I don't understand this mentality. This will be us in 20 years.

[billdeserthills]

The governments of England, Scotland and Wales share a common set of laws regarding firearms.

The government of Northern Ireland is different. There, although airguns have to be licensed, handguns of any kind are permitted, unlike the mainland, where a massacre of sixteen 1st grade schoolkids and their teacher in 1996 in Dunblane, Scotland, by a Scottish pedophile with a grudge and legally-owned handguns, brought about the handgun ban on ALL of mainland UK.

FYI - ANY person over the age of 18 can apply for a shotgun license. It is up to the police to prove that the applicant is not suitable, otherwise, the applicant, providing he/she does not have a police record, is not on leisure drugs and has an otherwise good character, may have his two or three shot shotgun. Anything more, such as the semi-auto or pump used in Practical Shotgun [a British invention, I bleeve] requires a full firearms licence.

Firearms with rifled barrels are a different matter. To own a firearm, one must have 'good reason'. In law, that means -

1. target shooting in a Home Office-approved gun club [there are none that are NOT approved].

2. game shooting on land deemed suitable by calibre and with the permission of the land-owner, inless, of course, you ARE the landowner [look up British Deer Society and BASC.]

3. professional necessity - game warden, pest controller and so on.

4. veterinarian of large animals, ie, a rural veterinarian.

There are about 6 million legally owned shotguns in the UK, excepting Northern Ireland, where there are about 300,000. Northern Ireland also has a CCW policy, with around 3000 citizens currently carrying on a daily basis. On mainland UK There are about 1.8 million licensed firearms holders, with around 8 million privately-owned firearms. I have eighteen - fifteen rifles and three handguns [two BP and one long-barrelled revolver].

A quick trawl of the internet will show you that shooting sports are the second most popular participation sport in the entire UK, and has the best safety record by far of ANY sporting activity. If you can spare a minute, look at my channel on Youtube - tac's guns - to see what we get up to. Many of the folks you see on those little movies have between thirty and fifty guns each, BTW. Much like all of you, of course. Our little club has recently spent almost half a million dollars on upgrading our facilities, with over half of it coming from the 300+ members themselves.

The world champion young shotgunners are all British - mostly girls. The world champion shotgunner is the British George Digweed, for about the tenth time.

So saying that shooting sports don't happen here is total baloney. Why do you imagine that you have a rifle match called 'The Wimbledon Match'?

tac

You forgot to say that you are unable to remove your handguns from your club.
The sad fact is the guns you own cannot Ever be used for personal protection, not without the user ending up in jail & that is a guarantee, as the crown cannot afford to have it's peons thinking that it is ok to take up arms for the defense of oneself or others. Apparently english lives simply are not worth that much. Or is it that the criminal's lives are simply more valuable, I lost track of which.

 

[tac]

You forgot to say that you are unable to remove your handguns from your club.
The sad fact is the guns you own cannot Ever be used for personal protection, not without the user ending up in jail & that is a guarantee, as the crown cannot afford to have it's peons thinking that it is ok to take up arms for the defense of oneself or others. Apparently english lives simply are not worth that much. Or is it that the criminal's lives are simply more valuable, I lost track of which.

I regret to tell you that all three handguns are, as I write this, upstairs in one of my three gun safes. Those of us who have guns are required to safeguard them ourselves, and are totally responsible for their security. Nobody I've ever heard of stores their firearms in a club, that is, in any case, only registered as a storage location for the club-owned firearms.

The exception to this is the very small number of Section 7 handguns owned by folks who don't mind being overseen when they shoot their own possessions, and agree to store them in one of seven secure locations in England, but not Wales or Scotland. Having commanded troops armed to the teeth, I'm not about to stand around while a spotty youth oversees me and counts my empties. Northern Ireland, of course, allows you to keep all your guns - long and short - at home, as I do with my fifteen rifles and three handguns.

However, I can't argue with you about the law on using guns to protect yourselves, except to quote judge in a case last year where four armed burglars took on a farmer and his wife, and all four got shot and wounded. The judge told them, in the court case after they had recovered, that if they went armed to a location where it was usual for the home-owners to have ready access to firearms then they should reasonably expect to get shot by the home-owners defending themselves.

