Battle Re-Enactment in Our PLI Policy: He Was and Still Is Active in an American Civil War Group and Thus Emerged the Second Half, Collectively ‘Living History’

1 battle re-enactment in our PLI policy: he was and still is active in an American Civil War group and thus emerged the second half, collectively ‘living history’. Re-enactment got off to a shaky start with administrative obstruction on all sides. Many police forces opted to require re-enactment firearms held on certificates to have barrel obstructions to ‘prevent’ live ammunition being used. This was part of a wider policy of restricting a firearm solely to the ‘good reason’ for which it had been granted. Live ammunition shooters fared no better at the hands of the so-called public servants in firearms administration. The Met, for SHOOTERS’ JOURNAL example, decided that there was no legal Published by TSRA Ltd way to take a gun to a shoot. The firearm PO Box 3, Cardigan SA43 1BN certificate condition said it had to be locked ISSN 2398-3310 away at all times except when in actual use, which meant any attempt to take a firearm to a range would only avoid prosecution if CONTENTS Page undetected. All such difficulties placed in the way of Editorial 1 our social activities by bureaucrats have Firearms Fees 2 been overcome – and then replaced by new News in Brief 4 ones, as the firearms managers used to get Grace v DC – US court report 5 together under the auspices of the defunct Prohibited Person Applications 6 Association of Chief Police Officers to think Blair Grindle appeal 9 up new ways of not doing their jobs. They Firearms Statistics 2016 11 were all hired, after all, to issue certificates Mark Holmes Appeal 14 to applicants. No other branch of The Mac Ten Man 33 bureaucracy has invested so much time and Scottish Air Guns 38 public money in searching for ways of avoiding doing the work they were hired for. BOOK REVIEWS And there’s more to come: fed up with the (1) The Mint by T E Lawrence 15 courts not treated every law-abiding (2) Dead on Time by John McVicar 18 taxpayer dragged through them as the villain (3) The battle to clear Barry George Home Office policy thinks they should be, by Mike Bourke 22 they are in the process of changing the law. (4) Justice for Jill, by Scott Lomax. 24 It’s a case of tearing up the rule books as established by Parliament and the courts FEATURE ARTICLE over the past quarter century and replacing What really happened in Dallas? 26 them with the rules they tried and failed to bring in by prosecuting certificate holders EDITORIAL and dealers. Antiques, de-acs and The SRA is an organisation of two halves: component parts are in the process of being founded in 1984 as a legal interest group re-defined, although of more interest in the monitoring government interest in firearms policing and crime bill is a clause that controls, all our founder members were expects everyone to ‘have regard’ for Home shooters. Dick Baxter suggested mentioning

2 Office guidance on firearms matters. Since before: attendance was up, but the stall that guidance is at times vague, at others count declined. That hasn’t stopped them doesn’t articulate the issue and elsewhere is and although some of the smaller events just plain wrong, it’s going to get interesting. have been cancelled this year, it’s still the Also of passing interest should be the case that we have lost more shows to attitude of the shooting organisations to all adverse weather than to costs or negative this. Britain has never had a ‘gun lobby’ per legislation. se: the organisations that make up the The SRA doesn’t exhibit, costs issue, but British Shooting Sports Council are that doesn’t stop us attending without governing bodies. They each have a portfolio, so we might meet some of you as constitution and rules and are thus governed the season progresses. That is, when we’re by their members’ wishes and their not tracking the progress of the law’s conflict members generally want their sport with your rights and privileges, not to administered, scores recorded, medals mention your peaceful enjoyment of your issued. That leaves shooting organisations possessions in your chosen social pastime. rather in the position of Cowslip’s warren in Watership Down: tolerant of the occasional FIREARMS FEES empty chair, closed business or a The Home Office launched a consultation membership subscription not renewed as in January 2017 about the fees it intends to long as it’s not theirs. charge for the authority to possess Which is where the SRA came in – back in prohibited weapons, the approval of rifle 1984 with an interest in matters legal. So and loose ammunition pistol clubs and we’ll get on with that while you all enjoy the museum collections in anticipation of the season. Last year, re-enactors experienced authority to charge fees being vested in them police checks of their de-acs against by the completion of the Policing and Crime certificates at some shows. At some point Bill currently before Parliament. this year, the new law rendering all de-acs to They have taken to calling these date ‘defectively deactivated’ will kick in. authorities ‘licenses’, although there has Essentially they are retrospectively being been no change in the law either to make deemed ‘out of proof’ and can’t be sold until them into licenses or to call them such. re-worked to the new European spec. But The Home Office has issued prohibited this is going to be much harsher than selling weapons authorities under section 5 of the a real gun out of proof, as that’s a matter for Firearms Act 1968 since 1973, when they the proof master to prosecute and his took over the role from the Defence Council. primary interest is in getting the fee for re- Since then the category has been swollen to proofing it. With the police involved, it could include some forty types of firearms and become difficult, or it may pass, as have so ammunition, as well as some products that many other attempts to crack down on the are not firearms at all. An applicant has to law abiding in hope of finding fault; such as prove his need to possess prohibited the kitemarks for gun cabinets farce in the weapons separately for each category 1990s. applied for. Some prohibited weapons are in If this year is much marred, we suspect it more than one sub-category of section 5. will be how the shows manage that will Prohibited weapons that are firearms are make the difference. The trend seems to be also subject to section 1(firearm certificate) toward venues getting dearer, which control, so one requires either such a translates into higher pitch fees for certificate or registration as a dealer as well exhibitors and the latter saving their money as a section 5 authority to possess them. The by not attending. The Midland Game Fair Home Office propose a fee of £1,860 for a seemed hard hit last year and the year dealer to trade in prohibited weapons, with

