No laffin - the Great British Shooting show

[tac]

It's an annual event, and this year, for the second time, it's held in the national Exhibition Centre [NEC] near Birmingham airport - with easy access from all over Yoorup.

I know you must be laffin' yourselves f*rtless by now, imagining how on earth the UK manages to host the largest shooting show that is open to the public outside the USA. Remember that the German show, IWA, is for the trade, not the shooters. However, it's true, and having been there myself, I can confide in you that it really is HUGE, even by US standards. This year they are expecting around 100,000 visitors over the three days. Not to be sniffed at, you may or may not agree.

Here is the link to the catalogue of attendants -

Showguide 2019 - Shooting Show

Needless to say, there will be a lot of US-based company representation, as well as all the names from British gun-making and custom rifle and shotgun builders for those who still have any money left. Last year the combined value of the guns on display on the Cogswell and Harrison stand was a tad over 2.3 Million dollars...and then there were Churchill, Purdey, William Evans and Rigby, too. In fact, if you make guns, deal in guns, new or secondhand, wear shooting clothing, and look through glass by day or night - everything to do with shooting and the attendant activities, it will be here next weekend.

You won't see me there, though, I'm too poor the afford the entry fee of £17/$22 - that's 176 dog dollars!!!

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[DuneHopper]

Wonder what kind of security checks they do, bet its very intense.

 

[Stomper]

176 dog collars.....

 

[tac]

Wonder what kind of security checks they do, bet its very intense.

Nope. Here in yUK we don't walk around with guns like you do. And bringing guns to be sold is not part of the ethos of European gun shows. In any event, the guns themselves are secured to the tables and you can bet that, this being the UK, there's probably at least one CCTV for everybody in the halls.

Buying a gun there is OK, though, as your firearms certificate will already be made up for you to make the purchase and acquisition. IOW, if you go to the show with the intention of buying a gun, your FAC will already have been granted in respect of that gun - like - 'Permission is hereby granted to acquire and possess 1 [ONE] .308 Winchester calibre rifle.' No other method is possible.

 

[DuneHopper]

Nope. Here in yUK we don't walk around with guns like you do. And bringing guns to be sold is not part of the ethos of European gun shows. In any event, the guns themselves are secured to the tables and you can bet that, this being the UK, there's probably at least one CCTV for everybody in the halls.

Buying a gun there is OK, though, as your firearms certificate will already be made up for you to make the purchase and acquisition. IOW, if you go to the show with the intention of buying a gun, your FAC will already have been granted in respect of that gun - like - 'Permission is hereby granted to acquire and possess 1 [ONE] .308 Winchester calibre rifle.' No other method is possible.

Seems like a complicated process, I think sometimes we forget over here how easy it still is to carry, buy, and possess allot of varied types of firearms. Don't get me wrong, the laws here are far and over reaching, but by design that's how our countries rights are written. Thats why we here should never take for granted that 2nd Amendment, for its inclusive rights only exist here. Still love to see firearms at that show, as there is much there I am sure we seldom if ever see here. Sorry you can't go love to see pictures, but ya that price tag is high to get in. There is a Gun show here today. 6.00 to get in... of course maybe 300 people in this one. I was going to go, but naw I don't need anything, and need to spend extra on the Granddaughters room so when she comes over she has her own place.
I digress, sounds interesting, do you know if there is a place that shows these guns shows after the event as in reporting or pics?

 

[MountainBear]

I couldn't afford to even drool on the tables of the Fine London gun makers. But I'd go just to see them up close.

 

[tac]

Seems like a complicated process, I think sometimes we forget over here how easy it still is to carry, buy, and possess allot of varied types of firearms. Don't get me wrong, the laws here are far and over reaching, but by design that's how our countries rights are written. Thats why we here should never take for granted that 2nd Amendment, for its inclusive rights only exist here. Still love to see firearms at that show, as there is much there I am sure we seldom if ever see here. Sorry you can't go love to see pictures, but ya that price tag is high to get in. There is a Gun show here today. 6.00 to get in... of course maybe 300 people in this one. I was going to go, but naw I don't need anything, and need to spend extra on the Granddaughters room so when she comes over she has her own place.
I digress, sounds interesting, do you know if there is a place that shows these guns shows after the event as in reporting or pics?

Yup, See it all on Youtube - just look for the Great British shooting show - last year's has been there since, uh, last year.

 

[Certaindeaf]

Last gun show I went to in Europe was WWll.









