Air pistols & guns. Time for them to be licensed?

[Jemima Puddl]

As has already been stated many times in this thread the laws are already in place to control all and any antisocial or sociopathic behaviour involving airguns but they are not used.

 

What is the point of adding to the long list of already available but unused laws?

[Halibut]

Welcome to the forum cinstone and congratulations on an excellent first post.

[s410]

gun shops should just stop selling the cheaper guns cause all these chavs go out and spend £20-£100 on a gun that is not very well made they wouldnt go out and spend a couple of hundred quid on a gun would they

[cinstone]

Hello again all & hello Halibut. There has been several polls on similar forums to this one, so I've had some practice!

 

s410;- I think you will know this already, but just for thoughs of you that don't, I think most reputable gun shops don't sell the inferior Chinese copies of decent well engineered rifles. It's mostly the small shops such as fishing tackle shops & small outlets that sell these. The Violent Crime Reduction Bill should, in theory, change this as the only folk allowed to sell any air gun as a business will be registered firearms dealers. However, I feel that this new law has & will cause problems. Not for scum who use these guns illegally, or for responsible shooters. The problem will be to the retailers themselves.

 

You see, a lot of the small outlets/secondhand shops don't know anything about the V.C.R bill. For example, in March this year I was on hol's in The Lakes. My girlfriend & I was in a secondhand/curio' shop, having a mooch around. Right up near the ceilling hanging up was, I think a Henal .22 air rifle. It was nice & if it was .177" I'd have had it myself, but the point is, we got chatting & he new nothing about the V.C.R bill. To this end, some of the V.C.R bill was delayed from coming into force until October this year, when all of it should have come into force last April. Not that the V.C.R bill will do anything to anyone except law abiding, responsible shooters, that will not be able to buy rifles or pistols via mail order anymore, which may mean lack of competition & higher prices for the equipment involved.

 

This part of the V.C.R bill has already seen a couple of quite large reputable mail order dealers stop selling air rifles themselves & a number of smaller reputable shops closed down alltogether.

 

Another slant on this part of the V.C.R bill is that buzz word of the moment the "environment".

 

If I want a rifle, for example, there is a very reasonably priced shop in the North West of England, that, by & large have the best, or nearly the best prices for rifles, pistols & related equipment. Come October I will be unable to purchase these via the internet or mail order via the telephone & I will, in reallity, have two options. 1, Have the rifle delivered to a local firearms dealer at extra expence, or 2, Drive approx' 160 miles each way to get what I want.

 

Now a rough calculation tells me that 320 miles will be about 8-9 gallons of petrol that I would not have had to use. The item would have been posted with Royal Mail or some other courier, in a vehicle already making the journey with possibly hundreds of other parcels, thus being much more environmentally friendly. Yet again a rule/law from the government, may be only in a small way, affects the "government line" on another rule/law. Still, they can waste all the tax from the petrol on something else I suppose!

[Tony]

So what is the problem with needing a license if you're a responsible user?

[Jemima Puddl]

"most" drugs you od on ARE banned?

 

All the behaviour that you are worried about concerning airguns is already against the law!

[melthebell]

All the behaviour that you are worried about concerning airguns is already against the law!

 

i just think its a major confusion finding out how old people are, where they are, where they bought it, what theyre doing etc etc

 

if there was a blanket license thing

somebody gets seen with one "have you got license?"

"no" "your nicked"

 

at the minute theres too many little bits of rules that confuse people, and most people DO still see them as toys as somebody already said.

but with all that there should also be education about em, the dangers , any new rules and maybe an amnesty.

 

and yes i know you always get the illegal holders, i just think itd be easier to spot those using em illegally

[Jemima Puddl]

i just think its a major confusion finding out how old people are, where they are, where they bought it, what theyre doing etc etc

 

if there was a blanket license thing

somebody gets seen with one "have you got license?"

"no" "your nicked"

 

at the minute theres too many little bits of rules that confuse people, and most people DO still see them as toys as somebody already said.

but with all that there should also be education about em, the dangers , any new rules and maybe an amnesty.

 

and yes i know you always get the illegal holders, i just think itd be easier to spot those using em illegally

 

If they are in a public place (other than a gun shop or range of course) and the gun is not in a bag or container then they are using them illegally! ie. if you spot them there is a 99% chance they are already breaking the law unless you are trespassing.

[Rigel]

I don't believe that air weapons should be licensed. It is the most simple and cost-effective method of entry into the world of Shooting Sports, and licensing would dissuade many eager young boys and girls who currently provide a much-needed pest control service to farmers and landowners the length and breadth of the country. They provide this service for free, and gain valuable experience and maturity in so doing. Why should the sensible majority suffer beacuse of the idiot minority? Why introduce yet another level of bureaucracy to what has traditionally been a simple and relatively cheap pastime?

 

Let me explain further:

 

We already have some of the toughest and most draconian firearms laws in the world. Pistols have been banned for 10 years following the tragic events of Dunblane, and where has all these new laws and bans got us, exactly? Gun crime is up, year on year, and yet those weapons used in crime are not legitimately held weapons: they are illegal, unlicensed weapons, a great many of which have been smuggled in from Eastern Europe on the back of the drugs trade.

 

Why has a complete ban on pistols resulted in even more handgun crime since the ban came into force?

 

What makes any of you think for one moment that the licensing of air weapons would buck the current handgun trend?

 

The handgun surrender following Dunblane cost the taxpayer £94 million. That was over only 57,000 pistol shooters. The estimated figure for the number of air weapons in circulation is anywhere between 4 and 6 million. The glaringly obvious disparity between these two situations is simply this: handguns were strictly licensed and controlled prior to the ban; the police held the name and address of every single licence holder, and therefore the surrender was relatively easy to administer. In contrast, air weapons have not been subject to any form of administrative recording or control, save for the minimum age of purchase and a relatively recent introduction which requires the first purchaser of a new air weapon to give his or her name and address to the vendor, who must record it. Note the term “first purchaser”: should that person sell his air rifle on, he is not required by law to obtain any details from the buyer whatsoever. When you then factor in the large number of airguns which have historically been passed down through family generations, a cumbersome and complex picture begins to emerge which renders any such call for airgun licensing as naïve, simplistic and unworkable.

 

Any airgun licensing system will only affect bona-fide sporting shooters who face ever tougher legislation and licensing regulations - the very people who act responsibly with weapons are the ones who are punished with increasing bureaucracy and additional expense!

 

The scrotes of course will carry on regardless; with such a large number of airguns already in circulation, Johnny Scrote and his mates will have a ready-made black market from which to select his next “Cat Killer.”

 

There are plenty of laws available to deal with irresponsible miscreants who misuse and abuse air weapons, but those laws are not enforced!

 

We do not need yet more legislation. What we need is an effective and efficient Police Force who are willing to protect public safety by actively pursuing wrongdoers with air weapons and prosecuting those offenders accordingly. The laws are there, and sentences are tough - they simply have to be used.

[TimeTravelle]

because at the minute ANY idiot can buy and carry one

with a license most wont be bothered, people with criminal records wont get, anybody caught without one would be in bother.

people will always get illegal guns but licensing the good may make it easy to spot the bad

 

And at the moment any potential killer can acquire an already banned and illegal firearm. It's naive to think this will stop crime. When will people learn that banning / licensing isn't the answer ... the answer is to properly and wholly rigorously enforce the existing laws and not let chavs etc .. off the hook.

 

And, just for your information, air rifles perform important pest control functions and I'd suggest that just because you're unaware of it, doesn't make it illigitimate.