Are you a gun owner? Let us in OR ELSE, say Blighty's top cops

Hmm

I thought they could already do this. Have a shotgun license, never had an inspection apart from the initial one (in 5 years), but I always thought they had the power to do spot checks.

The problem of course

The problem of course is that it relies of the police officers judgement.

Of late, our police have been shown to, at best, have very poor judgement.

“Our aim is not to catch out gun owners,” said ACPO's Chief Constable Andy Marsh, their lead for firearms licensing matters, “which is why we are giving notice that these visits will be taking place. We want to work with the shooting community to ensure gun owners are aware of how to keep their firearms secure and, where appropriate, give advice to individual owners.”

A little leaflet would be just fine, as a legal firearm owner I can't imagine what "justifiable" reason they could really have.

As both a hunter and a sports shooter I know many, many people that own firearms, none of which need Mr Bobby knocking on the door to remind them how to do things, they already know how to be secure, responsable. ( Mr Bobby won't change the minds of those that don't)

First of all Mr Bobby doesn't probalby know correct firearms procedure as he is not allowed to carry, use, own a firearm himself( unless of course he has been properly trained and in that case he already has much better things to do with his time, like catching the bad guys).

Secondly, most "legal" firearms owners are already responsable, they had to foot the bill and keep footing the bill for their arms and/or munitions, neither of which are cheap and are both a constant reminder that what you possess are not toys.

Hunters know from first hand experience what guns do, if you have gutted a deer and saw the damage modern munition do you will know what I mean. No one wants that happening to them. All hunters have to do training courses, or at least now they do. So yes, they know about reponsability and security.

Sport shooters are "obliged" to follow strict procedures at the range. Guns are in an unuseable state whilst being tranported, munitions are kept seperate. As the range no gun comes out it''s case unless it is being used. Muzzles always point down range, guns never out of sight, loaded guns never laid down, guns on tables must have the chamber shown etc etc etc etc etc. So yes, they already know about reponsability too.

So who exactly are these laws supposed to apply to, who "legally" owns a gun that doesn't already know about their responsabilities/security.

If I am a bad guy, it doesn't matter about these kinds of laws, take away my guns and I will use a crossbow, baseball bat, hammer, catapult, fork, half brick, piece of two by four, rottweiller, broom handle or in the last, wife..... I will always find a method to cause harm if that is my intended goal.

I know that every year there are firearms accidents, very few are actually accidents, many of them are just down to plain stupidity and that can't be resolved by handing out lessons on firearms safety.....

I can understand that these laws apply to "illegal" owners but certainely not for the legal owners. My home is my home, it has taken years of sweat and labour, as much as the IT industry can create sweat and labour and I do not see any valid reason for Mr Bobby to have the powers to enforce entry just because I "legally" own firearms. I don't mind being asked by invitation, but I certainely cannot agree to being forced. I am after all doing absolutely nothing that goes against the law..

It's a long rant but it's Sunday and this pisses me off... These damned people are making me worried that the future is going to get bad....I can only imagine that what they really want is to further discourage people from owning firearms. We must ask ourselves why.....

ACPO Ltd, aka Illegal Spies R Us (Mark Kennedy/Stone etc)

"These damned people are making me worried that the future is going to get bad."

If you think this is the worst that ACPO Ltd have lined up for us all, I can only imagine you've been following the wrong news sources over the last few years.

It's a shame this article was wasted; there's plenty to say about ACPO but this isn't near the top of the list.

"the ridiculous suggestion that licence holders might be vulnerable to radicalisation"

The police know:

Who we are.

Details of our family.

Several references from pillars of the community.

The firearms we have.

Where we live.

Where we keep the guns and ammunition.

The security arrangements.

The results of an extensive background check.

I do hope they have an inkling of who is likely to be radicalised.

Looks like mission creep is slowling happening.

Just an observation from one in the States. This appears to be mission creep due to a political agenda. Not being over there, I wouldn't know who's agenda. Part of why we Americans have the reputation we have as gun owners is that we have been fighting this for many decades, and not just in the gun ownership arena. Much of it here is overt and brings out the loudest screams. Yours seems more subtle.

The old "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" line is pure BS. Because what's legal today may not be legal tomorrow.

Follow the money and the agenda.... there's something/someone behind this besides "public safety".

Non story

What pointless mockrage.

Does anyone at The Reg even hold an FAC? Why is there so much opinion written?

The only change is that unannounced visits are now explicitly condoned. Big deal.

The police usually visit suspects without an appointment. They also often take firearms into "safekeeping" while enquiries are made. If an FAC holder is considered to be a threat to the public things already get very bad very quickly for them.

