Another Firearms incident

And undoubtedly there will be more people pointing fingers and muttering about those who engage in shooting as a hobby and calling for further firearm restrictions just as they did with William Hamilton (Dunblane) Michael Ryan (Hungerford) and of course Raoul Moat (Northumberland). My problem with this is that there are a number of pre-programmed attitudes that shape the response and an equal number of factors which appear to come down, time and time again, to failings on the part of those who are called upon to monitor and manage the shooting community.

Now before we get into this more deeply I think I might need to explain the differences between those who shoot in that we have:

Shotgun owners - these people split into two distinct groups in that we have target shooters (clays, etc), game shooters (as it sounds, ie. stuff you can eat what runs around in the wild) and those who use it for vermin (rabbits and other things that are considered a nuisance). Need a shotgun certificate/licence to hold one.

Firearms owners - This group has target shooters (shooting at different distances and in different positions to put a bit of lead through a piece of paper), hunters (as it sounds) and vermin shooters (squirrels, rats, rabbits, foxes, etc.). Needs a Fire Arms Certificate (FAC) to legally hold any of these.

Air-powered weapon owners - (rifles and hand guns) which can be as powerful as the proper (goes bang) weapons and range from free to hold through to firearms certificate required (depending upon muzzle velocity).

It seems to me that in each and every case of firearms abuse the common factor has been the way that the Police have managed, controlled or otherwise being involved with the disaster that followed.

With Hungerford, Ryan was not a member of a club (and this is important as you will, hopefully, see shortly) and the paperwork was, if the people I knew who were involved, done without full checks, proper homes visit and a number of other failings. Local shooters knew the man to be suspect and had refused to support the application.

With Dunblane, once again the local shooters knew the man to be something worrying and had made this known to the people who manage firearms (the Police). The Police did visit the man's home and found illegally held weapons, loaded hand guns lying around the house and other breaches of firearm security and good practice. So what did the copper do when he discovered this (remembering the warnings of other shooters?), he put them on his ticket (FAC). It was these, now legal, weapons that did the damage!

In today's incident, Michael Atherton, held what sounds like five shotguns and one FAC weapon (although some reposts claim it is three of each!) and had apparently been reported as being unstable some time during 2008 and yet the man kept his weapons. Seems to me that once again the problem features the same people once again and this indicates some form of revision to the role and the responsibility of the Police!

Now some will merely start sounding off about 'removing all weapons' and some of these will include the Salford (illegally held murder last week) as a good reason to ban all on the premise that all illegally held weapons begin life as legally manufactured and held weapons. Of course this is true and on that premise all those who murder begin life as sweet little kids so if we extrapolate their logic into the human situation, culling all before the age of cognisance would remove murderers and other criminals! Of course both are pretty stupid aren't they? So what do we need to do?

Well first and foremost we need to understand that the best people to control the shooting fraternity itself. A for instance being that when I was a committee member of a shooting club the first thing that happened with a newcomer was safety training and assessment of the person. If the person gave any hint of concern they found they never got near a weapon and their card was marked with the local, excellent, coppers who did the Firearms role. When someone had an FAC and appeared to be dangerous they were managed and if it seemed that they couldn't be considered to be safe then, once again, the local coppers were given a call and home visits were done, often resulting in a ticking off, removal of weapons and sometimes removal of the person's ticket.

Secondly we need to realise that shooters generally aren't weird (O.K. if they are they were before they got into shooting and should have been picked up early on if that weirdness was threatening). A golf club is an equally dangerous weapon and just as it is used to propel a ball into a hole as accurately as possible, a shooter uses a weapon to propel a bit of lead into the centre of a target. Same game, different modes of operation!

Lastly we need to understand that we have more than adequate gun control laws, what we need is for them to be enforced and that with the pressures on the Police and a degree of general incompetence that has apparently existed if history is anything to go on and these shortcomings need to be addressed.

And of course, having come out of prison, why and how did Raoul Moat manage to still have weapons licensed to him? The same question lies on the table for Atherton today and for Hamilton when Dunblane took place.

Thank you for reading this - I hope it helps bring some clarity to the situation and some realism to the fatuous stuff that will be flying around after this sad and tragic situation.

Pax

ps. and there is still gun crime to be considered - perhaps we will do this later (tea drunk, daily office awaits)