Posted on 03/13/2006 8:03:16 AM PST by SittinYonder
BRITAIN could see another massacre like that at Dunblane a decade ago because of the failure to set up a national gun register, a police chief warned yesterday.
As relatives of the victims prepared to mark today's tenth anniversary of the tragedy, Sir Chris Fox, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said complacency about our firearms legislation would be "foolish".
He said tightening gun laws had made a similar bloodbath "far more unlikely", but progress towards a national gun register had "not been as quick as it could be".
Sixteen children and their teacher were killed on 13 March, 1996 when Thomas Hamilton burst into Dunblane Primary School gym and opened fire, before shooting himself.
Mr Fox said: "People get access to weapons and become rogue in the way they behave, and they are very difficult to track."
But he added: "People registered as firearms owners have to go through a very stringent vetting process, which has been revamped since Dunblane."
Families of the Dunblane massacre victims will mark the anniversary privately today, lighting candles in memory of their loved ones.
A spokesman for the victims' families said: "We will be lighting candles, as we have done every year, and will recall with great affection how so many people in Dunblane and beyond also lit candles on the first anniversary to show that our children and their teacher were not forgotten. We hope they will be remembered on this tenth anniversary."
The massacre in the small Stirlingshire community stunned the world and led hundreds of thousands of people to sign petitions calling for a gun ban. Despite stiff opposition from the gun lobby, the government introduced tough controls a year after the tragedy.
The 1997 National Firearms (Amendment) Act banned handguns and made provision for a national firearms database to be set up.
The register would be accessible to police forces across Britain and would keep track of everyone with a gun licence as well as those who had been judged unfit to hold one. But the database has not been established. Records are still held by local police and are not available to colleagues in other force areas.
The Gun Control Network (GCN) leads the campaign for a national gun register. Gill Marshall-Andrews, chair of GCN, said: "It is indeed bizarre that ten years later, the nation still waits. Is this incompetence or a lack of political will? The register is basically a list. It's not a difficult thing to develop."
As far back as 2000, the Home Affairs Select Committee said: "We are appalled that the national database of certificate holders and applications is not yet in immediate prospect. We regard this system as absolutely central to the safe and effective operation of the firearms licensing system."
But 2004 pilot schemes of the register, known as the National Firearms Licensing Management System, in the West Midlands and Lancashire, did not go to plan.
I understood UK handgun owners had to keep the guns at the PD...
Mr Fox said: "People get access to weapons and become rogue in the way they behave, and they are very difficult to track."
Yeah, you can't have too much o' that freedom floating around now, can you?!
I had heard that, also, and believe that to be correct. This story says there's a ban on all handguns.
I have access to several weapons and must confess that I am rogue in the way I behave.
The liberal mindset still does not get it -- criminals DO NOT OBEY LAWS! Only law-abiding citizens do. Criminals don't register guns..crimals buy guns on the black market. Gun registration will foreever be a socialist farse, without logic, a thinly-veiled attempt to disarm a law-abiding public...they will NEVER disarm the criminal sector.
Fools.
Given the success(?) of gov't IT projects in the UK a gun registry database there would make Canada's look like a model of success !
Why do you need a database if handguns are banned ? Nothing to enter except the rifle and shotgun owners who get grief from the authorities already.
Ditto. I have more guns than I probably need but not as many as I want.
In the USA, to require a felon to register a firearm would be a violation of the 5th Amendment: you would be requiring them to incriminate themselves on a legal document. Only the law abiding could conceivably be required to comply, anyway.
Knives are next. I read a week or two ago that teen males in Scotland are toting knives and there is a move beginning to in some way restrict ownership or possession of knives. About a year ago, a doctors group in the UK called for a ban on knives with blades of a certain length and everyone laughed it off.
The UK is becoming a frighteningly totalitarian state. The NHS is worse.
In the USA, to require a felon to register a firearm would be a violation of the 5th Amendment: you would be requiring them to incriminate themselves...
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In my state, the SALE of firearms is registered, not ownership per se, with the exception of prohibited arms which require special permits to own. Felons cannot purchase or have firearms. That is the crime. Basically you cannot FORCE someone to try and register during a sale, because the sale will not be authorized. The sale will not consummate regardless of whether the felon denies being a felon and signs the application, which is a felony (perjury). A good system in that regard.
A safer bet is letting the law abiding, hell... ENCOURAGING the law abiding to carry everywhere they go. The more good people you have armed and on the scene, the less opportunities for those with evil intent to do more harm.
"Man does not strive for pleasure, only the Englishman does."
And even Sir Paul saw the joy in holding a warm gun in one's fist. http://www.stevesbeatles.com/songs/happiness_is_a_warm_gun.asp
So, what's up with this gun-hating stuff, cousins?
Ahhh. The weapons cause the crime. They cause otherwise normal people to suddenly "go rogue" and avoid the authorities. It all becomes clear to me now.
While the yellow sheets are on file for firearms purchased after 1968, and doubtless, somewhere, inconvenienced electrons and magnetic media host the later NICS background checks, those earlier firearms and a host of battlefield souvenirs have not been documented.
Even if our government were foolish enough to try to have a Canadian style registration system, the tremendous number of undocumented arms would render it fairly useless.
In addition, private sales do not have to go through a dealer in many states, my state included.
Earnest firearms enthusiasts should be locating elderly folk who have been accumulating firearms over the years, and offer to purchase the odd rifle or other firearm and put it away.
These arms have no paper trail, and although it may seem cold, the previous owners will not be telling any tales in a decade or two.
I am not sure how things work in your state, but documenting the sale would record serial number, type of arm, and manufacturer at a minimum, the background check would link it to you. All anyone has to do is make sure the data are not dumped, a situation which was occuring during the Clinton Administration, when NICS data had been archived (illegally!) for months.
Fixed.
BRITAIN could see another massacre like that at Dunblane .... [When] Sixteen children and their teacher were killed on 13 March, 1996 when Thomas Hamilton [Shot them] before shooting himself. >>
Seems the Police person points out the paucity of his own argument by illuminating the fact that ten years after Mr Hamilton executed his own death sentence -- and notwithstanding the absense of any more bureaucratic meddling with Britain's almost non-existant individual liberties -- Mr Hamilton has committed no more murders.
Now for once great Britain's hapless Messrs Plod to set off in pursuit of its obsessively hesperophobic, resident, foreign and domestic terrorists.
[Don't hold your breath. Much easier to make insane inane and infantile claims on behalf of the magical powers of 'gun registries']
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