Not what we want to hear........

[philpot]

Today this email came through from Shooting UK which I am not surprised to see but if it goes ahead will create a great deal of issues for those who do not have a firearms license. 

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• March 11, 2023
  

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Proposed changes to the licensing regime would see shotguns treated as strictly as Section 1 firearms, and lead shot is back in the spotlight

TAGS:Shooting Times






The past week has seen two news stories, both recently reported in these pages, turned unfairly against the shooting community.

First came the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) report on the tragic Plymouth shooting where five people were killed. Despite acknowledging that the issuing of murderer Jake Davidson’s initial licence was “attributable to a lack of training, supervision and inadequate force processes” and that the officers who issued his licence renewal should face disciplinary action, the report suggests sweeping changes to firearms licensing anyway.

The proposed changes include making the licensing regime for shotguns as strict as that for Section 1 firearms, such as rifles.




 
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Under this change, shotguns would need to be individually listed and all ammunition would have to appear on the licence too.

Christopher Graffius, BASC’s executive director of communications and public affairs, said: “BASC is clear that we need a system of licensing that protects public safety and also provides an efficient service. It is plain to see that that system was absent in Keyham with tragic consequences. It is obvious from the comments of the coroner and the verdict of the jury at the inquests that the fault lay not with the existing laws but with their inconsistent application by Devon and Cornwall Police.”


 


In another potential blow to our sport, Green Party peer Natalie Bennett is to table a question in the House of Lords, asking Defra what steps it plans to take “to end the use of lead shot in hunting in England”. This follows the Cambridge University report that found 94% of pheasants are still being shot with lead three years into the five-year voluntary ban proposed by the major shooting organisations in February 2022.

 

[perazman]

I really can't see shotguns being listed as sect 1 firearms. The work load would be immense for already over stretched licensing departments and it would provide zero gain to the public.

Laws will change purely as a distraction technique to draw attention away from what was a case of complete police incompetence. There are a lot of 50:50 cases as far as license decisions go but this was black and white. No body required training to know that that idiot shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near a weapon of any sort.

PM.

 

[Paul120]

Yes fix the system that's in place before messing around and more likely than not make it worse. 

Sorry, I went to edit a typo and  deleted most of the txt. 

 

[philpot]

I cannot disagree PM but who knows where this will go if anywhere. It is a fact that by removing police staff from a department, in this case the firearms licensing dept, it cannot function as it should. Having spoken to my area dept on many occassions, they are lovely people who simply cannot keep up with the demand and I do feel sorry for them as they must get so much hassle from people chasing up their tickets.

Scotland went through hell with the stupid law on registering air guns but as shotguns are already listed on our certificates, it would be far less of a job to trace them for any new license. Still a major task, I think we will need a bigger license sheet for cartridge purchases though. 

 

[Westward]

It's Dunblane all over again. Thomas Hamilton should have had his licence revoked several times over after 4 separate people had complained to the police on 7 occasions about his behaviour with guns.

In the aftermath, the  but the police set out to deflected any suggestions of responsibility on their part and successfully put pressure on the government to update the laws. An unneeded and pointless change which meant that some of our Olympic medallists were hugely limited in their ability to practice their sport whilst the law breakers and nut jobs carried on as before.

 

[FESkent]

the Cambridge survey results is vey questionable, 121 of the carcasses contained no shot, so they excluded them from the results, yet they could have all been shot by steel shot which may have passed through the bird or been removed by the game dealer as apparently steel shot in contact with blood for any length of time marks, tarnishes the meat.

The study, undertaken by scientists at University of Cambridge and published in Conservation Evidence Journal can be read here. A team of 17 volunteers scoured shops, butchers and game dealers for Pheasant in late 2022 and early 2023; they managed to round up 356 carcasses.  Of these, 235 contained embedded shotgun pellets. These pellets were then analysed in a laboratory to determine the main metal present – in 94% of them, this was lead.

 

[Salopian]

"235 contained embedded shotgun pellets"  94% were found to be lead !

