging, and perhaps more importantly, it carries more prestige to win it. Knowing that people around the world shoot the discipline make it seem more worthwhile, which is not the case with pseudo-ISSF style disciplines adapted to pistol-calibre rifles, which are only shot in this country by a relatively small number of people.

Another alternative are the Bianchi Cup-style events, also more interesting than the events put on at the Imperial, but these are few and far between.

Yet another alternative came to my attention recently, and that is IPSC rifle. Many people will be familiar with practical shotgun and pistol events, IPSC rifle is basically practical pistol with a rifle, at longer ranges. The Practical Rifle League in this country has for many years dominated practical rifle, but PRL events are similar to service rifle, IPSC is a different kettle of fish.

Much to my surprise I discovered that IPSC rifle actually requires in Standard Division the use of manually-operated rifles. I suspect most people like myself assumed everyone used centrefire semi-auto rifles. They are banned in the UK, so obviously international competitions would have been out of the question if everyone used semi-autos – but they don’t.

The main problem with IPSC rifle is finding a suitable range to do it on, but you can use gallery rifles within the terms of the rules (or the more powerful ones at least), so this is an interesting option for the former pistol shooter I feel, something worth looking into at any rate.

Doubtless there are other options, but ISSF duelling and precision with pistol-calibre rifles is like trying to flog a dead horse in my opinion, and in talking to other shooters it is a widely held view. Sorry, Richard. If it had anything going for it the current ISSF .22 rifle disciplines would have been taken up in greater numbers, but this has not happened, as my local club with its 50m range set up for ISSF .22 disciplines that no-one wants to shoot can attest to!

Time to innovate.

“The place to practise is at home; there is no economy in paying half-a-crown for every six shots at Bisley, when you can shoot as much as you like at home for nothing.” – Walter Winans, “The Art of Revolver Shooting”, p. 125, published 1901.

Five years later…

Posted on March 6, 2001 by cybershooters

It is with some shock that I realise that five years have passed since the creation of Cybershooters.

Cybershooters was started in the aftermath of the tragedy at Dunblane, in order to better distribute information among shooters, who were obviously going to be in for a pasting.

We were targeted with kneejerk legislation that went far beyond anything anyone could have imagined in March 1996, namely a near total ban on the private possession of handguns, with very few exceptions. Virtually all target shooting sports with pistols, with the limited exception of those performed with air pistols and muzzle-loading pistols, were effectively banned a year later in 1997.

Looking back over those five years, it is painfully apparent what a complete and utter waste of time the handgun ban has been. Lord Cullen, tasked with holding a public inquiry after the tragedy, did not even recommend a ban on handguns, but the issue became a political football with one-upmanship leading to a law that was far beyond anything that could have been justified in the name of public safety. £100 million was spent on confiscating private property, yet precious little was done to implement Cullen’s other recommendations, especially the ones that didn’t have anything to do with guns.

It was done because “if it only saves one life”. Yet now one of the organisations that said that, the Gun Control Network, says that the increase in handgun-related homicide since Dunblane is not “statistically significant“. 62 people were murdered with firearms from March 1999 to March 2000 according to the most recent statistics, 42 of them with handguns, apparently the highest figure on record.

What comfort is it to the families of those 42 victims, and the many dozens of other victims gunned down since Dunblane, to know that they were killed with illegally owned guns? Not much.

The handgun ban was wrong. It has achieved nothing other than to penalise law-abiding target shooters and waste huge sums of taxpayer’s money. It has enhanced public safety not one jot. That unfortunately appears to be one of the main legacies of the Dunblane massacre. It is not a pretty picture.

What lessons have been learnt?

The only lesson the Government learnt from Dunblane apparently, is that you can appear to look tough on crime by cracking down on legitimate gun ownership. Want proof? Look no further than the Sunday Times from the 4th of March, in which Home Office minister Charles Clarke is quoted as saying:

“I am pleased to support the campaign of the Gun Control Network to abolish replica firearms. This is a scheme which has the support of much of the police service and others. There do remain some difficulties to deal with, but the government is sympathetic to this.”

The Gun Control Network point to a large increase in the sale of replica guns after the handgun ban. The implication is that there is some insidious plot by former handgun owners to replace their handguns with replicas, which we sit at home stroking and drooling over, presumably.