Constables can always enter premises if a crime is suspected of being committed. The licensing office should not be confused with constables though.

That said, all laws will eventually get abused even though this isn't a law change. Fortunately I find Derbyshire's licensing office is the epitome of professionalism but nationally they vary enormously.

The police cannot affect the licence fee. It is solely at the discretion of the Home Secretary. There is less than zero appetite in the Tory party to visit firearms legislation. Even if they did the House of Lords moderates any interference of their green welly shoots.

We already have to be careful of scaring the curtain twitchers but I don't think this "clarification" or the new "panic line" will have them ringing it off the hook.

No-one at my club is at all interested in this matter. Nor do we consider firearms ownership to be a litmus test of our "freedom."

Black powder

Almost makes me want to take up Napoleonic reenactment and get a muzzle loader, say a Baker rifle - no! a Volleygun!

Apparently being a reenactor is a valid reason for having a shotgun permit.

We are the police

We can do what we want, so, tough on you, mate

Crimestoppers is the worry

Crimestoppers, to me, suggests anonymous tip-offs.

It's a long time ago now, but I had a couple of experiences with a particular shotgun user that scared me. Not big time, but I wondered. You grow up, in the countryside, expecting certain standards, and seeing a bunch of guys out shooting on a foggy day... Can they see far enough to be safe? But you have to live in the same village. An anonymous tip-off would have been a temptation, but I am not sure how anonymous it would have turned out to be.

Not every legal shotgun or firearms owner is flawless, even if they never start shooting people. And neither are the Police. And then the politicians stick their oar in.

I don't know what I would have done if this Crimestoppers option had been available.

First they came for the gun owners...

"now Minister Baker, we want you to sign this brief for us... or.. you remember what happened to our unfortunate friend? Don't try anything, no one will believe you. We'll make quite sure of that. You will sign that brief tomorrow". <click>

You are plain wrong when you say:

"The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has announced a legal tweak intended to allow police officers to turn up at the homes of gun owners, without warning, and demand to inspect guns stored on the premises."

They cannot "without warning [...] demand to inspect guns [lawfully] stored on the premises".

They can turn up at your door unannounced.

They can *ask* to check your security measures.

You can tell them to piss off.

Unfortunately, anyone who legally holds a shotgun/firearm probably wouldn't be best advised to tell the plod to piss off, but the plod can't turn up unannounced and *demand* to inspect your security arrangements or weapons.

Half cocked

I remember a time when owning a gun was normal, it was no big deal.

Now it's like you are pre-approved for a Gitmo vacation.

Ahhh....the freedom (or rather the loss of it)

The 1903 Pistols Act was the first, followed by the 1920 Firearms Act which was implemented simply because the powers that be were worried about another Bolshevik revolution in the UK after WW1 broke the class boundaries.

Since then the UK governments aim has been to remove all possible power from the people whenever possible.

Dunblane was a terrible act carried out by a certifiable psychiatric case whom the local police, the Strathclyde senior police officer all knew about but did nothing, That is why the senior officer in Strathclyde resigned. All in all a shameful episode mismanaged by the police.

Unannounced visits by police are what I would expect anywhere, quite frankly I have no objection.

I have previously held a FAC in the UK and currently hold the equivalent where I live in France (I still shoot full bore pistol).

"The British Association for Shooting and Conservation, meanwhile, seems to have completely changed its position on random spot checks."

Gareth, could you point out - anywhere in the official guidance or law - that says Police are allowed to do random spot checks?

The current guidance states that officers must offer specific reasons why they are visiting. If not, you would be well justified in turning them away (moreover, the Police do not have the resource to randomly spot-check a meaningful percentage of certificate holders on a meaningfully regular basis).

As far as I can tell, BASC have not u-turned at all. Visits to a certificate holder for specific reasons have always been a possibility - they may now be unannounced instead of pre-booked. All the Governing Bodies are advising certificate holders to cooperate with Police, unless they feel that proper procedure (giving of good and specific reasons, etc) has not been followed, in which case to report all details. If indeed the Police chose to abuse these unannounced visits and set up random spot-checking, such a pattern would emerge pretty quickly at national level and I think you would find BASC et al let their lawyers off the leash fairly rapidly.

TL;DR Unannounced != random

Doesn't stop illegal gun ownership

The problem with most of these gun laws is that they only effect the legal gun owner. It doesn't do anything to stop illegal gun ownership. It also gives opportunity to anyone with a grudge to inconvenience the legal gun owner. That inconvenience could result in a £5000 legal bill (High Court, Barrister, Solicitor) to get the firearm back. In my opinion this is another pre-election PR exercise, similar to the The Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988 by Douglas Hurd.