Don't overlook that fact that not everybody who lives in the UK is actually English. I am precisely 1/8th a Brit - my maternal grandmother was half-English.

Best

tac
Hon Member - Clark Rifles, Brush Prairie WA

 

[luke23]

The governments of England, Scotland and Wales share a common set of laws regarding firearms.

The government of Northern Ireland is different. There, although airguns have to be licensed, handguns of any kind are permitted, unlike the mainland, where a massacre of sixteen 1st grade schoolkids and their teacher in 1996 in Dunblane, Scotland, by a Scottish pedophile with a grudge and legally-owned handguns, brought about the handgun ban on ALL of mainland UK.

FYI - ANY person over the age of 18 can apply for a shotgun license. It is up to the police to prove that the applicant is not suitable, otherwise, the applicant, providing he/she does not have a police record, is not on leisure drugs and has an otherwise good character, may have his two or three shot shotgun. Anything more, such as the semi-auto or pump used in Practical Shotgun [a British invention, I bleeve] requires a full firearms licence.

Firearms with rifled barrels are a different matter. To own a firearm, one must have 'good reason'. In law, that means -

1. target shooting in a Home Office-approved gun club [there are none that are NOT approved].

2. game shooting on land deemed suitable by calibre and with the permission of the land-owner, inless, of course, you ARE the landowner [look up British Deer Society and BASC.]

3. professional necessity - game warden, pest controller and so on.

4. veterinarian of large animals, ie, a rural veterinarian.

There are about 6 million legally owned shotguns in the UK, excepting Northern Ireland, where there are about 300,000. Northern Ireland also has a CCW policy, with around 3000 citizens currently carrying on a daily basis. On mainland UK There are about 1.8 million licensed firearms holders, with around 8 million privately-owned firearms. I have eighteen - fifteen rifles and three handguns [two BP and one long-barrelled revolver].

A quick trawl of the internet will show you that shooting sports are the second most popular participation sport in the entire UK, and has the best safety record by far of ANY sporting activity. If you can spare a minute, look at my channel on Youtube - tac's guns - to see what we get up to. Many of the folks you see on those little movies have between thirty and fifty guns each, BTW. Much like all of you, of course. Our little club has recently spent almost half a million dollars on upgrading our facilities, with over half of it coming from the 300+ members themselves.

The world champion young shotgunners are all British - mostly girls. The world champion shotgunner is the British George Digweed, for about the tenth time.

So saying that shooting sports don't happen here is total baloney. Why do you imagine that you have a rifle match called 'The Wimbledon Match'?

tac

The fact is, from an American perspective, your system is abjectly horrifying. It may be better than Japan, but if we compare the weaponry to food...

Imagine a place where you need a Police permit to eat Chinese food. You can only eat Chinese food, and you can either have chow mein or fried rice. Not both.

Italian food is banned, so you need a good reason for it. Like, an exchange student from Italy.

Sounds ridiculous right? That's about the way we see it. A gun's a gun. Food is food. But if we suddenly start nitpicking and banning some, the result is this capricious weirdness.

 

[tac]

Yuh, my mom got bombed out twice by V1s, both times during the day when she was out at work, and coming home both times to a street filled with rubble and dead neighbours.

Gets your attention, for sure.

tac

 

[tac]

The fact is, from an American perspective, your system is abjectly horrifying. It may be better than Japan, but if we compare the weaponry to food...

Can we get something straight right now, before this post degenerates into a Brit-bashing session. I do not make the laws, nor do the population. Nor do we have any say in the making of the law. We don't get a vote on the law, and if there is a law we don't like, we can't change it. So having at me on a personal level as some kind of f***wit who enjoys all the crap I have to go through to have guns might get YOU a high, but only serves to p*ss me off substantially. I'm not here as an apologist for the government of the UK, I'm here as a fellow shooter who, in spite of all the hassle, STILL manages to go shooting three or four times a week with any and all the firearms that the law allows. If I lived nearer to a suitable range, I'd have a .50cal something, too, and join the others here in the UK that make up the largest chapter of the .50ca Shooters Association outside the US of A.

