Been a few days to digest the sad events up in Cumbria and the inevitable question of how did the guy come to have a gun. The guns he used were legally owned guns and it raises the question of whether we need even tighter laws than we have at present.
So - my twopenneth…
I can’t understand (maybe cos I am a townie) why we allow anyone (with the exception of farmers) to own and keep a gun at their home? If you enjoy shooting things - and some people do - why not just go join a gun club. The guy was a taxi driver ffs. He has no business with a gun other than for the “leisure” persuit of going into the country and shooting things.
Allowing people to possess and keep at home guns will inevitabilty have serious consequences if/when ordinary people snap - or if the guns are stollen and end up in criminal hands. People snap every day - for most of us - that might mean we hit someone - or maybe even kill someone - but put a gun into our hands, and it is clearly has the potential to be much worse.
So to all the people who enjoy shooting - go join a gun club and leave your guns there - under lock and key.
yup its all been said before, but here go’s anyway. Britain has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, you cannot just go out and get a gun, guns kept at home have to be kept in secure conditions that satisfy the requirements of the local police firearms dept, who check those arrangements before the certificate is granted. there is no law that will prevent someone doing what was done in Cumbria, yes I know that banning guns will prevent the use of legally held guns in such tragedy’s and I am sure that all the people shot every year by handguns in this country feel a lot better knowing that those handguns are not legally held!
I am sure that you would get on your high horse if the use of motorcycles was to be banned to prevent the shocking carnage on our streets due to the use of bikes ? yet you are quite comfortable to condemn hundreds of thousands of law abiding citizens for the action of one man, who it appears was mentally unstable? yes it was a shocking and tragic event, it was shocking to a large part due to the rarity of such events !
To be fair Kenny, because I have made the rant you have just made in the past…the original poster didn’t suggest banning guns or stopping anyone having them, he only suggested that gun owners keep their guns at a controlled place, rather then at home.
Which I think is a reasonable suggestion. You can’t shoot your guns at home, and you can only shoot them in designated places for registered reasons, so I don’t see the problem with requesting that guns be kept in a secure location.
Most gun clubs that I visited in my youth with my father were on Army and Territorial Army bases.
Appreciate that tighter gun laws won’t make that much difference to most gun crime…
It’s the balance of freedom of the individual vs protecting people…I do like your bike analogy. I guess where I really struggle is not seeing the attraction of shooting as a pastime - but I suppose many non bikers wouldn’t see the attraction of bikes in the same way.
Guess my original argument could be extended to limiting high performance bikes to racetracks…(not something I’d support btw)
sorry if I went off on one, but it is an emotive subject. the problem with storing guns at a club is that it is only really practical with target rifles as they are only used at designated places (and due to the lack of target clubs most are probably always used at the same place) I would have no problem with that at all, it would probably make the grant of an FAC easier as well as there would be no security to worry about for the individual. the problem is that guns used for vermin,deer, pest control (and from first look it appears that is the type we are looking at here) are used at all hours of day and night, it is not practicable to keep them anywhere but at home, and as the use of stolen rifles in crime doesn’t seem to be a major issue in this country I would hold to the belief that the current system works well.
No point in tighter control … it is tight anyway. If a nutter is intent on doing you harm, they’re going to do it by any means possible, they don’t need a gun. Look at that dude last night … what was it … a state of the art frying pan.
As we all know … machines are machines … it’s people that are truly dangerous.
I’m actually a supporter of gun ownership (assuming said person is sane and has the appropriate controls). As one of the other posters mentioned, at least with legalised gun ownership it’s easier to track down what happened during an incident - rather than an unknown gun returning into the wild.
I like the idea of keeping guns in a “well known” place - like a shooting range. If you need to use the gun, you’d check it out. As some of the other guys mentioned, what would you really do with a gun at home? I can only think of a few things:
Cleaning
Showing to friends
Messing about?!
Scaring local chavs
You could argue even that wouldn’t stop these sort of incidents but at least you’d avoid someone losing the plot - they’d have to fabricate a good lie first.
When all is said and done, you can still kill someone with a fork if you wanted to. I suppose guns just make the entire process easier.
Agree keeping guns at gun clubs only really workable for target shooting.
It’s not really practical with hunting / game shooting.
I am hopeful that a knee jerk reaction isn’t the result of this and the Powers that be don’t over react.
As has been said the biggest danger is from unlicensed / illegal firearms in circulation currently - the Police know where all the legal ones in the UK are and all about the people who own them (I’d suggest an individual with a firearms certificate has as much if not more information held on them by the Police than a convicted criminal).
