{"id":297,"date":"2000-01-23T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2000-01-23T12:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cybershooters.org\/?p=297"},"modified":"2015-04-29T23:21:50","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T22:21:50","slug":"tony-blair-and-the-bs-brigade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cybershooters.org\/?p=297","title":{"rendered":"Tony Blair and the BS Brigade"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 Er, bit too late for that isn’t it Tony?<\/span><\/p>\n

In reality, the reason for our Leader’s comments are the increasingly effective marches organised by the Countryside Alliance.\u00a0 The PM seems to think that a lot of misguided shooters are joining in with opposing the ban on fox hunting.\u00a0 Actually, Tony, your urgent need to ban handguns as soon as you took office basically put the nail in that coffin.\u00a0 No amount of words from you now is going to reassure shooters.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Noticeable is the appointment of Kate Hoey to be Minister of Sport, someone who is well-known for her tolerant views of fox hunting.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 That he would recommend a virtual ban on everything was obvious, so we now have Robin Corbett MP (Erdington) to contend with instead.\u00a0 Mr Corbett is known to be independent-minded and made some speeches in 1987 and 1996 in support of shooters.\u00a0 He is not a pro-gunner per se, but he knows silly laws when he sees them.<\/span><\/p>\n

We await the report of the Home Affairs Commitee with interest (apparently this will be in May).\u00a0 You can read the evidence of the Home Office by clicking here<\/a>.\u00a0 Note especially paragraph 388 of the oral evidence, and the subsequent comments about how the handgun ban will have little effect on crime.\u00a0 So why bother with it?<\/span><\/p>\n

Antis fail to impress<\/span><\/h3>\n

The report of the Firearms Consultative Committee<\/a> this year made for interesting reading, I won’t bore you with the details as it has been overshadowed by the HAC review.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In virtually every instance the GCN disagrees with the rest of the committee, thus leaving them wandering out into the void of isolation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jersey<\/span><\/h3>\n

Jersey is where the “action” is at the moment.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Jersey is well-known as a tax haven and also a tourist destination.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So the Bill passed.\u00a0 Time will tell whether I was right or not about the bad parts of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fairness, the States got rid of some of the bad parts, like a total ban on expanding ammunition.\u00a0 The FCC has recommended the repeal of our ban, which has exemptions.\u00a0 The Jersey Bill would have banned it entirely, but fortunately it was amended out of the Bill.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the worst provision, the introduction of firearm certificates for shotgun possession, remains in it.\u00a0 The problem is that the Police have completely underestimated this task.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 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…”<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,5,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","category-field-sports-pest-control","category-political-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybershooters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybershooters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybershooters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybershooters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybershooters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybershooters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":445,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybershooters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions\/445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybershooters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybershooters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybershooters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}