3 a £200 discount if an RFD is applied for at rather pointless – a duplicate rubber stamp. the same time, since all the checks for a There is no appeal mechanism for refusals, section 5 are carried out by the police in the which violates EU law. context of issuing the RFD apart from Our view of the section 5 issuing function confirming the business or other need that of the Home Office is that it would be better the applicant has. vested in the DTi, since they have more to do APPROVAL of rifle and loose ammunition with the day-to-day business of the pistol clubs currently costs £84. The Home prohibited weapons trade. Or back to the Office propose charging £1,050 to grant a Ministry of Defence, from whence it came in six-year ‘licence’ and £900 to renew it. The 1973. Those two departments are both proposal document refers to shooting clubs involved in the export of military weapons as businesses and proposes a fee of £690 to anyway and would thus have a better handle change the address at which club firearms on an applicant’s ‘need’ than the Home are stored, £470 to change the name on the Office, which is outside the loop. club firearm certificate and £110 to alter the The approval of clubs is not fit for name of the club on their records. purpose, as it does not cover all the firearms This is quite bizarre, given that an officer that might be used at clubs. We have this of the club usually holds club firearms on a weird situation in which one has to belong to certificate, so a change of address involves a Home Office approved club in order to the police amending the firearm certificate possess firearms for target shooting on a (for free) and the Home Office doing nothing firearm certificate, including types that for their proposed fee. Changing the named Home Office approval does not extend to, certificate holder is likewise entirely a police such as long-barrel revolvers and section 1 matter. shotguns. In every case we have had Some clubs are either part of a firearms involving clubs in difficulties over their dealership or are registered as dealers, Home Office approval, the local police whereupon a change of personnel involves instigated all the decisions causing the the new owner applying to the police for an difficulty. It seems to us that the club’s RFD, as they aren’t transferable. So what the approval might as well be linked to the grant Home Office is going to do for its money is of the club’s firearm certificate. The Home opaque. Office is merely a rubber stamp and has been At the back of these proposed fees is that for years. the Home Office have a full time department Our comments to the Home Office in this dedicated to these firearms matters, which is consultation will have been posted on our not very busy, so the exorbitant cost of website by the time you read this journal. staffing that is, in effect, being shared out www.shootersrights.org among the small number of clubs and businesses that have need of the ‘licenses’. NEWS IN BRIEF These generate some 700 applications of all types per year (14 a week) and processing ARMED DEFENCE them is mainly a case of waiting for the Kenneth Hugill’s acquittal (10th March 2017) police to confirm that the applicant is a at Hull crown court of GBH after he shot a firearm certificate holder, registered would-be burglar in the small hours of the firearms dealer or museum curator as the night (and the foot) prompted us to dig this case may be and has appropriate storage for letter out: first published in ‘Country Life’ the prohibited weapons. magazine, it was reprinted in the Daily The department seems powerless to act Telegraph in 2015 to promote a book about until the police have done their bit, which letters to the Country Life editor. makes the Home Office involvement look

4 THE LAW AND THE BURGLAR the burglar to shoot or maim him without [November 27th, 1909] having the first shot.—Justice of the Peace Sir,—If “Country House” will refer to Stone’s Justices’ Manual, forty-eighth IT DIDN’T WORK HERE edition, 1908, page 813, note G, he will see We came close to having Boris Johnson for that he has a perfect right to shoot a burglar. Prime Minister. He missed out because The following is an extract: “As to killing a Michael Gove forgot the basic rule that a burglar, see Stephen’s Commentaries, kingmaker can’t make himself, thus leaving fourteenth edition, vol. 4, page 40, where it is us with the worst possible outcome for the laid down that: if any person attempts the shooting sports. As Home Secretary since robbery or murder, or to break open a house 2010 Theresa May presided over the in the nighttime, and is killed in such creeping hunt-sab approach to eliminating attempt, either by the party assaulted or the certificate holders and registered firearms owner of the house, or the servant attendant dealers ‘by any means’; not to mention the upon either, or by any other person present re-write of Home Office guidance to the and interposing to prevent mischief, the police to include all sorts of stuff for which slayer shall be acquitted and discharged.” there is neither legislation nor court I have beside me a cutting from a local paper, precedents and not forgetting the Policing dated November, 1893, which under the and Crime Bill provisions – inspired by heading of “Should Burglars Be Shot?” says, Europe and she’s already said that she will “the Saturday Review discusses the theory stick us with everything European until the as to the right or otherwise of householders last possible moment. Which leads us to to shoot persons whom they find occupying comment on: their premises, after a felonious breaking and entry, especially at night.” Commenting BREXIT on the decision of a recent case at After more than forty years of Manchester, it says, “Mr. Justice Grantham Conservative Prime Ministers negotiating must clearly be enrolled among the opt-outs to make sure you don’t benefit from followers of the late Mr. Justice Wills, and EU membership and then asking us what we who could be in a better following? thought only to go into a big-time sulk about Mr. Justice Wills was asked, ‘If I look into my our answer, we can now see that the next drawing-room and see a burglar packing up half century will consist of Conservative the clock, and he cannot see me, what ought I Prime Ministers negotiating opt-ins! And to do?’ He replied as nearly as may be, ‘My that still won’t benefit the shooting sports as advice to you, which I give as a man, as a the Home Office policy of vilifying legitimate lawyer and as an English judge, is as follows: law abiding social firearms users at every In the supposed circumstances this is what opportunity is a Home Office policy, not an you have a right to do, and I am by no means EU one. sure that it is not your duty to do it: Take a We suspect that the proposals relating to double-barrelled gun, carefully load both de-acs currently being considered in Europe barrels, and then, without attracting the are British in origin. The basic problem with burglar’s attention, aim steadily at his heart British firearms policy is that ‘they’ want to and shoot him dead.’” reduce the number of firearms in circulation Whether the above is a true record of what while ‘we’ the public like owning and using the (then) late Mr. Justice Wills said or not I firearms for a wide variety of largely social cannot vouch for; it is only a copy of what reasons. The ‘they’ in this discussion was a appeared in the paper, but it stands to self-appointed committee of policemen reason that if a man finds a burglar in his under the chief inspector of constabularies house it would be folly on his part to wait for in the 1960s. The resultant McKay Report in

