The Burpster wrote:You CONTINUALLY use odd single examples thrown up on here as evidence of a Galactic conspiracy by the Police to stop you shooting.....etc etc
Mein Gott! We have to worry about the Intergalactic Police as well? No, no, you have the wrong idea: you're thinking on the local individual-copper level whereas I'm concerned about our national firearms legislation, and its application at a national level. If you like, the attitudes of senior officers/ACPO and the Home Office. Don't get your knickers in a twist: many ordinary coppers might well be ignorant about firearms but I don't think most of them are actually hostile towards shooting. However, the actions of individual coppers certainly need to be viewed within the context of State attitudes to firearms ownership.
I wonder how long you've been observing the UK firearms scene; you might have been shooting for quite a while, and so have I, but I've also been interested in the ramifications of firearms legislation for several decades now, and I've learned quite a lot about it. It meshes with my political concerns/interests too. And believe me, the sort of things I say here are simply nothing new! Were you paying attention in 1988 when we lost semi-auto rifles? Or in 1996/97 when we came in for vicious anti-shooting propaganda that would have embarrassed Goebbels, and lost our handguns? You should have been reading Handgunner magazine thirty years ago...
I'm a freelance photographer and writer - and NOT, before you get too excited, a news-journo, but an entirely different field, could be Gardeners' Weekly or Rubber & Fetishist Gazette, though I'm not saying which.
Yours, Malcolm