Gun control and ownership laws in the UK...

[Zulu Cowboy]

All I have to say is...THANK GOD FOR THE 2ND AMENDMENT!!!

Zulu Cowboy

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Gun control and ownership laws in the UK

BBC News - Gun control and ownership laws in the UK

Thursday, 3 June 2010

By Dominic Casciani BBC News home affairs correspondent

Derrick Bird, who shot dead 12 people in Cumbria, held a firearms licence for 20 years, it has emerged.

Cumbria Police said the taxi driver had a shotgun certificate and a firearms licence for weapons, and he is understood to have been a licensed firearms holder since the age of 32.

Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde said the two weapons they had recovered from Bird, a shotgun and a rifle, appeared similar to those described on the licences, but that officers would need to perform a detailed forensic examination to confirm this.

The UK has some of the toughest gun control laws in the world. If you want to own a gun, it is very difficult to do so.

In the United States, you can declare that it is your constitutional right to bear arms. But in the UK, you need to spend hours filling in paperwork and proving to police officers that you are not a danger to society.

The system is administered by police forces in each part of the UK and in England, Scotland and Wales there are separate licences for shotguns and for other firearms.

Without getting too technical, a shotgun is defined as a weapon with a smooth bore that typically fires no more than two cartridges before reloading. In essence, it is the kind of long-barrelled weapon you would see a farmer or game shooter carrying. A firearm is any other kind of legal gun that fires bullets, including rifles.

According to the most recent figures for England and Wales, there are 138,728 people certificated to hold firearms and they own 435,383 weapons. There are 574,946 shotgun certificates which cover 1.4 million shotguns.

Statistics for Scotland show that 70,839 firearms were held by 26,072 certificate holders at the end of last year. Some 50,000 people in Scotland are certificated to hold shotguns - and 137,768 weapons are covered by that scheme.

Police chiefs can revoke certificates if they conclude that the holder can no longer be trusted. In 2008-09, almost 1,300 certificates were revoked.

In Cumbria, there are 9,868 shotgun certificates covering 22,476 shotguns, figures which are broadly similar to those in other rural counties. Of the 370 new applications between 2008 and 2009, two were refused. Seven licences were revoked.

Getting a licence

Getting a licence is a long and complicated business. Every stage of the process is designed to reduce the likelihood of a gun falling into the wrong hands. It starts with an application form which asks specific questions about why the individual wants a gun, telling them they need to show "good reason".

The criteria are tougher for firearms than shotguns because weapons that fire bullets must only be used for specific purposes in specific places. These would include deer stalking or sports shooting on an approved range.

In contrast, shotguns tend to be used in more general rural circumstances, such as by farmers who are protecting livestock from foxes.

Independent referees provide character statements in which they are expected to answer in detail about the applicant's mental state, home life and attitude towards guns.

Those statements are passed confidentially to the police and are not seen by the applicant.

Police will often speak to an applicant's GP and look at their medical records for a history of alcoholism, drug abuse or signs of personality disorder.

Finally, senior officers will only approve an application if the prospective certificate holder has a secure location for the weapons, such as a gun cabinet.

'Piecemeal laws'

Simon Clarke from the British Association of Shooting and Conservation says that whatever the merits of the certificate system, the wider law around gun control has never been properly thought through in the UK.

"The legislation has built up piecemeal since 1920 when they were worried about soldiers who had returned from World War I and the revolutionary fervour [of the times]," he said. "Since then, it's been quite reactive."

The 1920 Firearms Act introduced registration and gave chief constables the power to refuse licences. The rules were tightened 7 years later with a ban on the fully automatic weapons of the day. In the 1960s, Parliament ordered the control of shotguns and consolidated all the measures to date in one major act.

But the two most important laws came in the wake of two national tragedies.

Gun conversions

Michael Ryan's massacre of 16 people in Hungerford in 1987 led to the banning of all modern semi-automatic rifles and a range of guns that are capable of firing rapidly without needing to be reloaded.

Nine years later, Thomas Hamilton killed 16 schoolchildren and their teacher when he opened fire at a school in Dunblane. Parliament banned all handguns and there is now a mandatory five-year jail sentence for possession.

There are also laws banning the sale or manufacture of realistic imitation firearms because police say criminals know how to convert them into guns that can fire live ammunition.

The most recent restrictions in 2006 angered many gun enthusiasts, including historians and collectors, who said that it criminalised people with an entirely lawful interest in firearms. The law allows people to hold imitation weapons for specific purposes, such as re-enactments - the enthusiasts say the law has been drawn far too tightly.

But criminal conversion of fake guns concerns many senior police officers. The latest gun to be banned is the Olympic .380 BBM revolver, a cheap blank-firing pistol held aloft by officials who start races at sporting events.

