New restrictions on the way?

[Portzy]

Per the title, how an illegally held and fatally used FAC air rifle can change things.

https://www.itv.com/news/calendar/20...-firearms-laws

[bighit]

Same way they did it up here I would guess. Child shot with an unlicensed firearm and the Andrews law was put in motion .

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dai...ns-5949920.amp


This proposal is already in place

Making it an offence to fail to lock up an air weapon and its ammunition separately in the presence of under-18s while not in use

It's been in place since 2011 at least.


From 10 February, owners will be liable for a fine of up to £1000 if they do not take reasonable precautions to stop unauthorised access to their airgun by people under the age of 18. Safety leaflets informing new owners of the offence will be also be included with every air gun purchased.


500,000 in Scotland they claim is small fish to the 4 to 6 million airguns they claim in England and possibly includes Wales.

[Rampant Rapid]

If these are the restrictions, sounds like common sense and what is already in place.

“The new air weapons controls being consulted on will include:

Removing exemptions which allow people from the age of 14 to have unsupervised possession of air weapons on private premises

Making it an offence to fail to lock up an air weapon and its ammunition separately in the presence of under-18s while not in use

Working with industry and retailers to improve the safe keeping of air weapons and advice at the point of sale”

[Blaserbob]

2020 just keeps getting better!!

[Black Beard]

Priti Patel has just had a whole load of bad PR.

The most worrying is stopping youngsters from shooting unsupervised on private land. Lots of people who shoot on farms will be impacted.

[bighit]

There will be more in this link Courtesy of JB101

http://www.airgunbbs.com/showthread....ing-components

[derekm]

"They will also close loopholes in our laws to prevent dangerous weapons falling into the wrong hands "

That's right, just pass another law and that will fix everything.

What could possibly go wrong?

[Brano]

All these proposals already exist so I wouldn't worry to be fair.

As unfortunate as that incident was it was an accident which involved an over the limit airgun used by an adult.
Licensing isn't mentioned in the consultation proposals.

[scorpiont10]

Making Laws is one thing - paying for a sufficient police force to enforce them is another completely.

[Portzy]

What I find rather coincidental is the fact that this was on the local news at dinner time today. It was being reported as an instant response to grant a legislation change after the childs mother visited government ministers yesterday.

By the looks of things it was more than likely a scheduled consultation document in any event.

[micky2]

All these proposals already exist so I wouldn't worry to be fair.

As unfortunate as that incident was it was an accident which involved an over the limit airgun used by an adult.
Licensing isn't mentioned in the consultation proposals.

On our local news yesterday the mother of the child met with Priti Patel to talk about having licensing for airguns.

[Geezer]

I just posted this somewhere else:

None of this bothers me that much personally, though it’s sad to see further restrictions that will potentially criminalise people who are not a danger to public safety or good order while not changing the behaviour of those who are.

I was certainly safe target shooting in my garden unsupervised at 14 or 15. Because I had been properly brought up, taught about guns, and was not an idiot.

The “Gun Control Network” is basically about three people who lost kids at Dunblane. I completely understand their passion, though don’t agree with their proposed policies. But they present themselves as some kind of broad campaign based on actual objective research into the problem, whereas in reality (and understandably) they just hate guns of any kind and want them all banned.

I strongly suspect (though proper research is lacking, IME) that the troubled and uncontrolled adolescents who shoot cats, swans, cars, street lights, other rival adolescents etc with air guns are the same troubled adolescents who beat up or stab each other with kitchen knives, drop bricks off motorway bridges into traffic, let off fireworks in the street, and generally smoke weed or take pills and hang around being annoying and vaguely threatening.

To my knowledge, no-one has done any objective research into the effect of the last twenty-ish years of tightened laws on airguns into airgun misuse. Surely you’d do that in order to make good policy/legal decisions? If it has been done, please share, including the peer reviews.

[jjjohn]

Per the title, how an illegally held and fatally used FAC air rifle can change things.

https://www.itv.com/news/calendar/20...-firearms-laws

This happened 10 mins from me.
I didn't realise it was an FAC gun,also of course it was an accident a very tragic accident.
If it was an FAC even though it was unintentional etc the chap got 3 years,what happened to the 5 year ruling?

https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk...ces-published/

[WebleyWombler]

I note that some of the proposals are driven by the Cats protection league and the RSPCA. let them nibble and they will push for big bites.

[Black Beard]

The document talks of complaints of people shooting cats. I am sure that a lot of these are owners looking for an explanation why tiddles is injured with puncture wounds. The idea that foxes, dogs or other cats may cause injuries doesn't cross their mind so it must be airguns! I wonder how many had pellets show up on X rays?