Not really

 

[tac]

Seems like a complicated process, I think sometimes we forget over here how easy it still is to carry, buy, and possess allot of varied types of firearms. Don't get me wrong, the laws here are far and over reaching, but by design that's how our countries rights are written. Thats why we here should never take for granted that 2nd Amendment, for its inclusive rights only exist here. Still love to see firearms at that show, as there is much there I am sure we seldom if ever see here. Sorry you can't go love to see pictures, but ya that price tag is high to get in. There is a Gun show here today. 6.00 to get in... of course maybe 300 people in this one. I was going to go, but naw I don't need anything, and need to spend extra on the Granddaughters room so when she comes over she has her own place.
I digress, sounds interesting, do you know if there is a place that shows these guns shows after the event as in reporting or pics?

If you go back to one of my early posts, that should have been made into a sticky, it gives great detail about what we have to do over here on mainland UK to acquire a firearm or shotgun.

Lemme try and find it and I'll repost it.

Hey, lookit that!!! Dint take long, eh?

SLONG!!!!!!

I was chatting to the webmaster the other day, who happened to mention my different POV and that it was welcome here on our great site. So I then thought, hey, let's try out all this fuzzy and huggy fellow-shooter feeling by telling you about what is actually entailed in getting into TARGET shooting sports in the UK these days. Game-shooting- that is to say, what you call deer-hunting/goats and so on, as well as shotgunning for clays, is a whole different ballgame, and if anybody is interested in that, I can do a similar post based on it.

Here goes - I warn you now, it's pretty hard reading for most Americans, used to a different style of gun ownership, but here we just get on with it, or do without and, take up spoon-collecting. Even so, some of us, like me, do both. Remember that shooting sports here in UK are the invisible earner, with well over $3Billion going into the coffers every year from shooting sports and associated business of one kind or another. We also have, right here in UK, the second largest group of .50cal and associated large-calibre rifle shooters outside of North America, as wells as the largest and longest rifle ranges in entire Europe and Scandinavia.

Oh yes, apologies, in advance...

Here in UK, you - a never-before-interested-in-shooting-person-who nevertheless would like to know what all the fuss is about - goes along with a pal to his gun club as a guest [12 a year, for members to show their spousal units and pals/colleagues what they get up to], and think to yourself, WOW!!! I could get interested in THAT for sure!

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooo,

1. You join a gun-club that does the kind of shooting that you think will appeal to you. Apart from a few commercial ranges - not open to the general public who are not part of the firearms industry, and a VERY few private individuals who have their own land and facilities, there are NO ranges that do not have gun-clubs, and NO gun-clubs who do not have ranges. EVERY range in the country is an official government-sanctioned range, and EVERY gun-club per se is part of the National Rifle Association or National Small-bore Rifle Association. So every member of every gun-club right from the start is also a member of either or both of these two national associations, by association. That's the insurance thing settled.

2. You serve a six-month probationary time, during which you learn all about shooting lots of different guns and disciplines by shooting lots of different guns and taking part in different disciplines. Most noobs get a mite bewildered by the club members offering them lots of different guns to shoot [I have nineteen, so it can take a while], and most, at first, ask if they can pay for the ammunition. The answer to tosh like this is simple - when YOU are a full member, YOU let a noob shoot your gun, and pass it all on along, right? You CAN buy ammunition at the club, in the five calibres for which we have club rifles and carbines, but you cannot take it away with you. However, you can, if you wish, take empties away for future use for reloading when you get your FAC. Here in UK, and in the rest of the world, except for the Republic of Ireland, an empty cartridge case is a piece of brass with a hole in each end, and not any kind of live round. The only guns you cannot shoot are shotguns that shoot more than three rounds [yes, we do practical shotgun here], or any shotgun firing slugs [yes, we do practical shotgun here], or any kind of long-barrelled handgun of the kind permitted on mainland UK. Northern Ireland does NOT subscribe to this latter geas, BTW, and you can shoot anything that another club member puts in your hand. This sad stricture is a Home Office thing, and applies to EVERYBODY, not just noobies/probies.