In reality, low power firearms powered by carbon dioxide were removed from license controls by Section 48 of the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 (after having been placed there by a bizarre court ruling in 1986), the same Act that banned handguns, the same Act strongly supported by the Labour Party – and obviously with the controls on them reduced, the sales of them have increased. Simple really. Too simple for the Gun Control Network apparently, who would rather perceive a paranoid insidious plot on the part of gun owners to promote the “gun culture” (whatever that actually is).

This is the same organisation that is afraid to let anyone join up in case they are “infiltrated” by gun owners. Consequently they have a membership of six people. They claim to represent the “silent majority” of the public, in reality opinion polls show a roughly 50/50 split on whether the handgun ban is a good idea, so one can safely infer that the public would be even less supportive of a ban of replica firearms.

The police (in the shape of ACPO, as per usual) apparently support further controls on replicas, even a ban, so we can assume a squad of coppers will shortly be arriving on the doorsteps of every home in the country to cut off everyone’s hands, in case you should succumb to the temptation to put your hand in your pocket and point your finger at the local shopkeeper and claim that you have a gun.

Truly the insane will shortly be running the asylum. Let us hope that it is merely pre-election rhetoric.

Women and guns

One thing that always puzzles me is why there are so few women who take part in the shooting sports, at least in comparison to men. I can understand to some degree why women may not be interested in sports where they are at a physical disadvantage, such as perhaps Practical Shotgun, which requires a lot of running around with heavy equipment, but Target Rifle? Smallbore rifle? Clay-pigeon shooting?

What really gets my goat about it is that in most shooting sports women actually have a physical advantage over men. For so many years I have seen protests by women’s groups demanding equality, one assumes they do this with shooting by simply not taking part. After all, wouldn’t want to show up the men, eh?

Throughout history, women have demonstrated that they are formidable shooters. And in fact they are able to shoot better than men. Annie Oakley is perhaps one of the better known examples, being able to shoot glass balls tossed in the air, using a lever-action rifle while standing on the back of a horse, running around an arena!

Women have an advantage over men because they are on average shorter than men, and their body fat is concentrated lower on their body than men. This gives them a much lower centre of gravity and consequently they have a much more stable off-hand (standing) shooting position. In addition, one clinical study I read some years ago indicated that on average women also have better eyesight than men. Shorter arms also mean less leverage and once again a more stable position, provided the gun is properly fitted.

Joanna Hossack showed what women can do when properly armed in the Queen’s Prize last year at Bisley, winning the Grand Aggregate against all male (and female) competition.

I really wish women would look past the male stereotype of the shooting sports and get involved. Okay, so it may put me at a disadvantage but it is worth it to witness some of the miraculous shots I have seen women make.

“My greatest desire is that every woman be able to handle a firearm as naturally as they handle a baby.” – Annie Oakley, 1893

The Government’s Opinion

Posted on October 9, 2000 by cybershooters

Well, we’ve been waiting since April for it, and finally the Government has responded to the Home Affairs Committee report with a Command Paper, Cm 4864. The Government is required to respond to committee reports in the form of one of these papers.

To cut a long story short, the Government has rejected the Committee’s recommendation of licensing for airguns, and a ban on young people possessing firearms, but they have accepted most of the other recommendations.

Licensing for airguns or a ban on youngsters using guns would have been a red flag to the countryside lobby, who are already sounding off loudly about the proposed ban on fox hunting with dogs, and despite what deputy PM John Prescott has to say about it there is no doubt the Government is keen to avoid a repeat of the Countryside Alliance march on London.

The Government have however accepted the idea of an age limit of sixteen on unsupervised use of firearms, and that would be further limited by the requirement that supervised use by young people must be on private land. The main objection here is that some shooting does take place on public land, but worse than this is the reality that a farmer could not legally give an air rifle to his fourteen-year old son to perform pest control with, unless he was supervised. This is hopefully a flaw that can be fixed with some lobbying.

Wait for it…

But all is not roses or technical arguments. The command paper does include a number of worrying proposals, most of them relating to shotguns and also registration.

