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I might have told this tale before, and if so, I'm sure that the PTB will haul it off. There were any amount of rumours back in the late 90's, of senior police officers here in UK with their own 'collections' of handguns that had been handed in at the '97 handgun ban. Whether or not there was any truth in them is open to conjecture, of course, but the old saw about smoke and fire would seem to hit the mark, as a number of serious court cases proved.

So, back to 1997 here in mainland UK, where the ordinary Joe and Joette had to hand their cartridge-firing handguns in after the appalling tragedy of Dunblane, the previous year. A pal of mine, who worked for an experimental machine shop in our local town, was part of an R&D team developing micro water-jet cutting for various materials, including such stuff as carbon fibre and exotic metals.

He only had one pistol - his pride and joy - a Colt Gold Cup in .45ACP. I wasn't there to see him hand it in to the officer behind the counter, but from him the conversation went something like this -

Him - Here's my pistol and here's my FAC. You can take them both.

Police Officer [hereafter PO] - just let me check the serial number against our records and the FAC.

Him - They should be the same, after all, you issued the FAC...

PO - Doesn't hurt to check, y'know...

Him - Like you've had a couple of hundred Colt Gold Cups handed in, right?

PO - Now, now, Sir, I know this is stressful for you, but I'm only doing my job...

Him - In that case, you'll be wanting to take care if you try and pick it up - use a pencil in the muzzle...

PO, looking at him like he had grown another eye - Why would I do that?

Him - I wouldn't like you to get hurt, OK?

PO - What have you done to it? [looking slightly alarmed].

Him - Try and pick it up, using the pencil in the muzzle, and you'll find out.

The PO did as he suggested, and to his utter amazement, the gun came to pieces where the pencil inside the barrel ended. And so, too, did the rest of the gun when poked by the by-now astonished PO. 'What the **** have you done to it?' he cried out...'Well, since it was my property at the time, I thought I try out our new micro-bore water-jet cutter on it, and I've cut it into 120 slices - just like a sliced loaf. I'd like to see you flat-foot b*ggers put THAT in your collection and shoot it!'

So saying, he gave the finger to the CCTV and walked out, not happy, but strangely satisfied.
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I can't imagine ever being in a situation where I would have to turn in my firearms.

Scary that in another generation or two the masses of America would probably be willing to do the same.

Not in my lifetime.
 
I might have told this tale before...
...
I've heard this story before. Pretty sure it was from you in another thread. Still funny, inspiring and well worth reading again.

Soooo I have ask...
Why did everyone turn in their firearms without a fight ?
I know a few Brits who, I would have to guess, might be just a little resistant to this kind of overreach. And that little Revolution thing we did a couple hundred years ago - didn't a lot of the folks doing the revolting have British backgrounds? ;)
 
Think it over?
Could it be for the same reasons we have given up the right to own certain guns in places all over the U.S. ?
This is indeed something to think over...
Many folks have no connection to firearms nowadays...This coupled with all the misunderstandings and outright lies spread about guns , gun owners and the 2nd Amendment , along with "Apathetic gun owners" , endangers our future in being gun owners.
Andy
 
Uh, before you write off everybody here in yUk who 'turned in' their handguns as limp-wrist panty-waists [that's including me, BTW], and branding the rest of the population as 'sheeple', here's a reminder that the UK took part in Gulf Wars 1 and 2, Bosnia/Kosovo and Afghanistan, and others.

Anyhow, back to the story and a few more explanations.

In the USA, your RIGHT to bear firearms is part of the written Constitution of the nation.

In the UK, as in every other civilised nation, firearms ownership is a paid-for privilege, and like all privileges, it can be withheld.

After the Dunblane Massacre in 1996, in which a pedophile handgun owner slaughtered sixteen first-grade kids and their teacher, the privilege of owning a cartridge-firing handgun was withheld, making it illegal to own one on mainland yUK*. Since all LEGALLY-held handguns, like EVERY legally-held firearm in this country, were registered, it was a simple matter of notifying the holders of these guns and requesting them to hand them in or face the consequences of law concomittent with the illegal possession of a handgun.

That's five years jail and unlimited fines.

For each gun.

I had many guns.

Unlike the USA, where over half the population has a gun, there were just 57,000 of us with handguns of the kind that were prohibited, with a total of around 103,000 handguns.

Every single handgun of the kind that was made illegal was handed in.

By the time the accountants had done their sums, it had cost the taxpayer just over £100,000 per gun. There was recompense of the value of the gun - new - on the day. Also 'bought back' were any an all loading gear, cases, accoutrements [holsters and so on, speed loaders etc] At that time, that could have been around $200,000, or $1.4M in dog dollars.

All that are left are the millions of illegal handguns...

The result was that almost instantly, around fifty handgun-related businesses disappeared, along with their livelihood. Dozens of gun clubs folded. Those surviving gun dealers took a colossal hit in the registers - one local dealer I know lost over $3000 a WEEK from loss of ammuntion sales.

No .22 target pistols meant that there was no UK pistol team in ANY international competition unless they not only trained abroad, but kept their guns abroad - many did, in neighbouring France, Belgium and Switzerland, where the Swiss authorities actually HELPED the beleaguered Brits to set up their very own gun club - The British Alpine Shooting Club. Imagine it - a foreign nation setting up a club for foreigners, with the only proviso being that it was only open to British nationals.

No centrefire pistols meant that there was no IPSC, no Police Pistol, no shooting sport where cartridge-firing handgun were used.