5 1972 was never published, although a copy through the courts than we are from our was placed in the House of Commons library government, as is the American experience in 1997. Before that it appeared as the green in Grace et al. paper CMND 5297 in 1973 and although rejected by Parliament at the time many of PARTING SHOT its proposals became police policies. The While thinking about Brexit, bear in mind 1973 paper was dusted off to become the that British army rifles are made in 1988 Act that banned self-loading rifles and Germany: a country that refused us military enshrined deactivation in legislation barely a supplies during the Falklands campaign in hundred years after the trade started doing case that upset their ex-pats in Buenos Aires. it. The shooting sports are in decline, US COURT REPORT according to government figures; no boost Grace et al v District of Columbia et al. from the Olympics, since most of the 17th May 2016 shooting competitions are not open to UK Washington DC is that swamp set aside by residents as the firearms are prohibited and the founding fathers of the United States for the venues were temporary anyway, so no the federal capital. An unconstitutional legacy either. handgun ban there (which exempted cops Deactivation was brought forth as a way and didn’t affect bad guys) led it being of releasing firearms from the controls – dubbed the murder capital of the world in thus to keep certificate numbers down – and the 1970s, yet wasn’t overturned until 2008. now the panic is about having abdicated that The case then was District of Columbia v control ‘they’ don’t know what the rest of Heller. Mr Heller was a security guard who you are doing. It would all have been much had a handgun at work. The DC law simpler if your public servants respected the prevented him having one at home or public they purport to serve. Public safety carrying one off duty. His landmark case would be better guaranteed by all those de- challenged DC’s law as a violation of his acs still being live and on certificates in the constitutional rights under the second system. amendment. Likewise the early cartridge firearms: the This 1791 amendment is the ‘right to keep 1992 obsolete calibre list is another example and bear arms’ and also refers to a ‘well of government abdicating control over a regulated militia’. This phraseology did not class of firearms in order to keep certificate matter until politicians started trying to numbers down, followed by panic about control the freedoms of the citizens they those firearms not being on certificates. purported to serve in public office and then ‘They’ can’t have it both ways: either the debate became whether the founding certificate numbers must rise to fathers meant that the right was an accommodate the demands of the law individual one or a collective one for citizens abiding taxpayers or kept down by releasing only when called out as militia. firearms from the controls. What doesn’t The common law principle is that you work is the current dogs breakfast in which have the right to defend yourself and those the certificate system is operated with a for whom you are responsible. The role of view to keeping people out of it. No other militia is the wider defence of the realm, government policy works thus: an overhaul which extends to acting offensively on behalf to make a system that works for the public it of the government. The Supreme Court in supposedly serves and is fit for purpose is ‘Heller’ concluded that the right was an long overdue. The template is in our book individual one, because when the king called ‘does the trigger pull the finger? you out as militia, you were supposed to Unfortunately, we’re more likely to get it come equipped and ready. The ‘right’ to be

6 armed is thus also an obligation to be Home Office has long used the mantra that prepared to the best of your ability. carrying a weapon to defend oneself on the The District of Columbia didn’t like a court off chance of being attacked is an overturning their policy and since 2008 have inappropriate form of defensive weaponry. placed all manner of obstructions in the way That is still being clung to despite having of people who sought to exercise the right to long since been discredited, such as by the keep arms. police using them. The ‘off-chance’ position Where there is a carry permit scheme, it’s came up recently in correspondence with only valid for that state unless reciprocity Gloucester police. An SRA member applied agreements have been reached. The New for 12 bore slugs to deal with wild boar and Hampshire permit is now recognised in 28 while Gloucester will allow a (minimum) . states: New York is not one of them and it 270” rifle for him to carry with that purpose stretches from the Atlantic coast to the in mind, they won’t allow 12 bore slugs for Canadian border, blocking land access by use in a shotgun for him on the ‘off-chance’ tooled-up residents of Connecticut, Maine, of encountering wild boar while out with the Massachusetts, New Hampshire and shotgun with a wide variety of other pest Vermont from the other states that species in mind. recognize their permits. That harks back to the 1970s when a In DC, the post-Heller concealed carry (since discredited) Home Office committee permit scheme requires applicants to meet a decided that there should only be one good number of criteria relating to good reason for each firearm, so that it was easier character, health and so forth – more than for a roadside police check to establish for being an airline pilot or a police officer – whether a firearm was being transported for and then the applicant had to take that good reason or not. The policy fell apart qualifications and lastly had to satisfy the soon enough, but the Home Office is not an police that that they were in specific organisation that lets bad ideas go if they jeopardy. That’s similar to Northern Ireland, might have some negative effect on what law where being the random victim of a abiding taxpayers get up to in their spare sectarian tit for tat attack didn’t count. You time. had to survive one attack and prove you were a specific (not a random) target of the PROHIBITED PERSON APPLICATIONS assassination attempt to get a carry permit In 2014 sections 108 to 111 of the there during the troubles. Antisocial Behaviour Crime and Policing Act DC’s approach seems derived from the 2014 extended prohibition to include British 1920 Firearms Act exemptions, so suspended sentences. A ‘prohibited person’ transporting cash and valuables (which under the Firearms Act may not possess any potentially makes you a robbery victim) firearm or ammunition. A firearm is a lethal would count more than being a celebrity. barrelled weapon from which any shot, This threshold is what the Supreme Court bullet or missile can be discharged. ruled was a step too far in Grace et al, so DC Ammunition is the projectile – in its ‘ready- can keep all the barriers they have dreamed use’ form – that can be discharged from up regarding mental health etc., but can’t use those firearms. their ‘good reason’ restriction to refuse ‘Lethal’ is defined in the Scottish air applicants who aren’t about to be homicide Weapon and Licensing Act 2016 as ‘1 joule’ victims. or about .7 of one foot-pound: so ‘firearms’ Interesting. In UK firearms legislation the for the purposes of prohibited persons ‘good reason’ requirement only relates to includes air guns and the ammunition for sporting purposes. Nothing in the Act them: so lead pellets, darts, 6mm plastic contradicts the Bill of Rights, yet the UK balls etc.