I’m not sure how being made to keep firearms at ‘a gun club’ would stop this type of event?
I agree. I wouldnt keep my gun at the gun club though. Its out in the woods. Big building which is a great target for any terrorists to break into one night and grab, say 300+ guns…
On my shot gun licence i had to take at least 8 pictures of the gun safe. Also detailling all locks, access points, amount of keys i have for it. Who has house keys which would then grant them easier access to the gun safe. This is without talking about ammunition. A seperate safe, different keys and a different part of the house. I had to detail the name of the gun club i would use too. They needed to know EVERYTHING about me. Even though they alaready had the information. They also wanted to know about my brothers girlfirend (who lives with us) her name, dteails, family connections, any convictions within her family.
A firearms officer then ahd to come to my house, un-announced and survey and double check my application pack. Asks questions and take notes.
Even after i was granted the licence i had to pay £50 for it and have very strict rules to when, where, how i can use it.
If i was dodgy criminal, taking into consideration of all the details they have of me, guns, ammo, safes, locks and the cost to install all this I would think “**** that” and go into a dodgy bit of town and pick up a gun on the black market.
Unfortunately im quite sure if i tried a little in a few areas near me i reckon i could get a gun! Now thats shocking!!! and very scary if you ask me.
I agree that you can also kill someone with a fork or a cricket bat, however, if you excuse the expression they are by no means as efficient as using a gun. If that chap had gone on the rampage with a cricket bat or a fork he wouldn’t have gotten very far.
I that when shooting for sport keeping guns at the club is a good idea. What is unfortunate is that shooting used to be a sport that people enjoyed socially. Now if you’re into shooting people may assume that you have a screw loose.
see wot your saying m8, idea was just that, maybe can be a central place where can be kept etc in persons home.
yes the innocent/non nutters get punished because of actions like recentley but wot can you do.
Every decade some nut with a legally held gun goes off on one and kills 10-12 people - a terrible event to be sure but statistically negligible compared to other forms of violent death.Your many more times likely to be killed on the roads than by a mass murdering gun nut - but we accept the necesssity of motorised transport.
If the gun laws were really lax then it would be worth looking at legislation - but they are not - so we just have to accept that incidents like this are the price we pay for the freedom of the vast majority of sane gun owners to own and use legal firearms - in the same way that we grant people the right to use private motorised transport - even though we know we will pay a far greater price in terms of death and injury than we pay for allowing gun ownership.
Using terms like ‘statisitcally negligible’ would cut no ice if you are a relative of a victim of one of these massacres - but legislation has to be arrived at via rational consideration - rather than as the result of understandable emotion.
Interesting thread…I wont put up too much but I had an interesting moment about 2 months ago.
A lad I know of, hes early twenties like myself and earns about £1500 a month take home so not exactly rich. Yet he owns 4 cars worth about 80k, all paid off(proven),has £1000 watches and very nice suits.
We have only known each other for 6 months through a 3rd party but talk quite abit now. Being an ex-cop, I have an interest in anything highly illegal:D and was naturally curious of how he could of paid off these vehicles at such a young age.
After time I obviously question him over this and he laughs and completely ignores my question:D. He says he can get me ANYTHING, I claim bullsh.it and ask for something rather hard to get,almost impossible for someone like myself(no criminal connections), a week later I meet him out of work and he shows me what I’ve asked for, I check it and its exactly what I’ve asked for.I just had a look, not kept.
What scares me is the following:
He got exactly what I asked for, the price you pay for black marke value and how quickly he got it.
Its not people like him I’m worried about, its the nutters out there with no control.
I used to love shooting, my Dad had a Lee Enfield .303 rifle I used to enjoy plinking with, between the ages 16 to 20 I lived on a farm and spent many happy evenings shooting rabbits with a 12 bore, but the special treat was when I visited my cousin who had an interesting collection of guns in his cupboard under the stairs including a .357 Magnum. We used those in his back garden, neighbours didn’t seem to mind.
Then Dunblane happened which put paid to the cousin’s hobby and his very impressive collection of handguns. But I was so sickened at what Hamilton did I entirely understood the reaction, albeit it was a knee-jerk one as the problem there wasn’t the law but the local police, who were completely useless at administering it.
Not that bothered now as, if I really wanted to shoot I could always head abroad, like when I went to Florida in 2005 went straight to the nearest gun club and made up for lost time with a Glock 18 and 100 rounds of ammo - total cost about a fiver
…and I agree with the suggestion of keeping registered firearms for target use at registered gun clubs, but they should allow us to own handguns again as long as we can’t take them off the club premises, but that would have to be properly administered.