3. During this time, you are, of course, being watched like a hawk by everybody for anything odd that might give people cause for concern about your suitability to own firearms of any kind. Standing in a corner muttering to people that only you can see is a surefire way of NOT getting any kind of gun certificate, and after a while, when it's obvious that you have a real problem distinguishing the REAL reality from YOUR version of it, you'll be asked to leave and not come back, thanks . Many of us shooters are a mite odd, but just not THAT odd. And anyhow, shooting is a social thing - people who do it like to talk to other people about it. This is called 'instinctive teaching' or, more correctly, 'bragging'. If you don't like to talk to people, then you are most likely not a suitable candidate for any kind of shooting sport. Michael Ryan, the Hungerford mass-murderer, wasn't a member of a gun club, and didn't like people much, as he later proved by killing sixteen of them, including his mother, and wounding over thirty others. Here in yUK we like to think that the way that the application form is laid out, and the conditions demanded in it, render this kind of appalling act of violence 99.999% unlikely these days.

4. You are tested, at least twice, on safety and safe handling and general knowledge on the firearms scene.

5. At the end of the six months, the secretary tells you that you have done just fine, takes a pile of money off you for full membership of the club and advises you to go ahead and fill out your application for a firearms certificate - the FAC - on which you may ask for the guns that you think that you would like to shoot. It is at this point that you suddenly realise that the very first referee in the application IS the club secretary, and weren't you glad that you behaved and did all that was required of you in terms of attendance and demonstration of good and safe handling an gun etiquette et al? So, your first application will be multiple firearms - usually a .22 rimfire rifle or carbine, a .223 centre-fire rifle or carbine, maybe a .308Win for target work, maybe a 38/357 or .44/44 underlever rifle or carbine for the sheer fun of it, any kind of black powder firearm or rifle, carbine or handgun [of the kind permitted on mainland UK]. You also ask for as much ammunition for each gun that you think that you will need at any one time. You provide two referees who have known you for at least two years - NOT a serving police officer, or official of the club or any person with a police record, and give permission for the licensing authority to ASK your GP if you are a drugee or epileptic or habitual user of hallucinogenic powders or liquids. Alcoholism IS a problem, if you are a noted or documented sot, as is any record of violence, threat of violence or the threat of or use of threatening behaviour. Having such a record on, uh, record, will usually stop your application dead in the water. However, carrying out acts of extreme violence, such as the killing of sundry foreigners on behalf of the wishes of the government of the day, either singly or en masse, does not count, as you were plainly carrying out your patriotic duty in obeying your superior officer at that time. Note that you will have made a declaration to the fact that you are NOT a drugee or epileptic, nor in the habit of taking mind-altering meds etc, in the body of the FAC application form. Lying about this will get you 3 - 5 years grey hotel vacation time, as the application form is, in UK legal terms, a sworn document, and you will be rightly guilty of attempting to obtain a firearm/firearms by deception.

6. You buy and fit a suitable gun-safe - there in UK they are ALL made in UK, unless, of course, you are stupendously rich, and can afford the Browning items - they are all evaluated and physically tested to the same standard. Nothing else is permitted, not even, as I saw once, a refrigerator converted into a 'gun-safe' and painted a natty shade of Hammerite silvery blue. Note that the fitting of a domestic alarm is NOT a compulsory requirement, until you have around 12 or 16 Section 1 firearms. I live in an outlying village, so it makes sense to have one, so I have two. Here it makes not the slightest difference in the level of police response, no matter how many and of what kinds your alarms. If you get burglarised then the police will come round the next morning, maybe flap a few bits of paper around - even take a photograph or two for the station album to show willing, give you a crime number and b&gger off. You are unlikely ever to see them or hear from the again unless your guns were stolen, in which case they get a trifle concerned, make a note of your FAC details and circulate a list of your guns around the nation. Given the extreme unlikelihood of any self-respecting crook holding up a corner store with your 1862 Snider or F-Class target rifle and getting caught in the act, that is the last you'll ever hear of it. When I asked if any enhanced level of response in terms of rapidity of attendance might accrue from having a monitored alarm system fitted, one wag in uniform said that tearing round to the location with 'blues and twos' alight in an immediate response to 'attend the scene of the crime' was unlikely in the extreme, since the miscreants were, at that very moment, armed, albeit with MY guns. Suffice it to say that where I live, the Chief Constable supports the idea of people having monitored alarms, in spite of the fact that the Home Office guidelines make absolutely NO mention of the necessity for fitting even a basic system. The words say ' secure accommodation', so if you have seen any crime-buster TV programmes where the boys in blue have been trying to gain access to some scumbag's dreary little domestic unit on a sh&tty estate in Buttwipeville-on-Glum, you'll have seen with your own eyes just how hard it is to gain any kind of access to a house fitted with even the most basic modern double-glazing uPVC doors and windows, let alone do it surrepticiously.

