Posted on 12/29/2001 12:09:31 AM PST by tberry
Dunblane gun law has been failure, says marksman
By Stephen Robinson
(Filed: 28/12/2001)
PISTOL shooters can recall precisely where they were and what they were doing when the first news bulletins came through of the Dunblane massacre on March 13, 1996 . They went through phases of shock and horror, then bafflement, then rage. Rage that a man with a gun licence - one of their own - could have shot dead 16 children and their teacher.
Then the mood changed and competitive shooters, many of them reliable winners of medals for Britain in international meetings, found they were the target of tabloid newspaper attacks on Britain's "gun culture".
Even when it became clear that Thomas Hamilton had acquired his guns because of imperfect enforcement of gun laws, rather than inadequate legislation, the assault on legal gun ownership was redoubled. In the final inglorious months of the Major administration and with an election looming, ministers buckled in the face of demands that "something must be done".
Hamilton, a maniac with paedophile tendencies who lied to the police to get his gun certificate, was hung around the neck of Britain's 54,000 pistol owners, and historic rights to gun ownership were ripped up .
"When Dunblane happened, you just could not argue the case," says Michael Gault, a maintenance engineer with the RAF who is also one of Britain's finest shooters. "In truth we were sucker-punched: we couldn't argue with the parents over the bodies of those children."
Mr Gault is not bitter, partly because he knows that even his beloved sport pales into insignificance against the horrors of Dunblane. But the knee-jerk legislation that followed that tragedy has virtually destroyed a popular sport as Britain's competitive shooters begin training for this summer's Commonwealth Games.
Since the post-Dunblane handgun bans were enforced, British shooters have not been allowed to fire a single round in training, even in secure, meticulously inspected gun clubs.
To train for the Manchester Commonwealth Games shooting events, which are to be held at Bisley, British competitors must either bear the cost and inconvenience of going to Switzerland, or practise in Britain with air pistols that cannot match the feel of a pistol.
Mr Gault, who won four gold medals in the Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games, cuts a rather forlorn figure in the shooting range he has built in the garden of his Norfolk home as he practises with his airgun. A friendly Swiss dealer keeps a proper pistol for him, but Mr Gault's job maintaining Tornado jets does not lend itself to regular training abroad.
Mr Gault says 90 per cent of competitive shooting is mental strength, and using the wrong sort of gun does not really help him develop that. But he practises the deep breathing routines and concentration exercises that top-level shooters must perfect, meticulously firing lead slugs into the bull's-eyes of paper targets.
For British shooters, the final insult has been the Home Office's refusal to relax the blanket handgun ban that would enable Mr Gault and others to train in the months leading up to the summer championship.
Should Mr Gault or any other British shooter triumph at the Games this summer, the chances are they will be ignored by the media, which tends to portray competitive shooters as "gun nuts". This slur is grossly unfair, as competitive shooters are scrupulous about safety and intolerant of people who misuse guns in any way.
When Mr Gault came home from Kuala Lumpur in 1998 carrying his four gold medals, easily the best individual British performance in any sport, his triumph passed unacknowledged, except for a modest wooden plaque from Dereham council in Norfolk.
After the horrors of Dunblane, many people might accept the argument for a ban on handguns if it appeared to work, but the evidence suggests strongly that it does not .
Colin Greenwood, a retired police officer and leading expert on firearms law, has argued persuasively that gun control legislation has been an abject failure.
As Mr Greenwood notes, in the past 20 years, the number of robbery cases involving shotguns has remained roughly constant, but the use of pistols has increased fivefold, from around 500 to 2,561.
As the police in any British city acknowledge, handguns have never been cheaper or easier to obtain on the streets, and the flow of illegal guns has increased most rapidly since the ban was introduced.
Successive governments have moved inexorably to restrict gun ownership by law-abiding people while failing to restrict the flow of illegally-held weapons. Until the 1960s, ownership of shotguns was entirely unregulated. Now, farmers and sportsmen must often wait for months for shotgun certificates from police authorities that seem philosophically opposed to gun ownership.
Though it is undeclared, official policy is clearly for back-door banning of weapons, and it is always easier to punish the law-abiding than curtail the activities of criminals on the streets.
As Mr Greenwood argues, if Britain's strict gun laws are designed to protect the public, a simple glance at gun crime proves they are a "complete failure". However, if they are part of a deliberate pattern of "disarming law-abiding people for motives which remain less than clear, they can be said to be working well".
Mr Gault is determined to press on with his training to succeed at the Manchester Commonwealth Games, despite a touch of arthritis in his shoulder, and the obstacles his own government has put up for him.
"I take the view that if I press on and keep winning medals," he said, "then I chip away a little each time at the government's ban on my sport."
Notice that it was essentially the Media which led the charge against gun ownership. It has long been effectively illegal to use guns for self-defense in the U.K. Guns must be locked up at all times when they are not being used for approved purposes. Without the use of guns for self-defense, without an effective argument that guns save lives, there was no effective way to counter the argument for banning them. This is why the anti-freedom forces in this country are so adamant about manufacturing statistics to "prove" that guns are not useful for self-defense. When people realize that a gun in their hand is more effective for their own defense than a cop in the donut shop, they vote for freedom and the right to own and use guns.
Well this is shocking news. < /sarcasm>
A friend of mine tells me he is constantly having to wrestle his pistol to the ground in order to keep it from running amuck in the neighborhood. I myself have seen it jump up and try to run out the door.
At least they say they do; however, police are in the business of enforcing laws not the constitution. As has been seen many times recently, ( one example here.) the police are more than willing to arrest citizens for victimless "gun crimes" rather than real crimes. If having the truth about them posted offends them, then there is something seriously wrong with their attitude.
The difference between us and the English is that we tend to fight for our Natural Rights even when it isn't deemed "polite" to do so.
Two, actually, if you include the one in Texas, though that was a rebellion against the Mexicans rather than the Britons. It's beginning to loook like it may be time to establish a republic in the US again, as it becomes more and more clear that what we are now enjoying has strayed too far from that ideal.
The question is, are we willing to sacrifice that which those forefathers did to reestablish one.
-archy-/-
AMEN
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