It is a voluntary decision to not use Lead until 2025 so the SENSIBLE people decided to shoot LEAD.

IT IS NOT ILLEGAL TO USE LEAD !

If it is statistics that you want, here you go " Yesterday I shot 30 pigeons using steel shot .100% contained no lead shot."

 

[Garwood]

the Cambridge survey results is vey questionable, 121 of the carcasses contained no shot, so they excluded them from the results, yet they could have all been shot by steel shot which may have passed through the bird or been removed by the game dealer as apparently steel shot in contact with blood for any length of time marks, tarnishes the meat.

The study, undertaken by scientists at University of Cambridge and published in Conservation Evidence Journal can be read here. A team of 17 volunteers scoured shops, butchers and game dealers for Pheasant in late 2022 and early 2023; they managed to round up 356 carcasses.  Of these, 235 contained embedded shotgun pellets. These pellets were then analysed in a laboratory to determine the main metal present – in 94% of them, this was lead.

What non shooters don`t realise is that there will be a pretty large stock of lead ammunition to use up .I`ve been working through stuff that I already had for the last couple of seasons and still have enough for a year or two !!!!! We lost a year or more with covid ,so its not really a 5 yr transition is it.

 

[FESkent]

"235 contained embedded shotgun pellets"  94% were found to be lead !

It is a voluntary decision to not use Lead until 2025 so the SENSIBLE people decided to shoot LEAD.

IT IS NOT ILLEGAL TO USE LEAD !

If it is statistics that you want, here you go " Yesterday I shot 30 pigeons using steel shot .100% contained no lead shot."

 
"Lies, damned lies, and statistics”

 

[Les53]

Well I would guess that many of us are expecting to see some rather big changes in licensing and lead shot bans in the not too distant future. 
With licensing, yes the police are overworked and under funded as far a gun licensing is concerned. However the system allows each police force to interpret the home office guidelines in whatever way they think best. 
The police will admit that removing most handguns after Dunblane did nothing to reduce gun crime. In fact it’s still rising!!! 
The amount of misuse of legally held guns is minuscule. 
I’ve had FAC’s and SGC’s and to be be honest, if shotgun certificates were operated in the same was as FAC’s I would have saved a lot of money over the years. It would have stopped me impulse buying god knows how many guns!

 

[philpot]

There has been quite a lot of discussion on various face book groups regarding tickets being revoked or the police knocking on the door to do a spot check, I don't know if it is true but in the conversation several people said they ran into some trouble by how they stored their cartridges. I have never had any comments made about where I kept my cartridges.  To be honest that has made me think about how to store my shells, what do you guys do regarding this and what is the legal position on this subject, a topic I want to look into  further.

As Les said, there will be changes so perhaps we cannot just carry on in the same way as we always have done.

Phil

 

[ColinD]

I'm just going to wait and see what comes about, not worth stressing about, it's out of my hands. Mine are stored in the garage, as it's not part of the license requirement to keep them locked up at the moment is it, no matter what the Police who come knocking on your door say.

And if that's part of what they require when they interpret the HO guidelines it's surely up to them to now notify licence holders in their area of the new requirement in the first place

 

[Les53]

There has been quite a lot of discussion on various face book groups regarding tickets being revoked or the police knocking on the door to do a spot check, I don't know it it is true but in the conversation several people said they ran into some trouble by how they stored their cartridges. I have never had any comments made about where I kept my cartridges.  To be honest that has made me think about how to store my shells, what do you guys do regarding this and what is the legal position on this subject, a topic I want to look into  further.

As Les said, there will be changes so perhaps we cannot just carry on in the same way as we always have done.

Phil

By all accounts we only need to make sure ammo is safely stored, out of the way of kids and casual burglars etc. As yet we don’t need to keep ammo in a safe like FAC ammo . However I fear this will come, as maybe will limits on how much ammo we can hold. 
The days of buying a few thousand shells when cheap and shoving them in the garage will soon be a thing of the past I reckon. 
We’re all doomed! As they say! 
Was that Dads Army? Don’t tell him Pyke!