7 The 2014 Act also extended the list of ownership) a wide variety of factors, things ‘prohibited persons’ can’t possess to including domestic strife and controlling include antiques – which until then were not behaviour, that do not appear as contra- controlled by any provisions in legislation. indications in legislation or decided cases. Antique firearms are otherwise outwith the The one case that considered domestic strife controls, regardless of their operational (Edwards v Norfolk 1993) is not mentioned, status, so a shot-out, rusted out percussion as its conclusions are at odds to those in the tribal musket with a bent barrel is as off- new Home Office guidance: nor is the ticket as a mint condition Martini Henry. landmark case Joy v chief constable of To become a prohibited person under the Dumfries and Galloway (1966) which directs 1937 Firearms Act, one had to be sentenced decision makers to the duty to consider any to three years or more in prison, whereupon application from the point of view of an the prohibition lasted for five years from the applicant and not from that of a possible date of release. objector. A private member’s bill in 1965 – said to Into this mix came the inquest into the be to do with easing the passage of the murders committed by certificate holder abolition of the death penalty – extended the Mike Atherton at the end of 2012. His was an five year ban above to a permanent one and unsettled life pockmarked by police applied the five year ban to anyone involvement in domestic incidents such that sentenced to three months or more in they had taken his guns away more than prison, effective from the date of release. A once until things calmed down: when he got provision was enacted for any person them back he shot three members of his subject to prohibition to apply for relief to family. That’s where Home Office concerns the convicting court. The 1969 case R v about domestics and guns come from and Fordham decided that suspended sentences gave rise to the policy of whittling down the did not count toward prohibition, deciding number of certificate holders ‘by any means’: that on the key word ‘release’. that Marks Holmes (reported elsewhere in In 2010, Derrick Bird’s killing spree in this issue) got caught up in. Whitehaven, Cumbria gave rise to the Home Suspended sentences seem to have Affairs Select Committee in Parliament become more common since 2010. Maybe having another look at firearms legislation that’s a new policy too. Back in 1981, a and they noticed that Bird had received a Greater London Council report on women in suspended sentence in the 1970s and prison said that most were there for non- highlighted that as another turn of the payment of fines imposed for crimes that screw: hence the 2014 amendment to over- would not, of themselves, have attracted a rule ‘Fordham’. custodial sentence. The principle of law is The Home Office under Theresa May that the courts can’t imprison someone for (2010-16) became more antagonistic toward the first time unless there is no alternative people who want to own and use firearms due to the seriousness of the crime or the and shotguns lawfully; such people are to be immediate need to protect the public. vilified at every opportunity – that’s what Imprisoning people for non-payment of your government thinks of your choice of fines evades that principle. So does hobby - hence the ‘hunt-sab’ approach to suspending the sentence, as it doesn’t get the trying to demonize and criminalize your convict into gaol unless they offend again. lawful activity and the gun trade’s lawful What it does do, if the suspended sentence is business. for three months or more, is obliges the Segments of the Home Office guidance to police to revoke a firearm/shotgun police were re-written to expect the police to certificate that is held: at which point we consider (as contra-indications to firearms meet Leslie Jardine.

8 He caught a suspended sentence for fraud circumstances, we helped him draft his by submitting two quotes for a job on statement and we re-jigged the supporting different letterheads. The Metropolitan documentation to show the result in Mr Police revoked his firearm certificate, as the Jardine’s case and the judge’s identification law requires and with SRA assistance Mr of two mistakes in Archbold. Jardine applied to Woolwich crown court to Adam Johnson’s case was similar but ask for the prohibition to be lifted. Home different. He was growing cannabis plants to Office guidance says it should be unless the use the extract for pain relief purposes and offence involved violence or firearms. the police noticed. This landed him a six Fraud is neither: a 1988 case (Spencer- month suspended sentence at Truro crown Stewart v Kent) says that a non-violent court, to which he applied for prohibition to crime is not evidence of danger to public be lifted. What happened next was beyond safety or the peace. How ‘violence’ should be belief. Initially the police asked for a delay to considered in this context is addressed in the hearing date to prepare their case. Then Edwards v chief constable of Norfolk (1993) they provided that preparation in which it and how ‘firearms crimes’ should be was alleged that Mr Johnson had multiple considered is addressed in Shepherd v chief aliases, under one of which he’d previously constable of Devon and Cornwall (2002). held a firearm certificate in Northampton, Home Office newspeak guidance does not which was revoked after a fraud conviction. extend to mentioning these relevant cases, They claimed he’d applied for prohibition to thus leading firearms managers astray. be lifted and had been refused. At the hearing on 3rd June 2016, the judge We reverted to Mr Johnson who said that had read Mr Jardine’s application and he was always known as ‘Richards’ until supporting documents, discussed the adulthood when he found out (when needing application with the police and the CPS and his birth certificate to join the army) that he on reading ‘Archbold’ (the barrister’s bible) was registered as ‘Johnson’ at birth. Since he found two mistakes in it, which he then, he has always used ‘Johnson’ for legal referred to editors for correction, saying that purposes, such as his driving licence and he in forty years it was the first time he’d found is known to police record by both names anything like that to correct. after a caution for possessing an offensive Police attendance at applications is weapon ten years ago. The third alias alleged optional. In a case like this, where they on his PNC is his deceased brother’s name would not have revoked the certificate on and date of birth and the fourth suggested by the conviction but for the requirement of the Devon and Cornwall police is actually an sentence, they usually tell the court that and chap called Gordon who appealed to the high stay away. The judge accepted the court after failing to gain relief from application as appropriate and lifted the prohibition at Northampton crown court in prohibition. The police issued a new the 1990s. certificate against Mr Jardine’s subsequent We are used to the current ‘by any means’ application a couple of months later. policy leading police professionals into over- We assume the utility of this new egging their evidence, but usually from the prohibited person legislation is so that the witness box when it’s harder to counter and police have to reconsider erstwhile thus more likely to sway the court away certificate holders against the new Home from the citizen. Blatant false evidence of Office policy relating to domestic violence, this sort is rarely committed in writing and controlling behaviour etc. Somewhat when it is they usually go to great lengths to redundant in Mr Jardine’s case, as he lives avoid disclosing the material. We prepared a alone, so when Adam Johnson rocked up further statement for Mr Johnson, which he with a similar problem and domestic swore as an affidavit.

