A word of caution for every air gunner

[DJP]

I think that we should all panic because of a 6 year old case where none of the relevant facts are known.

But seriously, it's not worth worrying about.

[madcarlos]

I can remember we used to walk down the road with our rifles going to the fields rabbiting no one said a word round our way would not do it now

it's still like that around here now, it's not unusual to see people with guns around this way. Like today and quite often shot guns going off just over the woods, It's what we are used to. police do not patrol around here much.

[boko]

cant see em locking you up for a rifle just over the limit unless you were in a bank with it

[bozzer]

Is your mate the "bloke down the pub" by any chance?

Nah ... the local window cleaner.

The comment was a semi fictional one based on a true story ( I allowed myself some license with the sentence ), to make the point that these airgun stories that people drag up will almost certainly have far more information that leads to the conviction, beyond some bloke having a 12.1fp air rifle.

"My mate" had returned home in his Landrover and found a group of teenagers outside his home, including a teenager on a moped/scooter. He asked them to move down so he could park his Landy outside his house. It turned into a bit of a verbal exchange and they were telling him that it was a public road and he couldn't make them move the moped. In his frustration he carried his air rifle from the vehicle to the house, in it's bag, and not pointed at anyone, and said ... " If you lot carry on, you'll end up having some of this ".

The teenagers all left, including the one with the moped, so the moped was left outside his house. One of them phoned the police and said a bloke has just threatened them with a rifle. The police didn't respond to this call at this time.

My mate then spoke on the phone to a friend of his, who was a 19 year old local lad. The 19 yo went around to my mate's house and they had a beer. Unfortunately the lad with the moped turned up to get his bike. The 19 year old lad went outside to ask him why he had been such a prat earlier. More verbals and the 19 yo put a bottle in his head. The teenager ( moped owner ) was very seriously hurt and ended up in hospital for some time.

So the 19 yo was arrested for assault and causing severe injury. A few months later my mate was arrested. The prosecution had decided he must pay for his part and they charged him with causing affray and threatening serious injury with a rifle in a public place. They were trying to say that he made that phonecall to instigate his mate coming around and having some beer and then giving the moped lad a good hiding.

In court the 19 yo who bottled the lad got 6 years imprisonment.

It was a distinct possibility that my mate would get a custodial sentence of a couple of years.

The judge said that, regarding my mate, there was no clear evidence to suggest that he made that phonecall to specifically get the 19 yo to come around to his house and then attack the moped owner. He did say that due to that phonecall a series of events took place that resulted in a young lad being very seriously injured. He ( judge ) did seem to want his pound of flesh. So he turned to the threat with the 'bagged' air rifle.

My mate's defence mitigated that this was totally out of character. He said that my mate was a man in his mid 50's, who had owned and used air rifles since he was a boy, and had never caused a problem previous to this event. In addition, a number of local residents had, without prompting, supplied statements to the court saying what a decent bloke my mate was, and that he was a valued member of the local community and never caused any trouble etc. The defence pleaded for leniency and a non custodial sentence.

He got 12 months non custodial 'community' sentence, plus he had to do 180 hours of unpaid community work and a £750 fine.

He could very well have gone to jail for a couple of years.

Now ... and the point I was originally making in that first post ... is that it would have been easy to just report and say that a bloke narrowly avoided jail time, and got 12 months non custodial, 180 hours community service and a £750 fine, for waving his airgun, in it's bag, at some teenagers on the pavement. As I said, at the time the local police didn't even respond to the phonecall saying a bloke had threatened them with an air rifle in a bag. So if the later events had never taken place he probably wouldn't have had any problem re the actual air gun offence. Maybe a b0ll0cking from a local copper, or probably nowt. It was the far greater story that meant he ended up in court and got a conviction and sentence for the air rifle offence.

It's no point just quoting ... Bloke jailed for having airgun over 12fp ... and scaring the cr@p out of all the decent airgun owners on here and other boards.

There's a site that you can easily find that is an anti airgun site and it lists loads of incidents with air rifles. If you read it it's usually ... bloke convicted for shooting at pigeons on his fence, missing pigeons and pellet hitting a child in the head in another garden. Are you going to do that? Another one is police called to a house by a phonecall from a girl, who had locked herself in the toilet because she was afraid of her angry boyfriend. The boyfriend was shooting at her through a thin wooden door with his air rifle. Police reported that the girl was not injured but there was some damage to the door ... No sh1t ! Any of you doing that this weekend?

If you don't do anything stupid, check your gun is under 12fp, and it's not related to a bigger, more serious story, you are statistically more likely to suffer a life changing injury from putting your trousers on, than ending up in court due to your air rifle.

What are you going to do ... never put your kegs on again?

[DJP]

...If you don't do anything stupid, check your gun is under 12fp, and it's not related to a bigger, more serious story, you are statistically more likely to suffer a life changing injury from putting your trousers on, than ending up in court due to your air rifle.

What are you going to do ... never put your kegs on again?

This, and all of the rest of your post, all day long.

I've been in the job for 20 years and I've known of only 2 air rifles to get tested in all of that time.

And in both of those cases other offences were being committed (and in one of the two cases, the person concerned was a "Prohibited Person" to boot).

If you're an otherwise law abiding person, it just isn't going to happen.

Of course, I await the inevitable flaming from the armchair experts with their "fat-bloke-down-the-pub" stories.

[barrel]

This, and all of the rest of your post, all day long.

I've been in the job for 20 years and I've known of only 2 air rifles to get tested in all of that time.

And in both of those cases other offences were being committed (and in one of the two cases, the person concerned was a "Prohibited Person" to boot).

If you're an otherwise law abiding person, it just isn't going to happen.

Of course, I await the inevitable flaming from the armchair experts with their "fat-bloke-down-the-pub" stories.

Exactly this. Reading half complete accounts or listening to fat man down the pub stories is ludicrous if you are trying to reach a reasoned answer. I dare say there are people who lie in bed at night worrying about this subject

Kindest regards

Barrel

[Jerry Cornelius]

Nah ... the local window cleaner.

The comment was a semi fictional one based on a true story .....

If you don't do anything stupid, check your gun is under 12fp, and it's not related to a bigger, more serious story, you are statistically more likely to suffer a life changing injury from putting your trousers on, than ending up in court due to your air rifle.

What are you going to do ... never put your kegs on again?

We should sticky this. "In case of paranoia break glass"

[Garvin]

Apologies for reviving a thread which has clearly run its course... but I missed it when it was posted. Bozzer is of course right and it's foolish to worry about being done for having a hot air rifle if you take the usual precautions and are sensible.

What surprises me is that some people seem to want clearer rules and definitions - even a wholesale consolidation of the patchwork of firearms legislation - without taking into account the likelihood of the end result being much worse for us than the present situation.

If the firearms acts, or even just the more contentious bits of them, are revisited, in the present climate there is a serious danger the alternative would be more restrictive than at present. Who knows what might result? Perhaps a lower muzzle energy limit, a ban on hunting with air rifles, maybe even licensing like in Scotland.

From a public safety point of view, the present system works well enough and airgunners can go about their business relatively untroubled. Why anyone would want to engineer an opportunity for the antis to get stuck in and damage our hobby/sport is beyond me.