The Government wants:

(a) to require referees for shotgun certificate applications, as is currently the case with firearm certificates;

(b) to require that an applicant for a shotgun certificate have a “good reason” for needing shotguns (but apparently not for each individual gun, as is the case with firearm certificates);

(c) to require applicants to state on the application form the maximum number of shotguns they intend to acquire, and to have to apply for a variation if they want more than that;

(d) to standardise the fitness criteria and revocation criteria with firearm certificates.

Of these proposals my view is that (c) is the worst, because if it were rigidly applied shotgun certificate controls would only be marginally less restrictive than firearm certificate controls. If all four proposals are adopted, in a very short period of time it is likely full Section 1 controls will be placed on shotguns, in my opinion.

Registration

The Government also thinks that centrally registering all guns held on certificate is a good idea. Given that they still haven’t gotten the database of certificate holders working one wonders where on Earth they came up with this suggestion. The Government doesn’t expect the current database to become available until the end of 2001, i.e. four years after the law requiring it was enacted.

My view here is to let the police and the Home Office dig their own grave. It doesn’t make much difference to certificate holders as all our details and gun details are held by each local police force anyway, if the Government think holding them centrally can be done, let them try and fail like the Canadians!

Holding all the details centrally, available to the police, will likely open the licensing system up to attack under data protection and human rights laws as well, because by definition certificate holders have not been convicted of any serious offence, so our civil rights are fully intact.

Having a central register of everyone who owns a firearm, open to the police on demand and maintained by them without any sort of warrant or judicial oversight is certainly illegal under even the most casual interpretation of human rights legislation.

Yet more:

The Government also wants a tighter standard for deactivated firearms, which is something that has been on the cards for some time now.

The Government also wants to stop a “gun culture” from developing, whatever that means.

However, the most ridiculous comment is contained in the Government press release. The Government apparently wants to “…work to tackle the use of illegal guns in crime…”, because as the Home Office minister, Charles Clarke assures us: “Our firearms controls are already among the strongest in the world, and these new proposals will increase their effectiveness.”

Well, if our controls are so strong, why do we need them to be stronger? If our controls are so strong, why is illegal gun use a problem?

Answers to your local MP and the Home Office!

When any of this will be enacted into law is an open question.

“Because controls are good.” – A Home Office civil servant, when asked by author Jan Stevenson in 1987 why the Bill that became the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988 was needed.

…well, it wasn’t all bad.

Posted on May 4, 2000 by cybershooters

For several months now shooters have been holding their breath awaiting the report of the Home Affairs Committee.

The Committee, at the behest of former Chairman Chris Mullin, announced a review of firearms control in England and Wales last summer. This apparently sent alarm bells ringing at Queen Anne’s Gate, as Chris Mullin had written a Labour response in 1996 to the last review, making various bizarre demands, among them a ban on the possession of firearms in urban areas. As the Labour Govt. had just announced that they would never ban shooting (don’t laugh), it was likely a report by Mullin would be seriously embarrassing.

Chris Mullin found himself promptly fired, er, I mean, “promoted” to a Government job upon the announcement, and Robin Corbett MP found himself Chairman of the committee.

You can read the report by clicking here.

It’s not all bad, but there are some serious clangers in it. The one that made me laugh the hardest is in paragraph 35 of the report, Zimring’s comparison of homicide rates in London vs. New York City. The committee appears blissfully unaware that in the period Zimring looked at there were actually more legally possessed handguns in London than New York!

The committee makes some 44 recommendations, the overwhelming majority of which are perfectly sensible and non-controversial. However, there is plenty for shooters to be worried by:

The committee recommends that all airguns capable of causing lethal injury be licensed, which to put it mildly is a disaster in the making. This is a fundamentally flawed recommendation for too many reasons for me to go into detail here. The committee makes no attempt to do a cost/benefit analysis, and it is hard to see how the nine figure sum needed to license the several million airguns in circulation (assuming people complied) can be justified given the scale of airgun misuse (about 125 serious woundings and one death a year on average).

It is also hard to follow their logic on airguns. Clearly most of the pressure for airgun licensing is coming from the police, but the police are worried more by airsoft guns and replicas it appears from the evidence they gave. As non-lethal items, they would remain unlicensed and thus the committee’s proposal would achieve nothing in that regard.