9 The chief constable sent a barrister to the represent Great Britain in amateur hearing who described the statement as ‘a championships. This was before it became mistake’. The chief constable’s only concern an Olympic sport so he had to pay for it all. was if Johnson was no longer using cannabis His daughter lost her final and received a as a pain killer, is he using something silver medal. He did not fight his final as the prescribed that might draw him into conflict opponent he beat in the semi punched him with the recent drug-driving policies. “No,” as the referee declared his win. That earned said Mr Johnson, “I’m on the minimum level him a fractured skull and shattered eye of pain relief on prescription and his doctor socket. says it will not affect my driving.” The local remedy to the pain he was in (in The judge released him from the Holland) was cannabis and he used that after prohibition, advising him not to re-apply for returning to the UK and eventually started his firearm certificate. That gives Mr Johnson growing the stuff to make it cheaper. The his air rifles back, a result that made his day. pain continued until the eventual We’d agree with the judge that he should not replacement of the damaged part of his skull apply for his firearm certificate back, at least with a plastic one. He had fifty plants on the until the dishonest staff have been dealt with go in his loft – each plant would generate and their replacements adequately trained about enough for a week of pain relief – to process his application according to law. when the police attended with a search warrant in December 2000. BLAIR GRINDLE – GLOUCESTER APPEAL His firearms etc. were seized and he was A long time SRA member, Blair Grindle eventually convicted of growing cannabis. has always lived in the Forest of Dean area, His firearms collection was scrutinized and as does most of his extended family. His after prosecution and defence expert reports father was a WW2 veteran who liberated he was advised to plead guilty to possession various items from Germany while looting of a sound moderator that was not listed on his way to VE Day. His 1945 souvenirs his firearm certificate. It had been on there feature in this 2016 case. While in Germany previously, but was taken off by a firearms he found out about ‘drillings’: a corruption of enquiry officer who said it did not need to be a German word, it refers to a double barrel listed. He was conditionally discharged for side by side shotgun with a rifle barrel two years for each offence. beneath; where the ramrod went on muzzle A few years working abroad intervened loading guns. before he returned to the Forest of Dean and These became a feature of the family. Mr a small furniture and joinery business. That Grindle senior taught safe handing and use lasted a year before the landlord sold the of firearms and country pursuits such that place, so he moved on into a gap in the Blair Grindle became an all-round market for pest control services. He had to countryman and a full time gamekeeper at learn alternatives for where shooting won’t How Caple Court Estate: working his black work and took the required exams for Labradors and extending his range to deer poisons, such as phostoxin (gas release stalking in the 1990s. tablets for mole runs) and tallinex He in turn taught his son Clinton to shoot (strychnine substitute). His son Clinton – the drilling features again – and young assisted in the business with his working Clinton hoped to inherit the drilling. Mr dogs and ferrets until he was killed in a road Grindle switched to factory work in 1993 accident in 2014. following the death of the estate owner and Pest control work dried up after that, as by 1997 was more involved in competitive people did not want to intrude on his Tae Kwando than in shooting. He and his mourning, nor risk asking him to take on daughter went to Eindhoven, Holland, to work that he could not handle alone, but

10 having a lot of experience and qualifications ‘otherwise unfitted to be entrusted with related to game keeping and pest control he firearms’. planned on setting up a wildlife management So Mr Grindle’s case for appeal was that company specializing in deer and wild boar. neither conviction stood tall enough to count The first step, of necessity, was to see as ‘danger to public safety or the peace’ and Gloucester about getting his certificates the court that convicted him set the back. seriousness of the offences at the lower end There are two main problems with the of the penalty scale. As reported elsewhere administration of firearms legislation by the in this issue, a cannabis conviction was not police. One is that policing has an agenda of regarded in Truro crown court as sufficient reducing certificate numbers ‘by any means’ grounds not to allow prohibition to be lifted. and the other is that the police don’t have to The police offered no new evidence to the issue firearm certificates to anyone they court and called no witnesses, but opposed don’t trust, so an application was refused the appeal on the grounds that they did not fourteen years after the conditional trust Mr Grindle because when police discharges he received had expired. attended his premises some sixteen years Herbal self-medication is a victimless ago in connection with a renewal crime that, so far as we can tell, has never application, he had a Nazi battle flag been cited as evidence of ‘danger to public displayed on his wall. This was one of his safety or the peace’. Mr Grindle never sold father’s souvenirs and he’d hung it, he said, any of his products and has not used to get the creases out before photographing cannabis for at least fifteen years, nor does it to sell. Concerns about the flag were he knowingly associate with anyone who supported by other Nazi stuff, including CDs does. So far as his firearms offence goes, he and such. One senses transference kicking in, was obviously foolish to let the police take as the man convicted of killing Jo Brand MP the moderator off his certificate and if that possessed similar material. makes him unfitted to be entrusted with The judge took an overall view of Mr firearms, what does it make them? Grindle, ranging from juvenile convictions to The chief constable cited ‘danger to public an arrogant disregard for the law, such as safety or the peace’ as his ground. In not bothering to tell the police that the Spencer-Stewart v Kent (Times, 1988) the sound moderator should be on certificate, court took the view that his convictions and came to the view that nothing of itself under the Theft Act 1968 were not violent indicated refusal was appropriate, but added crimes and were not evidence of danger to together this was not someone he was public safety or the peace. In 2002, the prepared to trust with firearms. The one decision of Shepherd v chief constable of point that he failed to address, and which we Devon and Cornwall confirmed that the would have liked him to, is the passage of firearms convictions Mr Shepherd had were time. His negative view of Mr Grindle was likewise not evidence of danger to public based entirely on things in his past, all of safety or the peace. The high court which are more than fifteen years ago and distinguished between his shot gun the intervening quarter of his life free of law- certificate and firearm certificate in that the breaking of any kind did not, it seem, count grounds for revocation are slightly different, toward rehabilitation for having inherited so in his case he was allowed his shot gun his father’s war souvenir flag. certificate, not being a danger to public safety or the peace, but not allowed his FIREARMS STATISTICS 2016 firearm certificate back on that appeal on the The Home Office publishes numbers basis that his dishonesty in relation to his periodically. The latest from National firearms could be interpreted as making him Statistics were published on 30th June and

