Issue 68 ISSN 2398-3310

SHOOTERS’ JOURNAL Issue 68 ISSN 2398-3310 WINTER IS COMING SO’s CHRISTMAS MAKE IT A MERRY ONE And then THERE’S NEW HOME OFFICE REGULATIONS FOR 2021 SHOOTERS’ RIGHTS ASSOCIATION COVER PICTURE P.O. Box 3 Issue 68 ‘AUTUMN’ 2020 Cardigan SA43 1BN TEL: 01239 698607 www.shootersrightsassociation.co.uk follow us on Facebook .org is not up to date Existing members have had or will get at next renewal concessions to reflect the dormant period of lockdown. Join in 2020 to get 15 months membership for the cost of 12. New members welcome at any time and you get up to 15 months membership for the price of 12. SRA MEMBERSHIP FEES New Individual £39.50 Extra family members, each £10.00 Photo Credit: Shutterstock Much as we’d like to send all our CLUBS, GROUPS, SYNDICATES members a Christmas card, in these (Minimum of three) per person £22.00 restrained times this is as close we LARGER GROUPS 40+ per person £15.00 could get: a couple of foreign deer in Over 100 £12.50 a foreign landscape. That fits quite Group leaders can add new members to well, as most of what makes their group at any time for £22 per Christmas in the UK is foreign: person up to the group’s renewal date. chocolate, Holy Eucharist, turkeys, Pro rata if that’s soon. whisky, Xmas trees, Yule – enjoy! And ---------------------------------------------------------- let’s have a better 2021. Autumn is usually hectic, as we -our membership secretary Elizabeth remember three great battles – Law organised our local Senlac, Trafalgar and Agincourt in remembrance as a flash mob and the space of a fortnight, pause for attracted wreaths from our church, halloween and Guy Fawkes and then the SRA, the local community council, remember our military dead. Welsh Brownies and Guides, the Fire Station lockdown stopped all that, so - and two Women’s Institute groups. SRA PHOTO SHOOTERS’ JOURNAL The Act was presented to ISSUE 68 Parliament as an anti-crime initiative AUTUMN 2020 while Lloyd George referred to it as Published by TSRA Ltd making sure only friends of the PO Box 3, Cardigan SA43 1BN government had firearms. Sir Ernley ISSN 2398-3310 Blackwell’s brief had been to find ways of preventing bankrupt European CONTENTS Page governments selling off surplus Editorial 1 weaponry to third world hotspots once Correction – Mass Ayoob 3 the Great War ended. New Home Office Regulations 3 Blackwell was a Home Office European Firearms Passes pass 7 mandarin with no skills, knowledge or SRA & the VCR ‘defence’ 7 interest in any goings on outside his Latest Australian ‘gun’ ban 10 own Home department. He’d had his Jermaine Baker Update 13 hands full anyway. Events which Breona Taylor 16 doubtless coloured his thinking: in the The US Supreme Court 20 simplistic world of dictatorial Rumbles in the countryside 25 bureaucrats banning something is Scottish Air Weapon ‘Licensing’ 26 seen as a solution. Book Review – Unnatural causes 28 The Home Office first came up with the idea of banning handguns in 1870 EDITORIAL and what Parliament allowed instead There’s always something going on was the Gun Licensing Act – a tax. The that can or will have an impact on the department made several attempts to diverse activities of the SRA’s further control firearms in the 1890s membership: whether you’re locked and Parliament rejected all but down, self-isolating, shielding, allowed the Pistols Act 1903 – another working from home or just working. tax. Even if you’re doing nothing, the Home He probably wanted to ban Office is beavering away in the handguns in 1917, but if he ran it up background to make your legitimate the flagpole nobody would have interest in guns and older weaponry saluted it: they were too useful and the more difficult for you to maintain pet Home Office gun-ban project safely and legally. wouldn’t fly politically. It was ever thus; Lloyd George’s Prior to the Great War, two government adopted the proposal of significant handgun incidents Sir Ernley Blackwell’s 1917 committee occurred, and both have gone down in for a system of firearm certificates for history for their severity. These were the public and registration of firearms perpetrated by eastern Europeans dealers for the trade, as the Firearms who brought their automatic pistols to Act 1920. the UK with them. 1 First up was the ‘Tottenham 1920 Firearms Act was as near as Outrage’ in 1909: an attempted armed Blackwell got to fulfilling his robbery. The suspects hijacked a tram department’s 1870 plan. to get away, hotly pursued by the The next fifty years saw police Metropolitan Police in another tram, to attempts to introduce de facto bans Chingford, where they got into their administratively thwarted by hideout and committed suicide. Over Parliament and the courts. Shotgun 1,000 shots were fired; ten times more certificates were awaiting a suitable than in the Hungerford massacre of legislative