Airgun Amnesty

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The radio was abuzz today with the news that in Scotland, police are going to crack down on unlicensed airguns. That is exactly how it was phrased.

I sold my air rifle a long time ago because I saw this one coming. It was unlicensed. All airguns in Scotland, indeed in the UK, are unlicensed. There is no such thing as an airgun licence. There is no ‘crackdown on illegal airguns’ because none of them are, as yet, illegal. It’s an attack on perfectly legal possession.

There is such a licence now, and anyone holding one of these previously perfectly legal weapons in Scotland will have to buy one. Alternatively you can surrender your airgun to the police to be destroyed in an ‘airgun amnesty’.

The amnesty takes place before the law takes effect on July 1st. You will surrender a legal weapon to be destroyed before it becomes an illegal weapon. Or you can pay the Scottish government to let you keep what you already own.

Oh, I know, there are those thinking this is a good thing. One of them was in the coffee room at work. Well, until I pointed out that soon they will want us to have licences for kitchen knives since more people are attacked with kitchen knives than with airguns.

I also pointed out that the law now refuses to let anyone sell a knife to anyone under 16 even though almost every one of those who attack someone with a knife are over 16, and any 13 year old can get a knife from the kitchen. The law achieves nothing.

You will have to be over 18 to buy an airgun. Or you can join the army at 16 and get a real gun and a tank and training in how to kill people with them. Logic? Expect none in this world.

Airguns are not particularly dangerous. Apart from a few very powerful ones, it’s really hard to do any serious damage with one of those things unless you creep up behind someone and bludgeon them with the butt end.

Yes, you could take someone’s eye out – but you could do that with a well aimed pencil.

As usual, all this comes from a single incident involving a dickhead who happened to have an airgun. If he had had a brick or a baseball bat he would have still been a dickhead and still done the same thing. Are we now to ban bricks, just in case? Do you need a licence for every brick in your house?

So airguns are no longer as easily available as before. Don’t buy one if you live in Scotland, and sell it if you have one. The licence is just phase one. Once they are all registered it is then a simple matter to ban them entirely and round them all up. The Scottish government don’t like us to have any kind of weaponry.

The next target for the Scottish Nannying Puritans is, I predict, crossbows. I sold all mine south of the border where a little remnant of sanity so far prevails. Then it will be edged weapons – swords, specifically Samurai swords for no real reason other than they like the name, then all swords, machetes, scythes and related garden implements.

Eventually it will be kitchen knives. Scoff if you like but just watch this space. It’s coming. You will have to have a licence for every kitchen knife and a damn good reason to have more than one of each type. And you just watch the drones nod in serious compliance to this total control of their lives.

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, right?

 

31 thoughts on “Airgun Amnesty”

  2. My children wouldn’t let me buy air rifles for my grandchildren. That really gutted me. I was going to be the best Grandma ever. But no chance. I rather gave up after that. What else is there?
    Mine own all had one, and had a lot of fun, and all learned how to shoot straight, although there were a couple of minor incidents that we won’t talk about. But no one died.
    The Builder next door got a bit shirty about his window but I paid for that, and it was a very dirty window anyway. He needed a new one.
    Anyway, Julian can now shoot to kill Rabbits. But he never manages to kill one for his poor old Mother, who would die for a wild Rabbit.
    The rotten little horror stories can ride and fish as well, but I don’t suppose they taught my grand children to do any of that either.

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  4. “You will have to have a licence for every kitchen knife and a damn good reason to have more than one of each type.”
    It’s just as well that I no longer live in Invercockaleekie. You could deal yourself the death of a thousand cuts while trying to get a teaspoon out of our kitchen drawer. The girlies say I’m a hoarder but, no matter how many new knives they buy, I’ve never seen them throw one away.

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  6. Next you’ll need a licence for a sgian dubh. Most airlines will carry these weapons (in the hold, not in hand luggage) – presently you can legally walk into the airport with one in your sock, even one with a sharpened edge. Let’s see Splurgon ban that – she’s more chance of making me wear underpants with my kilt!

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  7. I still have your old air rifle and it’s still going strong. I joined a shooting club a couple of years ago with the intention of getting a firearms licence. I still haven’t followed that one through but in the meantime, I’ve become a dead shot with the old air gun.

    I’ve heard rumours that the EU intend to bring airguns under the firearms licence but I don’t know how true that is.

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  8. The sgian dubh. – My late father took his trip of a lifetime about 25 years ago to the US of A. He wore the full Highland dress (including his sock-knife), on the flight over When he arrived at NY he was greeted with a welcoming party of New York’s finest, only the intervention of a Scots-American officer of the NYPD defused the situation. Now you can buy them with the full fancy handle and a bit of blunt plastic poking out the bottom for travel eventuallities…

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  9. Here in Northern Ireland you need a license for an air rifle, even the sub-12ft/lb ones you can buy straightforwardly in the rest of the UK. And you need a gun cabinet, medical check, and a visit from a firearms officer to make sure the gun cabinet’s there and is bolted to the wall and that you aren’t a swivel-eyed lunatic. You also need two referees and a landowner’s permission to shoot.
    The good news is, if you’re a bona fide member of a shooting club you can get any type of pistol you want, a Colt Peacemaker, 1911, Glock – whatever takes your fancy – not one of those bastardised huge long ones you are allowed in England – and any appropriate calibre rifle if you are in a target club or shoot foxes or deer. You can keep these at home, but only personal protection weapon certificate holders, in effect ex-HM forces and politicians, can carry. And there’s one legally-held firearm for every eight people in Northern Ireland with no adverse effects upon public safety according to the Chief Constable. So yes, although cumbersome the licensing system seems to work and anyone who is fit to own a gun and needs one can get one.
    Strangely enough you can buy a crossbow, a weapon which packs much more punch than an air-rifle, at sports shops or market stalls. The Yanks even shoot Black Bears with them where State laws allow, but apart from being over 18 you can buy one easily.

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    • As I said, I sold off the crossbow some time back. I still have the takedown recurve bow but the time it takes to put that together, it would be hard to class it as an offensive weapon! Assembled, it can pierce a car door and pin the driver’s leg to the seat but disassembled, you’d need to shout ‘Hang on a minute’ while you put it all together.

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    • I once decided that a straight razor would make a suitable alternative to the sgian dubh (given my lack of actual Scottishness). The following morning, as I glued my fingers back together, I decided that it didn’t.

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  10. “Airguns are not particularly dangerous.”

    To people, no. To people’s pets, yes.

    Not that that’s reason to licence them, just to deal with miscreants so harshly that Caligula would vomit.

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  12. Dear Mr Legiron

    Too much time, too little to do.

    All the good law was made long ago. All the lawmongers have left to do is make ever more law and all of it stupid. The ban addicts are there to help them.

    DP

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