I know - we ALL know - how bad it is here from your perspective, but you won't hear THIS boy making disparaging remarks over some of the rather odd laws that you have in the US of A where guns are concerned, or point out ot you the numbers of states where ownership is as restrictive, or even worse, than it is here in UK.

Let's leave it at that before this gets to be a potato that's just too hot to pick up, eh?

tac

 

[erudne]

In the People's Republic of Massachusetts, police and prosecutors didn't even bother pretending that they were enforcing a law permitting the pre-emptive disarmament of Gregory Girard, a resident of Manchester-by-the-Sea, after his estranged wife — who apparently is a temporally displaced subject of East Germany — called health and welfare officials to report that her husband held eccentric political views. Specifically, Mr. Girard believed that martial law, complete with gun confiscation, is imminent. Since it is impermissible for people to believe that government agents will carry out paramilitary raids to confiscate firearms, a paramilitary squad was sent to Girard's home to confiscate his firearms.

 

[mancat]

There's thousands of shotgun owners in England as well as many other types of firearms.

I have noticed that most Europeans are ABSOLUTELY in the dark about their given country's firearms laws and number of privately owned guns.

I know a ton of gun owners in the UK on various forums. Yeah they have to put up with some really stupid rules, but there are still a lot of guns. No semi-autos, but for example, you still have a ton of guys with straight-pull AKs, ARs, FALs, etc. that are still being manufactured and sold there.

Sweden's gun culture is through the roof. One guy I know owns just about any MSR you could think of. The only thing he's had trouble getting is a .50BMG Barrett, as his local police department keeps blocking him, and he's been collecting the necessary paperwork to take them to court.

Germany has one of the highest rates of firearms ownership in Europe - I believe it's something like 40 million guns.

France? No problem to own most MSRs either, but they have very strict rules on what you can and cannot use them for.

Quite a few nice posts on AKfiles from some collectors in Italy who can buy new AKs straight from Izhmash.

When I was living in Spain, my friends' landlord showed us his small collection of Spanish Mausers that he had hidden away since the days of Franco. He said they would be passed down to his sons, that they will never leave the family so long as there is the chance of another Franco in Spain's future - and that chance always looms in the Europe of today.

Swizerland? Serbia? Absolutely overflowing in guns. Really, I could go on...

Yet, talk to a lot of Europeans online, and you'll hear ridiculous BS like "we don't have guns in our country so it's really safe", just before they walk out the door and get stabbed by a Romanian gypsy.

The biggest problem in all of these countries is that many of them do not have legal protections for gun owners to actually use their firearms in a defensive situation and not suffer insane legal consequences as a result.

 

[luke23]

Can we get something straight right now, before this post degenerates into a Brit-bashing session. I do not make the laws, nor do the population. Nor do we have any say in the making of the law. We don't get a vote on the law, and if there is a law we don't like, we can't change it. So having at me on a personal level as some kind of f***wit who enjoys all the crap I have to go through to have guns might get YOU a high, but only serves to p*ss me off substantially. I'm not here as an apologist for the government of the UK, I'm here as a fellow shooter who, in spite of all the hassle, STILL manages to go shooting three or four times a week with any and all the firearms that the law allows. If I lived nearer to a suitable range, I'd have a .50cal something, too, and join the others here in the UK that make up the largest chapter of the .50ca Shooters Association outside the US of A.

I know - we ALL know - how bad it is here from your perspective, but you won't hear THIS boy making disparaging remarks over some of the rather odd laws that you have in the US of A where guns are concerned, or point out ot you the numbers of states where ownership is as restrictive, or even worse, than it is here in UK.

Let's leave it at that before this gets to be a potato that's just too hot to pick up, eh?

tac

Where the hell did that come from? I never personally attacked you or blamed you for anything. I said your country's system doesn't make sense. If you're going to have a stick that far up your bum and lash out, then you shouldn't be online. It'll drive you crazy.

For the record, you've got a lot of awesome things in Britain. Me not liking the gun laws is hardly 'Brit-bashing.' You've got to calm down.