 

[Les53]

I'm just going to wait and see what comes about, not worth stressing about, it's out of my hands. Mine are stored in the garage, as it's not part of the license requirement to keep them locked up at the moment is it, no matter what the Police who come knocking on your door say.

And if that's part of what they require when they interpret the HO guidelines it's surely up to them to now notify licence holders in their area of the new requirement in the first place

Colin, I rather fear that we are all going to be in for a nasty shock, but we needn’t panic ourselves. 
I’ve been a shooter of one sort or another, man and boy, almost all of my life. 
We don’t need to make any knee jerk reactions, we need not panic. Why? 
Simply because the general public and successive governments don’t like guns in private hands! 
We are a minority with a very faint voice, a voice that most politicians and people don’t hear or don’t like.

How do we successfully defend ourselves? We don’t, we never have. 

My great grandson will end up in a U.K. with no legally/privately held guns. It won’t matter, he won’t miss what we had, because he won’t know and nobody will tell him, other than possibly in a negative way. 
Yes this is all very negative, unfortunately where we are now is just the start of something that is possibly worse. 
I shall get my coat. Good evening.

 

[Will Hewland]

I’ve never understood this issue with amount of cartridges held. The idea that you would build a decent bomb by cutting up 10,000 cartridges to amass the propellant is absurd. (And I gather that is what the law is all about). And when on a deranged killing spree, I don’t think anybody has used more than a pocketful of cartridges. A killer on the street armed with 2000 shells would be fairly easy to stop as he’d be knackered from pushing around the wheelbarrow he has them in. 

 

[ColinD]

Colin, I rather fear that we are all going to be in for a nasty shock, but we needn’t panic ourselves. 
I’ve been a shooter of one sort or another, man and boy, almost all of my life. 
We don’t need to make any knee jerk reactions, we need not panic. Why? 
Simply because the general public and successive governments don’t like guns in private hands! 
We are a minority with a very faint voice, a voice that most politicians and people don’t hear or don’t like.

How do we successfully defend ourselves? We don’t, we never have. 

My great grandson will end up in a U.K. with no legally/privately held guns. It won’t matter, he won’t miss what we had, because he won’t know and nobody will tell him, other than possibly in a negative way. 
Yes this is all very negative, unfortunately where we are now is just the start of something that is possibly worse. 
I shall get my coat. Good evening.

You know I've heard this type of talk since I started shooting 23yrs ago. And here we are still shooting, I think we have more to worry about in the lead ban than legislation at the moment imho

 

[Les53]

You know I've heard this type of talk since I started shooting 23yrs ago. And here we are still shooting, I think we have more to worry about in the lead ban than legislation at the moment imho

You could well be right there Colin. 

 

[Daz W]

By all accounts we only need to make sure ammo is safely stored, out of the way of kids and casual burglars etc. As yet we don’t need to keep ammo in a safe like FAC ammo . However I fear this will come, as maybe will limits on how much ammo we can hold. 
The days of buying a few thousand shells when cheap and shoving them in the garage will soon be a thing of the past I reckon. 
We’re all doomed! As they say! 
Was that Dads Army? Don’t tell him Pyke!

Storing shotgun cartridges in a safe would be bonkers. Shotgun cartridges need the chamber of the gun to contain/direct the propulsive force when fired, unlike metallic ammunition, which must be stored at home in a safe.  An uncontained shotgun cartridge in a fire will go bang with minimal force. Put a load of these in a metal safe and you now have a "pressure cooker bomb" . Fire brigade are going to love that. 

Currently we're allowed to store at home 10Kg of "shooters powder", which most people read as approx 10,000 cartridges. Big safe needed for that lot, so if we ever do need to keep them in a safe, the quantities allowed are going to be vastly reduced

Safest place to store shotgun cartridges is in a wooden cupboard so they're hidden away, and the wooden cabinet won't contain the gas pressure build up in the event of a fire. If security over visibility is an issue, then a lockable metal cage.

 

[wynno]

Daz, that’s a very sensible suggestion, however it may be a bit too sensible for those in charge…