There are two other worrying proposals. The first is that there should be an absolute minimum age at which a person can use a firearm, even under supervision. This would mean for example that it would be illegal for a parent to teach their child how to use an airgun in the back garden. That is clearly unwarranted and addresses no specific public safety issue.

The committee strongly rejects Mullin’s nutty idea of banning guns from urban areas, but they do make considerable recommendations for tightening shotgun licensing that should be of concern to any shotgun owner. Some of the recommendations are acceptable, such as requiring the same standard of “fitness” as for a firearm certificate and requiring referees instead of the countersignatory requirement. However, there are also some bad proposals, such as in paragraph 93 – requiring an applicant to state how many shotguns he wants to own, and having to vary the certificate if he wants more. My own view is that this issue is already covered by the requirement to keep guns securely. Surely if the guns are kept securely it doesn’t matter how many the certificate holder owns, as a certificate holder can cause as much mischief with one shotgun as with a hundred.

Shooters will need to watch developments as a result of this report closely, and you should be making representations to your MP.

Security

New guidance on secure storage has been published, and it is comprehensive to put it mildly. You can read it by clicking here.

Tony Blair and the BS Brigade

Posted on January 23, 2000 by cybershooters

The most astonishing thing that has occurred in the past six months was Tony Blair’s claim to be a “friend of shooters”, with a firm vow that he will not ban shooting. Er, bit too late for that isn’t it Tony?

In reality, the reason for our Leader’s comments are the increasingly effective marches organised by the Countryside Alliance. The PM seems to think that a lot of misguided shooters are joining in with opposing the ban on fox hunting. Actually, Tony, your urgent need to ban handguns as soon as you took office basically put the nail in that coffin. No amount of words from you now is going to reassure shooters.

On the bright side however, it would appear that Blair is so worried that he does not want anything to pop up which could confirm the claims of the Countryside Alliance that shooting is up next for the chop after fox hunting. Noticeable is the appointment of Kate Hoey to be Minister of Sport, someone who is well-known for her tolerant views of fox hunting.

More blatant was the packing off of Chris Mullin MP (Sunderland) into a minor ministerial job after he announced as Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee a review of firearms controls. In 1996 Mr Mullin made his views quite clear that he wanted virtually everything banned, with the exception of a few tightly controlled airguns and the odd shotgun owned by someone who lived only in a “rural” area. That he would recommend a virtual ban on everything was obvious, so we now have Robin Corbett MP (Erdington) to contend with instead. Mr Corbett is known to be independent-minded and made some speeches in 1987 and 1996 in support of shooters. He is not a pro-gunner per se, but he knows silly laws when he sees them.

We await the report of the Home Affairs Commitee with interest (apparently this will be in May). You can read the evidence of the Home Office by clicking here. Note especially paragraph 388 of the oral evidence, and the subsequent comments about how the handgun ban will have little effect on crime. So why bother with it?

Antis fail to impress

The report of the Firearms Consultative Committee this year made for interesting reading, I won’t bore you with the details as it has been overshadowed by the HAC review. The main thread running through it though is the utter intellectual bankruptcy of the Gun Control Network, which doesn’t even seem to be able to network that well given their microscopic membership. In virtually every instance the GCN disagrees with the rest of the committee, thus leaving them wandering out into the void of isolation.

Jersey

Jersey is where the “action” is at the moment. For those of you from foreign climes or the truly ignorant Brit, Jersey is a little island off the coast of France which is sort of part of Britain, but it’s not, because it has it’s own legislature. Jersey is well-known as a tax haven and also a tourist destination.

I was fortunate enough to be involved in the formulation of their new law, and was able to direct them away from some serious gaffs. Unfortunately their Home Affairs Committee insisted on persevering with some of the worst provisions of the Bill, and it looked headed for defeat in the States (their legislature) until at the last moment they pulled the proverbial rabbit out of the hat, in the form of an Attorney General’s opinion that the current law has no provision for visitors who wish to shoot shotguns on the island. So the Bill passed. Time will tell whether I was right or not about the bad parts of it.

In fairness, the States got rid of some of the bad parts, like a total ban on expanding ammunition. The FCC has recommended the repeal of our ban, which has exemptions. The Jersey Bill would have banned it entirely, but fortunately it was amended out of the Bill.