opportunity in 1966 as a 1987 with the difference that in replacement for the 1870 gun licence Hungerford only the murderer was when Harry Roberts obligingly shot doing any shooting. three Metropolitan Police officers and The following year, the siege of Roy Jenkins knee-jerked them through Sidney Street. Blackwell’s boss, the Parliament to head off media demands Home Secretary for the time being for restoration of the death penalty. Winston Churchill, attended the scene While every legislative control of to be immortalized in movie newsreel firearms since 1870 has been directed footage. He got close enough to the at making it more expensive and action, depending on which account difficult for the law-abiding, doing it you follow, for a bullet to have passed administratively really took off after through his top hat. This started when the 1968 Firearms Act. The ‘restricted’ three anarchists burgled a jeweller’s in 1969 memorandum of guidance to the City of London. Three responding police told them to criminalize the gun police officers and one robber were trade and resulted in a crime wave. shot dead and two officers wounded. Firearms crime has increased Metropolitan Police officers pursued dramatically since 1968 and most of the suspects to a house in Sidney Street the increase has been the persecution where a Met officer was wounded. of the people who thought they were Then the army came in support and the acting lawfully. Real gun crime as house burned down during the committed by real criminals has been engagement. lost in the statistics. After 1910 came further attempts And so it continues: a reinvention of to restrict handgun sales and to licence which guns can or can’t be antiques the gun trade. The Great War put these (elsewhere in this issue) is the Home on the back burner, so when Blackwell Office’s Christmas present to people was asked to ‘do something’ about war who thought they were doing surplus sales to the third world, he everything right. Based on calibres, simply trotted out his same old ideas. this way of excluding some antique The Home Office remains famous to firearms from antique status was this day for shelving bad ideas. They rejected by the Court of Appeal in await, in Douglas Hurd’s words, a 1977. Home Office policy is thus at ‘suitable legislative opportunity’. The odds with the common law. 2 There’s more to come: the publication, and we apologise to both for Eurotrash legislation has to be the confusion. Ω adopted, retained or repealed and guess which way that’ll go in the case New regulations from the Home of deactivated firearms. Office Not to mention the MARS rifles ban, Announced in November with the still hanging over owners like the intention of this slipping into law sword of Damocles. Stuck, we think, before Christmas, the Home Office because the treasury can’t afford it. have drafted a Statutory Instrument What is needed is for politicians to take they claim will enshrine their 1939 a good look at the Home Office ‘Serious cut-off date and the obsolete calibres Violence Unit’ and its handling of the list in law, with the following law-abiding public as target criminals. alterations: There’s so much trash on the statute Seven revolver rounds are to be books slipped in through the Dead removed from the list: Parliament and while Theresa May was Home Secretary that where we are • .320 British (also known as .320 now is not a good start point. Revolver CF, short or long) One ray of hope is Priti Patel has • .41 Colt (short or long) publicly identified her other ridiculous • .44 Smith and Wesson Russian department – immigration – as not fit • .442 Revolver (also known as .44 for purpose; and survived her Webley) department’s attempt to shrug her off • 9.4mm Dutch Revolver the way they dumped Amber Rudd. • 10.6mm German Ordnance Now we need her to look at our Revolver problems, as the minister in charge of • 11mm French Ordnance public order – Kit Malthouse – has Revolver M1873 (Army) proved he’s just another sleepwalker. Ω These are all centre-fire rounds - developed in the 1870s after Rollin CORRECTION White’s bored through cylinder patent Massad F Ayoob spotted some fake expired. They did not make the news in issue 67, which we are pleased to transition from black powder correct. Mass succeeded Jan Stevenson to propulsion to nitro, superseded by the position of Handgun Editor for Guns better rounds. Home Office concerns Magazine, a position he still holds. about them – particularly the .44 Smith The confusion arose in our tiny and Wesson Russian – are based on a editorial mind because Mass wrote for rogue dealer having imported some Police Magazine and its predecessor and sold them with made-up Police Product News, while neither he ammunition to people who used them nor Jan held an editorial chair in that on each other.

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