11 are available on line. In the old days they seasonal, so Easter to October is busier – and gave us the number of certificates on issue is the focus of most competitions – than is on 31st December each year, but now it has the winter. Game shooting follows the slipped to 31st March. Caution has to be seasons from 12th August to the end of exercised when trying to draw anything January, while pest control follows certain meaningful from the figures due to the seasonal norms. number of variables at play. Class/wealth divisions kick in when Those variables include, for example, considering what one is shooting at. Game geography and population density. Then shooting and deer stalking are both directly there’s the police force for the area, its and indirectly more expensive to take part in efficiency (or otherwise) its prejudices and than any form of target shooting and in some its approach to its duties under the Firearms areas there is a ‘glass ceiling’ which limits Acts. Then there’s the efficiency (or demand to supply. Entry-level .22” target otherwise) of the figures themselves. rifle and clay pigeon shooting with shotguns Taking the last point first, in the 1980s the should, by the numbers taking part, reflect number of shotgun certificates on issue in the size and relative wealth of the the Metropolitan Police District fluctuated population. wildly – by several thousand – from one year The post-WW2 interest in the shooting to the next. At the time, police claimed that sports was largely driven by the increasing the 1981 Brixton riots had caused a huge wealth, leisure time and mobility of the influx of new applications, but the truth was skilled working classes. The war indirectly far simpler. Certificates where a renewal generated the formation of numerous application was in the queue were not shooting clubs – many of today’s clubs can counted unless the old certificate was still claim to have been founded as demobilizing valid. So if you were due for renewal on 10th Home Guard units – and the ‘you’ve never January, you would have been counted in the had it so good’ generation took an interest in number on issue on 31st December, but if shotgun shooting, as they could afford to buy your certificate expired 10th December and cars and American-made repeating shotguns your renewal was still sitting in an in-tray on were both affordable and available. The 31st December, you didn’t count at all. letters pages of ‘Guns Review’ magazine So when the Met got behind, the number (1960-97) highlight the class tensions: new of certificates appeared to fall and when they money complaining that countryside caught up it appeared in the statistics as an shooting is not available due to it all being increase. In these days where many forces inherited by the ‘haves’ and the old money claim to be six months behind and one force worrying about sales of repeating shotguns admits to taking eleven months, one has to to people who (they thought) didn’t have a wonder how these enormous pending trays legitimate place to use them. are dealt with by the figures. Then there’s The government intervened on occasions, the fact that no force has revised its figures not so much to restrict the shooting sports, from previous years, so the ‘how’ of data but to steer the new money away from collection in the 1980s and earlier is not the imports in favour of home grown products same as ‘now’, making long term trends and thus to have some effect on the balance harder to tease out. of payments deficit/surplus. The Deer Act The basic sociology of the law-abiding 1963 set standards (calibre, velocity and taxpayers who shoot for a hobby is that it’s a striking energy) that obviously had Holland wealth-related social activity. Since the & Holland’s .240 Apex cartridge in mind as pistol ban in 1997 it has been more an the minimum and so ruled out cheaper outdoor pursuit than an indoor one. That American rifles chambered for popular deer tends to make target shooting in all its forms

12 cartridges, such as .44 Magnum, .243, 45-70 down the grant/renewals process), and and 30-30. 783,400 in 1983. The Firearms Act 1965 jumped the 1988 saw the peak at 882,000 (the minimum barrel length for a shotgun to be government rounded numbers off in the old exempted from firearms controls from 20 days) and since then we have the precipitous inches to 24. Many American repeaters were decline down to 539,194 this year. So what made with 20 inch barrels, while most happened? English guns followed Churchill’s 25 inch Winding back to the start in 1968, norm, selected to suit the slower burning cleverer people than me believe that about Eley powders. Longer barrels also serve as one shotgun owner in four actually applied sound moderators; so English guns aren’t as and that estimate is at the high end. It could noisy as American ones. Following the 1968 have been a lot less, such as one in ten. Firearms Act, dangerous air weapons rules (When air cartridge revolvers were banned set 12 foot-pounds as the maximum in 2004, less than 5% of what was out there exempted from firearms controls. This was reflected in FAC applications.) Much of favoured British-made products that were the ‘increase’ between 1968 and 1988 is usually below that threshold and prevented thus assumed to be owners applying ‘late’ – the more powerful German products being when they found out about it. When we imported for a while. moved to Pembrokeshire in 1986, the Increased mobility gave urbanites access convention among farmers was one to the countryside where the war and certificate per family, and the extended mechanization had left a shortage of people family might have ten addresses. Until 1989, with the time to undertake pest control it was a ‘fit person’ certificate: details of guns shooting. When the late Archie Coats was possessed did not feature either in the compiling his book ‘pigeon shooting’, he was application process or on the certificate one of the few full time pest control shooters itself, as is now the case with Scottish air in Britain. Clay pigeon shooting was also on weapon licenses. The market was skewed by the up, as was pistol shooting. The latter was the 1988 legislation, which required comparatively cheap, especially in .22”, and repeating shotguns to go into section 1 demand was such that Parker Hale found it (FAC) controls or section 5 (prohibited) by worth their while converting WW2 ‘victory’ way of measurements. To stay on a shot gun revolvers to .22” by sleeving the cylinders certificate, a repeater had to have a non- and fitting a new barrel and target sights. detachable magazine limited to two Centrefire pistol shooting was accessible via cartridges, and barrel length of more than 24 comparatively cheap war surplus handguns inches and an overall length of not less than and indoor ranges, many of which started 40 inches with any non-rigid shoulder stock out as .22 rifle ranges. Pistol shooting drew not counting toward that overall length. much of its support from the skilled working Clay pigeon shooting, which had attracted classes: the 1970s new money. blue collar workers in the 1960s, trended If one looks at the old figures, the away from repeaters and that opened the introduction of shot gun certificates on 1st door to European firms who made May 1968 caused some 600,000 affordable over/under and side-by-side applications, despite the poor publicity. The guns: AYA (Spain), Rizzini (Italy) and Verney number of certificates on issue then Carron (France) to name but three. fluctuated with an upward trend – 781,900 Repeaters found their niche in practical in 1980, 785,200 in 1981 (that was the Met shotgun until the police set about reducing it catching up), 780,600 in 1982 (that was the to the absolute minimum. Apart from the police panicking about riots and slowing winnowing of the guns used, the Home Office joined in by shifting the goalposts for club