However, the worst provision, the introduction of firearm certificates for shotgun possession, remains in it. The problem is that the Police have completely underestimated this task. The Bill provides for only a one year transitional period, and there are estimated to be on the order of 10-20,000 unlicensed shotguns on the island. Assuming the average owner owns two, that is 5-10,000 applications to process in one year, in addition to all the additional new requirements involved in the renewal or variation of currently issued certificates for handguns and rifles (based on our own 1997 Act). By my reckoning, the police will need another three to five staff, but the Bill begins by saying: “The Chief Officer of the Jersey Police has assured the Committee that there will be no manpower or financial implications…”

The main bright spot is that the new law (which will probably be called the Firearms (Jersey) Law 2000) does not ban handguns, and centrefire semi-automatic rifles also remain legal on the Island.

Assassins and rampaging gunmen prove folly of gun laws

Posted on July 15, 1999 by cybershooters

Like people the world over, I watched the shootings at Columbine High School with horror – more soul searching is caused each time one of these tragic events happens. It is not a wonder that there is usually a kneejerk reaction, a call for more gun laws.

That more gun laws would not have stopped the killings in Colorado is of course plain on its face. To begin with, they weren’t just armed with guns – they had bombs as well, that were homemade.

In addition, they cut a swathe through the statute book, breaking so many existing laws that it is hard to count them all up. But of course, that doesn’t stop the call for yet more laws.

Britain of course had more gun laws than almost anywhere in the US prior to the shootings in Dunblane, but that did not stop them from happening. More laws will not stop it from happening again. But enough about schools.

Madmen and assassins

Two days after the shootings at Columbine High School, criminals on the run in Rochdale, Manchester opened fire with an AK-47, wounding six, and garnering themselves 20 counts of attempted murder. This is despite a ban on machineguns in this country since 1936.

On the weekend it happened again, a man walked into a pub in Manchester and opened fire, injuring three.

And then on the Monday, BBC TV presenter Jill Dando was shot dead on her doorstep with a handgun.

Those of us who were hoping that was it were disappointed when a man went on a rampage in Feltham, London a few days later, armed with an AK-47 and a pistol, spraying police cars with automatic weapons fire and eventually escaping to a housing estate where he broke into a house and took three people hostage.

And it goes on.

Of course, the Government denies that this shows that the handgun ban was an abject failure, because they point out to us that it was only intended to prevent the misuse of legally possessed handguns. But that was not the way it was portrayed at the time, and thanks to modern technology that can be easily proven by clicking here. Clearly there are a lot of handguns still “on the streets of Britain”.

Bear in mind that on average before the ban, there were two murders a year with legally possessed handguns, and that includes service weapons issued to the police and the armed forces.

If past performance is anything to go by, the Government will only admit that the handgun ban is a failure after another nutcase goes berserk with a legally possessed gun and shoots dead a large number of people. Then they will tell us that the handgun ban didn’t go far enough, and they didn’t ban rifles and shotguns as well because of the strength of the “gun lobby” and because they wanted to “play fair”.

It’s a never ending spiral of lies on lies, with the Government flogging a horse that is not only dead but long since decomposed. We have already seen Home Office minister Paul Boateng attempting to explain away incidents like those in Rochdale on lax controls in other countries, like the Japanese have. The difference is that the Government doesn’t seem able to explain why our armed crime rate is not significantly different from many of our European neighbours with much less restrictive laws. For most of the past ten years, our armed robbery rate has paralleled that in Switzerland (which has the least restrictive gun laws in Europe), with the main difference being that ours was rising, whereas their rate was stable. Finally, the Met realised that armed robbery could only be tackled by enforcing the law rather than simply writing endless volumes of it.

It is worth noting that the major city with the lowest armed crime rate in Europe is Brugges, in Belgium. Belgium of course has the least restrictive gun laws in the EU.

So what is the solution? Well, the solution to armed crime is not going to be more laws, it’s going to have to be a pro-active approach to tackling it, and we have prepared a position paper outlining two ways to do it.

But gun owners in Great Britain must never stop protesting loudly at their scapegoating, because it was wrong, and predictably, it didn’t work.

“Let us remember that ‘if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.’ It is a very serious consideration… that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.” – Samuel Adams, 1771.