We digress.

Back to the process.......A couple of weeks after sending in your application, the Firearms Enquiries Officer [a civilian from the County police HQ who works for the Explosives and Firearms Licensing Department] comes around for coffee and biscuits, finds that you are what you say you are, checks out your safe, mentally agrees with your referees, shakes your hand and bids you good day. In our club - that straddles two county boundaries and has members coming from as far away as the south Coast - at least 150 miles in a straight line - there are six such people - invariably shooters of all kinds themselves. Widely experienced in most, if not all aspects of the shooting sports, they are usually retirees from the police or military or conservation, in one case, all three. Two other club members are also instructors and authorisers for the British Deer Society, and can teach you how to carve up a dead deer. Apparently there is currently a super-abundance of things - like about 180,000 too many, and to hear BASC talk, you might imagine that the roadsides are piled high with their starving corpses. This is not so. In spite of what you might think, the UK is not all like London, and there are substantial open spaces for the blighters to live and breed. One pal of mine has 48,000 dreary acres of featureless granite hillsides in Scotland, and along with many American shooting tourists, kills around 1200-1500 a year...

Concentrate, tac....

7. Your FAC plops into your mail box a couple of weeks later, and off you go to the gun dealer to spend all your money on guns, and, if you want to give it a try, any and all reloading gear to get you started making your own ammunition, like 90% of all other shooters do here.

8. After a while, you give another discipline a try and find that it takes your interest, so you apply for a variation to your FAC for another firearm of the type you wish to shoot. It costs £40 to do this, but if you wait until renewal time, it's free. Same if you wish to swap out same-calibre guns on a one-for-one basis.

9. Your FAC lasts five years and costs, ATM, £60. Renewing it does not require you to justify your reasons all over again - you've already done that over the previous five years, and, in any case, anything aberrant that might cause concern has been notified to the licensing authority by the club secretary...it is not being a snitch, it is his or her legal duty to do so as part of the Home Office guidelines he or she has agreed to abide by on taking on the duty. Any infringement of range safety that shows that you are acting irresponsibly where live firearms are concerned is, of course, a matter for everybody around you, and whereas a simple and thoughtless action such as touching your gun while folks are forward of the firing point will earn you a loud ticking off, pointing it at anybody with obvious malice will get you kicked out of the club instantly and permanently. The club sec is obliged to inform the licensing authority without delay, and you WILL lose your FAC as a result. No club membership = no 'good reason' to own any target firearm, since that is THE condition under which you are able to acquire and possess a firearm in the fust place. Since the inception of the UK's HOLMES [yup, true], that information will have been passed to all 51 mainland county licensing departments and the PSNI, and you'll have to take up knitting or something like it. Unless you live in Maryland, where knitting is banned, at least, in public view.

As with most things, the more you do, the more you learn, and you improve as you get more familiar with your guns. There are always club coaches, like me, an NRA coach and British Disabled Shooting Association instructor, to help and advise, and the opportunity for you to put something back into the club by doing an RCO course, like almost 30% of our 300+ membership has already done.

I've been asked by an interested person on another site if all this personal instruction/mentoring and so on costs the probie anything extra to his or her initial joining fee.

'course not. Everybody HAS to learn initially and safety is of paramount importance where firearms are concerned. It stands to reason that somebody who is safe and sure in his or her handling of guns is, uh, safe and sure...experience comes with confident handling of the firearm, and that comes with use and 'doing it' under the watchful eyeball of the person alongside you on the firing line.

The only things that cost are extra-mural courses like those run by the NRA at Bisley, and the RCO qualification course that so many of our club have successfully completed. It is usual to save up the number of applicants to around ten or so, and get the peripatetic NRA RCO course instructor to come to us - cheaper all round, too. I mentioned already that we have a number of club members who are instructors for the British Deer Society qualifications, at all three levels of expertise, but that's really outside the remit of this post, which is primarily concerned with the target-shooting aspect of shooting sports.

I'll answer questions put to me in a civil manner - what else, you might ask, on THIS site? Friends, you'd be amazed at the cr*p I get on a few other sites I write on, and if you think my handle is familiar, then you'll know what I'm talking about.