Police say it has become popular among criminals in London because they have worked out how to convert it into a real gun. The amnesty to hand them in ends on 4 June.

Police figures show that there were 39 firearms-related deaths in 2008-09 and that seven of these involved a shotgun. That total was the lowest recorded by the police in 20 years. Guns play a role in just 0.3% of all recorded crimes - one in every 330 incidents.

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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material in this post is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes…

[Handsome Rob]

And people ask me why we moved here....

As complicated as it sounds on paper to own any kind of firearm in the UK, the reality is far, far tougher. Even Air rifles are strictly regulated. The legal limit for any air-weapon to be held without a firearms licence is 12ft/lb. That's about 2/3rds the power of anything Walmart sells. Any police officer has the right to confiscate ANY air rifle, to be tested (at their leisure) for power output. Even if th rifel is underthe legal limit, but the testing officer can modify it to shoot over the limit by any means the rifleis deemed to be illegal & you will be arrested for possession of a section 5 firearm.

The paranoia surrounding guns or shooting in the UK, even out in the country where I'm from, is astounding. I gave up telling people about my hunting trips to the US, Africa, Europe & Australia years ago, simply because I got sick of justifying & defnding myself to others.

Seriously, I cannot express how grateful I am for having the opportunity to move here & enjoy the freedoms you guys have. Please don't ever take them for granted!

[gnmwilliams]

I wonder how many stabbings and beatings they have then since people will still find a way to hurt other people if they want.

[Zulu Cowboy]

L. Neil Smith's Webley Page

Why Did it Have to be ... Guns?

by L. Neil Smith

lneil@lneilsmith.org

Over the past 30 years, I've been paid to write almost two million words, every one of which, sooner or later, came back to the issue of guns and gun-ownership. Naturally, I've thought about the issue a lot, and it has always determined the way I vote.

People accuse me of being a single-issue writer, a single- issue thinker, and a single- issue voter, but it isn't true. What I've chosen, in a world where there's never enough time and energy, is to focus on the one political issue which most clearly and unmistakably demonstrates what any politician—or political philosophy—is made of, right down to the creamy liquid center.

Make no mistake: all politicians—even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership—hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician—or political philosophy—can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash—for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything—without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude—toward your ownership and use of weapons—conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

If he doesn't want you to have the means of defending your life, do you want him in a position to control it?

If he makes excuses about obeying a law he's sworn to uphold and defend—the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights—do you want to entrust him with anything?

If he ignores you, sneers at you, complains about you, or defames you, if he calls you names only he thinks are evil—like "Constitutionalist"—when you insist that he account for himself, hasn't he betrayed his oath, isn't he unfit to hold office, and doesn't he really belong in jail?

Sure, these are all leading questions. They're the questions that led me to the issue of guns and gun ownership as the clearest and most unmistakable demonstration of what any given politician—or political philosophy—is really made of.

He may lecture you about the dangerous weirdos out there who shouldn't have a gun—but what does that have to do with you? Why in the name of John Moses Browning should you be made to suffer for the misdeeds of others? Didn't you lay aside the infantile notion of group punishment when you left public school—or the military? Isn't it an essentially European notion, anyway—Prussian, maybe—and certainly not what America was supposed to be all about?

And if there are dangerous weirdos out there, does it make sense to deprive you of the means of protecting yourself from them? Forget about those other people, those dangerous weirdos, this is about you, and it has been, all along.

Try it yourself: if a politician won't trust you, why should you trust him? If he's a man—and you're not—what does his lack of trust tell you about his real attitude toward women? If "he" happens to be a woman, what makes her so perverse that she's eager to render her fellow women helpless on the mean and seedy streets her policies helped create? Should you believe her when she says she wants to help you by imposing some infantile group health care program on you at the point of the kind of gun she doesn't want you to have?

On the other hand—or the other party—should you believe anything politicians say who claim they stand for freedom, but drag their feet and make excuses about repealing limits on your right to own and carry weapons? What does this tell you about their real motives for ignoring voters and ramming through one infantile group trade agreement after another with other countries?

Makes voting simpler, doesn't it? You don't have to study every issue—health care, international trade—all you have to do is use this X-ray machine, this Vulcan mind-meld, to get beyond their empty words and find out how politicians really feel. About you. And that, of course, is why they hate it.

And that's why I'm accused of being a single-issue writer, thinker, and voter.

But it isn't true, is it?

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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material in this post is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes…

[mcurrier]

I wonder how many stabbings and beatings they have then since people will still find a way to hurt other people if they want.

Psssst...buddy....wanna buy a brick?