13 approval. Prior to 1990, members of a Home interactions are all scrutinized in greater Office approved club could use any firearm depth than if you wanted to be a police brought to the club by a legitimate owner, officer or airline pilot, or work in the but the change in 1990 limited that security industry, the armed forces or the exemption from the need for a personal space programme: and that for a hobby. certificate to just full and small bore rifles Some leisure activities show an actual - as and pistols: that left clubs with no exemption well as a proportionate – increase in by which to train members in any shotgun participant numbers. Except shooting: so discipline. either there is something wrong with the Fullbore target rifle shooting remained figures, or there is something else wrong. largely middle class. The blue collars came in Either way, the figures suggest that the using war surplus repeating rifles and, shooting sports, defined here as engaged in denied access to service rifle competitions at by people who have firearm and/or shot gun Bisley from 1957-82, spawned various other certificates, are static or declining: so the service rifle events among themselves that numbers of certificates on issue simply don’t led to ‘practical’ rifle competitions. We find it compare to any other sport, or hobby, or interesting that the various gun bans have all leisure activity that the population spend been directed at the firearms which brought their money on. the upwardly mobile working classes into Our view is that the ‘decline’ is artificially the shooting sports, while leaving the core imposed. Shooting derived no shot-in-the- Conservative vote’s shooting unmolested – arm from the 2012 Olympics, as handguns except by carborundum policing. are still banned, except for the unelected The 1988 legislation took away service elite allowed practicing with them to rifles and restricted repeating shotguns to ‘represent’ Britain in competitions. The firearm certificate holders with only facilities developed for displaying the practical shotgun and pest control being shooting sports were demolished accepted as good reasons: these were the afterwards, so what’s left of the shooting erstwhile ‘good reasons’ for shot pistols and sports derived no benefit from our hosting short doubles, already in section 1. The 2002 extravaganza: unlike other sports. revised guidance quietly painted ‘pest Shotgun certificates can be revoked if the control out’, thus eliminating the good chief police officer for the force concerned is reason for most of those that made the satisfied that the holder can no longer safely transition a decade or so before. The keep shotguns, in accordance with the administration seems to be renewing FACs Firearms Act 1968. A total of 1,349 shotgun with section 1 shotguns kept for pest control certificates were revoked in the year to 31 on, but blanking new applicants, claiming March 2016, down slightly from 1,373 in the that pest control is not a good reason. previous year. Next came the handgun bans in 1997, so Pre-Hungerford, there were around 2,500 all the popular sports were hit, leaving the firearms dealerships, about a third of which upper crust largely unmolested. That’s were retail shops. The 1988 Act expected the another variable. Every other leisure activity police to stop giving RFDs to collectors and in the UK has expanded, as has the allowed them to refuse applicants who were population. The increase in motorists, for not going ton trade to a substantial extent example, is proportionate to the population while clarifying that people who required as a whole. To be a motorist, one obtains a firearms in connection with another trade, certificate of competence via a two-part business or profession should be registered. DVLA test. The only health check is eyesight. The effect was a drift downwards to sub To be a shooter these days, your physical 2,000 registrations, which was then boosted and mental health, your family and business to nearly 3,500 by the 2006 requirement for

14 registration to sell air guns before slipping She has since grown up, moved out and been back a bit more recently. The most alarming diagnosed bi-polar, which may be a clue. figure is the steep decline in the number of She called the police to a domestic row in firearms and shotguns held on certificates; 2008 and to another in 2013: on both now just 1.7 million or half what it was pre- occasions because he wouldn’t let her go out. 1988. A dramatic fall, trending against The second time she claimed he was under everything else in this country that the the influence of something, although a note government isn’t trying to eliminate. on the police paperwork says that she made that up to get their prompt attention. We were surprised then to find a statement made by one of the responding MARK HOLMES APPEAL – GWENT officers, dated some three weeks later, which Mark held certificates from the 1990s repeats the amphetamine suspicion without without any adverse issues until 2010 when mentioning that it was hokum. he had an ‘episode’ in which he says he was That statement was written about the spiked by an amphetamine drink. He time the firearms enquiry officer took the claimed it was a one-off involuntary guns in for the third time. He gave Mark the experience that led to his being sectioned to choice of a two-year time-out or revocation. a mental health facility for a few days for the Mark opted for the time-out whereupon the poison to work through. He was released police mysteriously cancelled his certificates within a week and without having required administratively. There is no power for them any mental health treatment, per se. to do so in the legislation. The police had taken his guns into Two years later, in 2015, Mark wanted the safekeeping, to await his getting a clean bill certificates back, as per the time out of health. The psychiatrist wanted to see him agreement. A different firearms officer a year after release to give him that all clear, required him to start the application process which she did, but with a throw-away line in again and then wanted him to get a further her report to the effect that he sometimes clean bill of health from the psychiatrist who misrepresents the facts. That later became a signed him off in 2012 – she said she had central plank of the police case against his nothing to add as she hadn’t seen him since – having guns. What she meant by that was a clean bill of health from his GP, which was not clarified at the time, but it didn’t prevent provided and blood tests which proved the certificates being returned in 2012. negative for amphetamines and all other Having got his firearms back, Mark proscribed substances that were tested for. returned them to the police shortly after The summary for the chief constable when he went to care for his ailing father; he merely suggests that there are sufficient didn’t want to leave them in his own gun grounds for refusing the certificate: key room while away and did not know how long amongst these was the fact that Mark ticked it would be before he got back. It was a few ‘no’ in answer to the question had he ever weeks, but it created another police record had any mental health treatment. She wrote of them having his firearms and returning that in August 2015, yet it was February them. Mark seems to quite like the drama of 2016 before the Assistant Chief Constable these big gestures. What scares him is not refused the application, referring to his being in control, so the amphetamine criminal record, drug and alcohol abuse etc. episode was traumatic, as he did not know In October 2016, the police solicitor what was happening. Also out of control was informed us that they would be relying on his daughter: she’s at the back of nearly all Mark’s 1994 drink-drive conviction as the episodes in which the police have evidence of his alcohol abuse. Mark has become involved between 2008 and 2013. always denied that he has such a conviction