Shooters in UK are a taking part in a minority - but withal one that is growing in spite of all the flaming hoops we have to jump through. I'm also the president of the Vintage Classic Rifle Association of Ireland, too, and, trust me on this one, if you want wacky rules/laws/hinderances inflicted on you in stellar amounts, it is to Ireland that you'll have to go, not UK.

By comparison with Ireland, the UK is getting no hassle at all.

Hope this is useful.

tac

 

[DuneHopper]

If you go back to one of my early posts, that should have been made into a sticky, it gives great detail about what we have to do over here on mainland UK to acquire a firearm or shotgun.

Lemme try and find it and I'll repost it.

Hey, lookit that!!! Dint take long, eh?

tac

Very good read, thanks for supplying it.

I am kinda a history buff on American firearms past,and present.

I noticed reading how much the clubs of today in the UK, are allot like how the original NRA was.
Originally our NRA was a shooting club with proficiency and safety as a number one goal.
They were for home ownership, but not for safety purposes, not really.
But were against carrying a firearm, open or concealed which kinda shocked me based on how they see things today. And the NRA did not think hand held firearms, pistols and alike were needed.
Hence the National " Rifle "Association.

In the beginning the NRA here was a gentlemen club for shooting enthusiast.
The goal was for hunting and for target shooting proficiency. They did not even touch on self defense.
While our 2nd Amendment does grant people here the ability to own firearm, its only been the last 60 years or less that protection became the forefront of the NRA here. The southern Democrats out numbered the NRA membership of any other party when it started. Interesting how things migrate to change as time moves on.
But how similar the NRA once was to the clubs in the UK now is very interesting.

Again Thank You, @tac, that was a great read... shed a bright light of understanding I didn't have.


DH

 

[tac]

The British NRA, of course, was founded in the late 1850s to promote civilian marksmanship in response to the perceived threat from Les Frogs [again]. Having just had them as allies in the war against Russia in the Crimea - using the same recently-invented Minié bullet in our rifled muskets - the British government was keeping a wary eye on the machinations of Napoleon III, whose main claim to fame in your recent WoNA was the widespread use of a field gun named after him.

I digress.

The result here in UK was the formation of what you would rightly call a militia - the Volunteer organisation. Many of the British Army's current regiments were founded in this manner by aristocrats effectively raising their own regiments of infantry and cavalry. Over in Canada, Lord Strathcona did the very same thing. Many of these regiments of brightly-uniformed soldiery went on to become the Territorial Army that performed with such initial blinding success in the early days of WW1, until they were all killed. And replaced with millions of conscripts or volunteers, a million of whom got killed, my own grandfather among them. He volunteered a week before war was declared, but he was a scrapper anyhow.

Now the NRA is a very vibrant [they say] movement for the good of the shooting sports, and the offshoot, the NSRA deals with the .22 shooting sports. There is also the National Rimfire Benchrest Association and the Muzzle loading Association of GB, as well as the Historical Breechloading Small Arms Association and the Vintage Arms Association, all of whom are affiliated to the NRA. the NRA's HQ is Bisley Camp located SW of London in the county of surrey, and location of the longest target shooting ranges in Europe and Scandinavia, apart from a few privately run specialist ranges like Orion, and shared military facilities like the one in South Wales, Sennybridge, that goes out to 4000m. My own local long range is located at Barton, just West of Cambridge, and is a beautifully-kept ETR rifle range from 100m to 1000m with full-time military range wardens in charge.

I might have mentioned before that we are required to keep all our guns at home, unless you have a Section 5 FAC, in which case you have to keep it, and the ammunition, at one of eleven designated locations in England. Less about that, the better.

No CCW here, unless you live in Northern Ireland and have a genuine need, having been targetted by the various terrorist organisations that seem to be operating over there. There are, right now, about 3500 such permits issued, as well as the pistols that go with them.

 

[pharmseller]

You lost me at probation.

I hated probation.





P

 

[DuneHopper]

I will say having a CC here, is in its self, is a culture.
We seem to carry very high managing our own protection from those that will have equal or greater
weapons to cause harm against us. Not sure I can imagine not having that security interest.

 

[MannyGlocks]

tac,

On another note: Are you a reader of Andy McNab, one time SAS soldier, business man and prolific writer?

I'm on a reading binge of his books, including the non-fiction one where he's found to be a psychopath, but a good one.

 

[tac]

Yes, I've read a lot of Mr McNab's stuff, but I've never paid to do so.

 

[LaVbRef]

Fascinating and thanks for posting