Biting the hand that feeds what?

This story has zero to do with IT and I can't imagine that anyone outside of the gun lobby care. So why is this story here? It seems a minor tweak in the law and no-one likes the feel they've been targeted, so you can see the source of outrage in a minority of the minority.

Seems like a report made by someone who has mistaken the UK for the US.

Having a gun has never been that normal in the UK unless you were a farmer out in the sticks.

No surprise the Twitter response was from Hampshire Police, where Andy Marsh is the Chief Constable.

Legal Guns

I'm not into guns, never have been, but I live in a rural southwest village. Many local people possess shotguns and a few have rifles as far as I know.

I was talking to a friend yesterday and he mentioned his son coming to visit! Son possesses a high powered rifle and decided to travel here to see his dad and do some target practice.

The location is 'VERY' rural and you wouldn't have thought there would be an issue, but the son attached a silencer to his rifle and proceeded to shoot at a target set into an earth bank on his fathers property.

Now, they slightly moved the target, for some reason and this is where the problem happened. The son missed the target and the bullet luckily missed a person who was walking nearby, the walking person was aware of the shot but thought it was an air pistol. Still all hell broke loose! If I'd seen a bullet inpact then I would have been worried. Luckily it must have landed in the fields behind our property, as there were no holes I could notice.

Had the passer by known it was a high powered rifle and it could have killed instantly then if it were me I'd have been on the phone quicker than anything to the police!

The guy who owns the rifle & silencer lives in London, has nowhere to shoot locally, visits father in the southwest, 'nearly kills a local dog walker', hides rifle & silencer in his dads van, lets his dad have words with the walker & happily goes back to London with his stuff.

My point is the person that nearly got shot, lives 200 yards from my house and was outside my house when it happened, and my kids and wife were in the garden at the time.

I thought it was illegal to own a silencer for any kind of weapon as it changes the markings on a bullet fired through it.

Are high powered rifles not illegal in the UK because the bullets can travel over a kilometer?

Doesn't common sense "YELL AT YOU" don't point guns near peoples properties?

My friend is over 60 and I don't think I'd let him have a firearms cert, I guess his son is in his 40's, living in London with a high powered un-licenced rifle & silencer. Maybe he just likes scaring the locals from ruralville.

Reading this article made me think, I don't own and don't wish to own a gun, but if you do you should be prepared for random spot checks, I'd even be in agreement with guns being stored in ONLY secure locations and only used under supervision. At a licenced gun club, not down at the local badger shoot.

On a side note, when my house was searched a number of years ago (due to a former owners actions, I hasten to add), the police confiscated two toy guns owned by my children, you know the small plastic ones that fire the red/black cap things. They were deemed to dangerous to have around the home, and even though they were bright blue could have been mistaken for 'real firearms'. (MY ASS)

Sorry for the long post, though it relevant! ;)

You blokes need a second amendment. In the states the government only knows who legally owns handguns, machine guns, and explosive devices (rocket launchers). Everything else is unregistered. Ya in Connecticut they passed a semi-auto rifle registration law and 90% of gun owners ignored it. Plus it looks like the Governor who signed it is getting booted out of office, just like a few politicians in Colorado who banned 30 round magazines were recalled.

Excellent, we need more of this, and fewer guns

We need to lower gun ownership in this country dramatically and increase enforcement and control dramatically. This measure is excellent, and I hope it results in enough unannounced visits to make people give up their obsession with the things.

So called hunting, which consists of chavs coming out to the country where they use tame pheasants and partridges for target practice? Its simply disgusting. And the chavs who are already in the country going around with their shotguns blasting anything that moves and generally trying to intimidate their neighbours? Why do we tolerate this?

We need to make the shooting of tame animals reared for purpose illegal, and we need to reduce the number of guns in private hands by about 80% - the remainder may have a legitimate use for the Olympic sport.

The countryside at the moment is full of Derek Birds, waiting to happen. Ridiculous and of absolutely no social benefit. Put a stop to it.

Irrelevant Arguments

Having read through a few comments, I stopped after several pages because most are irrelevant.

Quote: "these are NOT random spot checks - they are triggered by specific intelligence."

That being the case, specific intel is enough to get a warrant. Absent "warrant-level" justification, there is no - repeat, no - justification for conducting inspections. Demanding "spot checks" without cause is nothing less than tyranny.

Given the demonstrated corruption of law enforcement, judicial, and intel agencies throughout the western world, and - as the record shows - their repeated use of false unproven, even made-up, allegations to justify their excesses, this act can only be seen as another step in the subjugation of the once-capable British "subject".