Handgun Laws

[keith_d]

Personally, I'm not in favour of a blanket ban of hand guns or rifles, but it's clear that the licensing process needed some improvements. Depressingly, political policy seems to be driven by tabloid journalism rather than any rational thought in Westminster (again).

All it takes is one maniac riding at 120mph into a queue of school children and bikes will be getting banned too. You can imagine the headlines...

"School death rider hit 195mph before crash"

"Death on our Roads: motorcycles kill more people than guns"

"Motorcycles double plus bad"

"Four wheels good, two wheels bad"

not really too sure although I have voted for the ban. I have served in the army and have handled and fired various guns, I grew up in Germany with my Father in the Army and have been on all sorts of tanks, field guns etc, we used to go out of school and sit on the tank training area in Hohne with the americans, germans, dutch etc and messed around with various guns they had. we also had several run ins with the german police who are all armed.I really dont have a problem with guns. I can understand the attraction of people using guns for shooting as a hobby although it really doesnt interest me. Small target target shooting guns, no problem but why do people want to own uzi's and other machine guns is beyond me. we need better controls of licencing and secure storage rather than an outright ban, but who controls it?

my brother was a firearms officer in kent and I fully support the plod firearms team after seeing some of the scenarios they have to deal with. very few innocent people are killed by the police in reality.

its one of the few areas I will support the plod.

[ophic]

Originally Posted by timwilky

Banning ammunition holding would have been impossible. 90% of my pistol ammo was hand loaded. We had a syndicate going where someone would be remove primers/pressing, another casting bullets, another resizing lubing and then putting together. with multi stage progressive presses you could knock out 100s of rounds/night.

I always thought you were a bit dodgy. I am now convinced that you are, in actual fact, Preston's local gangster boss.

[timwilky]

I was actually in the process of putting some together one afternoon when a couple of Lancashire finest descended on my family home at the time as my younger brother had been upto no good. Having had no luck knocking on the front door, they followed the noise to the garage and walked in on me.

They were interested in the process and even had a go themselves. I have also demonstrated how to reload to my local MP of the time.

An FAC detailed exactly how much ammunition of each calibre you could buy, and how much you could own. I generally applied to hold about 4 times the amount I could buy. From memory it was about 2000 of each of the calibres I owned. However, I would have the supplies quite legally to knock out about 10,000 of any calibre.

You did need to show your FAC to buy large pistol primers, but they were not recorded, nor were you limited in quantity.

[Bri w]

Originally Posted by timwilky

Banning ammunition holding would have been impossible. 90% of my pistol ammo was hand loaded. We had a syndicate going where someone would be remove primers/pressing, another casting bullets, another resizing lubing and then putting together. with multi stage progressive presses you could knock out 100s of rounds/night.

But if someone came to you and said we'll repeal the current gun laws and allow you to hold the arsenal you previously had but you could only do so if your access to ammo was at the range would you be willing to change?

It's a win win. The gun lobby get the access that has been denied to them and the anti gun lobby see an element of control that would help them sleep at night.

And even if a lawfully kept gun was stolen, the fact that no ammo was kept with the gun also gives that element of safety, unless the theif wanted to beat you to death with it.

I have recently obtained my SGC and hope to my get my FAC soon but having spoken lots with my Firearms enquiry officer you need good cause which I dont yet have.

I feel priviledged to own a gun and wish to keep it that way.

As for hand guns, I cant see why you would need one, other than target shooting which I guess is good reason, as for the licensing it is not easy I was heavilly looked into before the grant, and it is constantly monitored.

As for todays occurrences it is so sad.

My 12 yo daughter shoots at school, where she is taught how to handle a weapon responsibly. The slightest horsing around gets a ban from the shooting club, and pointing a gun at someone is an exclusion matter.

In answer to the question - against. It's too rigid.

Being argumentative, and assuming that the gun(s) from today were legally held:

Why are the "mass" killings with legally held guns - just because they are to hand when someone snaps? We hear a lot about illegally held guns and how easy they are supposedly to buy, but why no mass killings with them? (granted, it's not a huge sample)

Originally Posted by Ed

My 12 yo daughter shoots at school, where she is taught how to handle a weapon responsibly. The slightest horsing around gets a ban from the shooting club, and pointing a gun at someone is an exclusion matter.

In answer to the question - against. It's too rigid.

Personally, I'd prefer that guns had been banned altogether if it could have saved the lives of the 12 people killed at random today by an armed nutter.

It's impossible to know how many lives have already been saved by the current handgun bad, but I'm willing to bet that it's quite a few.

The majority of gun owners are responsible, but that doesn't stop the nutjobs from going on killing sprees. For all we know, todays killer may well have been the very model of sensible gun ownership, right up until the point where he went off the rails.

[yorkie_chris]

The loonies tend to be more "normal" people who snap where the gangsters with illegal weapons have snapped a long time since and calmed down a bit, so only shoot the odd rival?
I dunno, I am not a shrink to explain it.

My opinion of it is you can murder someone with a spoon.


Just for laughs here is tale from local gun club, friend of mine had a shotgun since well before the (daft!) law regarding magazine size came in (2+1 only). (This is a guy in late 60s, president of the rifle club, ex MD of million quid company.). Has this gun when the (daft!) magazine size law came in, so moved it from his shotgun cert. onto his FAC.
Come latest FAC renewal cops won't let him keep the gun. What bloody mentalism is that... must be something to do with all the crime he's committed in his last 25 years of owning the thing...