 

[oldmoparbuff]

>>"I do not make the laws, nor do the population. Nor do we have any say in the making of the law. We don't get a vote on the law, and if >>there is a law we don't like, we can't change it." TAC

This is sobering statement, I had to take a second to think about. We as Americans at least think we have some say.
I can appreciate and welcome your perspective.

Easy for us to take things for granted.

At any time during ww2 were citizens armed? Crazy not to.

 

[tac]

>>"I do not make the laws, nor do the population. Nor do we have any say in the making of the law. We don't get a vote on the law, and if >>there is a law we don't like, we can't change it." TAC

This is sobering statement, I had to take a second to think about. We as Americans at least think we have some say.
I can appreciate and welcome your perspective.

Easy for us to take things for granted.

At any time during ww2 were citizens armed? Crazy not to.

Only the paramilitary Home Guard were armed - a kind of last ditch defence in the event of a full-scale invasion. There was also a highly secretive - even to this day - underground army, made up of volunteers who would undertake sabotage and guerilla warfare until killed. The landscape of England it liberally strewn with their underground bunkers, we are told, only a few of which have been revealed to the public. The few survivors from that time are still extremely tight-lipped about it. One recently spoke out on a TV programme [he died shortly afterwards] and said that they expected to survive three days before capture and inevitable execution. The movie from 1964, called AFAIC 'It happened here' was a chilling reminder of how it could have gone.

The only people who would have been armed, if that is the right word to use in country where the police of the time were not, and never had been, would have been farmers and gamekeepers and the odd person who had a gun for fun. There were, however, on a per capita level, far more guns in the general population than is now the case, although that might come as a surprise to you. However, it's as well to note that the United Kingdom was never like much of the United States had been in the 19th century, although we are now told by American historians of the period that that state of affairs was greatly exaggerated.

Just as aside, I actually know of five other people in our village who have 'leisure/sporting/competition' firearms, apart from the inevitable shotguns [I live in a rural part of eastern England]. Person A has three centre-fire target rifles, Person B has one centre-fire and one rimfire target rifle and a sporting rifle, and Person C has a single rimfire pest control rifle in .17HMR. The other two are known to me to be firearms certificate holders, but I don't know what they have - they do not shoot with me. In this area there are probably a hundred shotguns, but I really don't know - that being the average ownership level in this rural part of England. When I go shooting to my range on a sunday morning, I usually pass by at least three organised shoots in the nine mile drive, with eight or ten pickups and other vehicles like Argos and quads.

The AVERAGE level of ownership in my club of just over 300 members is six rifles/handguns. Many of us have more, [I have eighteen] a few, many more. At least one has over fifty, and he is not an FFL/RFD, either. We have club members in the LRBPSA, the MLAGB, the HBSA, NRSA and the British NRA and two, me included, in the real NRA because of our long-time connection with the USA. I joined on July 4th 1976, BTW. Back in the days before the Dunblane massacre, I had 118 handguns, including at least one of every Model 29 ever made up until that date - 47 in all. Many 'escaped' to the USA, a few - very rare - went to the national collection, and the rest were destroyed, it is said, although my three Glocks went straight into the local police HQ armoury.

I was paid an enormous amount of 'compensation' of tax-payers money, although, of course, it was no such thing. At the time I was a serving senior officer in the Army, and due to be promoted one more time, so MY outrage can only be imagined. My 2i/c, a VERY promising officer in every respect, had just one handgun - an old break-open Webley that had belonged to his grandfather. When at home, he used to take the dog for a walk in his 15,000 acre backyard in Scotland, and pot the occasional bunny. Instead of going to Staff College, he told the government to stuff it all where the sun don't shine. With a severely-disabled daughter to make provison for, I swallowed my pride and soldiered on until 2000. Meanwhile, I had grudgingly signed his resignation letter. He went somewhere else, where people are trusted with a little .22 single-shot pistol.

As for the RKBA, no other country on earth has the legal possession of firearms written into its constitution, in the form of an injuncton or otherwise.

Guard this Right with all your might.

tac

PS - I am also the president of the Vintage Classic Rifle Association of Ireland [www.vcrai.com], and can tell you that if you think WE have it hard, you don't know nothin'. Compared to the Republic of Ireland and its very odd 'licensing system' we have it on a plate.