Three of us in our club shot police pistol - 500 rounds of .38Spec a WEEK. That stopped right here, and so did the sales of bullets and powder and primers that went with them. There were sixty-eight in our region who shot PP - all happily using the same supplier, went out of business within three months of the ban.

At the London Olympics, the shooting venue was set up on a brown-field site from scratch, and cost around £20M, including the RENTAL of all the electronics. After the games were over, the site was demolished, and restored to its former appearance, at a cost
of almost, uh, £20M...

And yet, shooting is THE fastest-growing participant sport in the entire UK, and the safest. Brits fill the podia all over the world in many shooting disciplines and reflect national pride in their achievements.

As I may have noted elsewhere, a football match here in yUK can require three hundred police officers to 'manage', mainly to keep the fans apart and from killing each other. By contrast, the Phoenix Meet at Bisley attracted over 20,000 mainly shooters over a week-long set of competitions, and there was not single police officer in sight, except the ones showing off their K9s...

Just last year, the government relented somewhat, and has allowed the British Olympic team to train at Bisley, behind closed doors with armed police officers guarding them. I wasn't there to see it happen, but apparently, when the training period was over, a Brinks-style armoured vehicle was backed into the specially-adapted raised-wall range, the handguns placed inside, and they were trucked in this fashion, with a police escort to safeguard the guns, to the Bisley armoury for safe storage...................sigh.

*For reasons outside the scope of this post, Northern Ireland was excused the handgun ban. Not only is handgun shooting a thriving sport, but there are also ~3000 CCW permits issued, for other reasons.
 
Legal vs illegal. You won't do your family much good dead or in jail. If you're single, hmm. This is a good reminder. A reminder that good people really want to be lead/governed for some reason. My boss got a $250 for having a phone in his hand at a stop light while a motor cop was next to him.
I don't know if that will save a life but it sends a few messages.
 
Uh, before you write off everybody here in yUk who 'turned in' their handguns as limp-wrist panty-waists [that's including me, BTW], and branding the rest of the population as 'sheeple', here's a reminder that the UK took part in Gulf Wars 1 and 2, Bosnia/Kosovo and Afghanistan, and others.

I'm not seeing "Limp wristed panty wastes. I imagine it's a different mind set in the UK. A smallish island totally separated from the major continents of the world. A civilized society starting how many hundreds of years ago? They still bow and respect royalty, that certainly didn't treat the people all that well a couple hundred years ago. It's a different mind set in America. We have been told for 200+ years we have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness! We have an absolute right to protect ourselves, families and homes with deadly force if called for! I don't know? Have subjects of the crown ever had such words to live their lives by? Any such thing now that the people of the UK have to lean on, or shout out to the elected leaders? Nope, not panty wastes or limp wristed, just conditioning through 100s of years to not stand up to the government.
 
Uh, before you write off everybody here in yUk who 'turned in' their handguns as limp-wrist panty-waists [that's including me, BTW], and branding the rest of the population as 'sheeple', here's a reminder that the UK took part in Gulf Wars 1 and 2, Bosnia/Kosovo and Afghanistan, and .

Wasn't really calling anyone out as much as curious.

I guess it just scares me how easily it could happen here. Your story was great at filling in the blanks . Thanks...
 
Question #1 - Have subjects of the crown ever had such words to live their lives by? Question #2 - Any such thing now that the people of the UK have to lean on, or shout out to the elected leaders?

Answer to Question #1 - The 1689 Bill of Rights, now disappeared under almost 350 years of governance, noted that all men had the right to defend themselves by the use of arms, but ony against popery.

With no West to win from the inhabitants, no new country to open up by the use and maintenance of arms, no lawmen to dish out instant justice by gun or rope, and no, let's be honest here, no Wild West to tame, the ownership of expensive items like guns was never going to be high on the agenda of a nation like Great Britain. Ownership of guns was limited to those who owned land upon which to use them, or were of the social class that enjoyed sporting clays, or safaris in the colonies, not the ordinary working man.

And, to be frank the two cultures are so very different that it is hardly suprising that guns are part of your landscape and household, but they are not here.

Answer to Question #2 - The ballot box. However, guns and those who shoot them legally are subjects so far down the parliamentary shopping list that they may as well not be there at all. This is in spite of the fact that a Bill making a few things more difficult for us legal shooters, but doing nothing to enhance the detection and punishment of illegal gun users, is going to get its a$$ kicked out of the front door, thanks to a large number of MPs who are shooters of one kind or another.

I spent the last few week in Eugene and Portland. Just two hundred years ago, niether of these two places existed.

By way of contrast, in a couple of weeks I'll be going to a service of Remembrance in our local church. As I pass through the door, I recall that the door is a 'recent' replacement for the original, put there in 1180 AD. By recent, I mean 1470 AD.

We really live in two different worlds.
 
Think it over?
Could it be for the same reasons we have given up the right to own certain guns in places all over the U.S. ?
Is that reason an abundance of soy? Gun ownership and soy consumption probably have a strong inverse correlation in the USA
 
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When I chose terms... well, feral sheep were once extremely dangerous, including some carnivorous forms. However, just as with the sheep, century upon century of "domestication" of serfs/subjects has created a general culture of unquestioning obedience to authority.

Fairer way to put it, @tac ? :)

Sir, the hole that you are digging with your unpleasant and needless remarks is getting deeper with almost every word you write. Give up now or get 'ignored'.
 

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