15 and has never declared it on an application to the house by the daughter were recorded form, without rebuke or any mention of it on domestic abuse template paperwork. before its appearance in his bundle. . These reports don’t identify either Mr Mark discussed the ACC’s decision with Holmes, his partner or his daughter as his FEO who disagreed with the position victims of domestic abuse, yet the police taken but had no remedy that he could evidence in court referred to Mr Holmes suggest. Mark appealed to Newport crown partner as ‘the victim’. court where the case was not heard because There’s also the – as yet unresolved – the Assistant Chief Constable arrived 45 question about the 1994 drink-drive. We’ve minutes late. Court officials put another case asked Mr Holmes to check that with the in to keep the judge busy and that over-ran. DVLA and until they reply to him we don’t The police barrister claimed not to have seen know how to advise him to proceed. What is the appellant’s bundle (delivered to the apparent thus far is that the police have police solicitor two weeks earlier) and asked grounds for not trusting him, which gives for costs. them the ‘otherwise unfitted to be entrusted’ The case reconvened at Cardiff crown handle from the Act to rely on for refusing court some weeks later where the police his firearm certificate, but he does not wanted a further adjournment in order to measure up to the ‘danger to public safety or produce the police officer whose statement the peace’ threshold set by the courts for referred to his 2013 drug taking. The judge, refusal of his shot gun certificate. This is a having read all the papers beforehand, felt case that will doubtless come back to the that a fresh psychiatric report might clear courts at some point, and possibly sooner things up and adjourned the case for that to rather than later once the facts have been happen. clarified. A third hearing finally convened at Newport crown court at which the Assistant BOOK REVIEWS Chief Constable’s position was that he did (1) The Mint, by T E Lawrence not agree with the psychiatrist’s Kindle edition methodology or conclusions, claimed that Col. Thomas Edward Lawrence CB DSO the FEO had no authority to make the two FAS joined the Royal Air Force as 352087 year time out deal which is why he saw no A/C Ross in 1922. This book was written need to honour it and didn’t produce the from notes he pencilled during his training police witness that the case had been days at RAF Uxbridge and briefly some later adjourned for last time. service at RAF Cranwell in 1925. The style is The judge was left with a picture of Mark pretentiously wordy, as though he were self- failing to measure up to expectations in consciously wrapping the mundane circumstances that proved beyond his activities he describes in a cloud of control. Despite all of these seemingly verbosity, the sharper to jolt his reader relating to his (now) grown up daughter, the when he quotes his foul-mouthed intake judge found no safe ground from which to directly. His new chums are a mixture, but overturn the police decision and dismissed mostly ‘working class’: so one describes the the appeal with no order as to costs. way the author talks as ‘toffology’, of which The trouble with cases like this is that Lawrence says “And in the hut I'm posh, not dismissal of an appeal does not draw a line for my bookish accent (pound note talk) but under anything. In the ‘by any means’ for having the only active wristwatch.” landscape firearms appeals currently Some of his intake are new to the military, operate in one has to be wary of cases that but many have past service in the (then) go against appellants by way of spin rather recent Great War in the army or navy. than facts. In this case, three police callouts

16 Writers write for a reason. Lawrence and obscurity. He describes his position consciously turned his back on fame and thus: “My urge downwards, in pursuit of the made arrangements to avoid benefitting safety which can't fall further: and the financially from his book ‘seven pillars of necessary compulsion to relearn poverty.” wisdom’, and in this book sought to record At the RAF interview, he claimed to have the minutiae of his experience as an irk. He missed war service due to being interned in did not want it published in his lifetime, so Turkey for the duration. The interviewing although he showed it around, discussed his officer W E Johns (Biggles author) didn’t plans for it in letters he exchanged with his believe him, his fake name or papers, but brother and accepted criticism of it from Lawrence undoubtedly had Winston novelist E M Forster (in 1929), he did not Churchill’s patronage and a note to smooth expect it to be read more widely and his things over. That got him into RAF Uxbridge publishing plan seemed to have been for a (the depot) as ‘Ross’. very limited edition. The title ‘the mint’ is because Lawrence In trying to explain his rationale for saw the process as that of taking raw joining the RAF and what went on there to a material – the men – and moulding (or planned, limited audience, he was also minting) them into the aircraftmen they explaining it to himself. As to how he got would become. In his case, he describes the there, he says near the beginning that he was first few weeks as taken up largely with down on his luck: no money, no food, torn ‘fatigues’ and then it was all drill in shoes. He needed a job and he needed preparation for the Armistice Day parade. somewhere to fade into the background of. The RAF lined part of the route to the His need for obscurity can be gleaned Cenotaph and used the most recently trained from prior events. His well known career men for the job: mainly because once track from Oxford University to archaeology graduated from the mint, aircraftmen do in the Middle East led to his role in the Arab their jobs rather than practicing drill. In the revolt in the Great War. After the war, he event, the call was for all those over 5 foot 8 worked for the Foreign Office and attended inches, so Lawrence/Ross, at 5 foot 5½ the Paris Peace Conference on Faisal’s didn’t go and got guard duty at the depot – delegation. He spent much of 1921 as an for which he had not been trained – instead. adviser to Winston Churchill at the Colonial Here are some of his words: he describes Office. What is less well known is that Lowell the drill instructor as “the ringmaster of our Thomas featured him in his Arab costumes circus” and says, “Some of those who exercise in photos that accompanied his lecture their authority upon us, do it in the lust of entertainment extravaganza ‘with Allenby in cruelty.” Palestine and with Lawrence in Arabia’ and Drill wasn’t his thing; nor parades, which that’s what made the previously obscure Col. he describes thus: T E Lawrence famous: a household name via “It is theatrical, and theatre in England appearing as himself in a stage cameo. spells circus and circus spells clown.... makes It occurred to us that ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok one doubt if an Englishman's blood can ever also struggled with the fame resulting from have flowed hotly enough to swallow a playing himself on stage. Acting up and tomfoolery divorced from alcohol.” embellishing the legend while personally not Another mention of drill is the phrases having learned to live with either his “guys stiffen for attention’ and ‘twos into mistakes or his failing health eventually fours git’ are traditional relics of the drove him out to the Dakota Territory and American army in France.” death and the hand of a back-shooter in Another leftover from the Great War was 1876. calling bangers and mash, “Zeps in a cloud.” So in 1922, Lawrence needed both income On physical jerks:

17 “Our created shapes being only our accidents making notes for this book on his posting to until by taking pleasure or pains in them we RAF Cranwell that year. make them our fault.” Further publicity as T E Lawrence landed On suicide (after a body was recovered on him when ‘revolt in the desert’ was from the railway line) published in 1926 and saw him packed off to “Young fellows shyly bred were too often an obscure RAF base in India for two years. overwhelmed when they tried to breast the Back in England, he served at RAF whole wave of life at once.” Bridlington until his enlistment ended in On getting an afternoon off; (he liked 1935. He needed to rationalize his 1922-3 taking the train into London to walk notes into a book and the Cranwell phase in around.) 1925 is a sort of postscript in which he tries “I had a craving to lose sight, for a to convince himself that he is happy and moment, of this camp which has been part fulfilled in his RAF role. After that, he adds bagnio, part ergastulum, and, till of late, nothing to this work: his exchanges about it wholly disagreeable.” So, part brothel and were after he got back from India and part slave pit. publication came after his 1935 death in the On swearing: 1950s in both sanitized and unexpurgated “The monotony if their adjectives revolts editions. me.” The common theme of his post war years In a conversation with ‘China’ (one of his was engines. He tells us nothing whatever in intake who has been pursued to the depot by ‘The Mint’ about what he was trained to do a woman who wants to marry him) in the RAF beyond fatigues and drill, but he “China was so moved that he forgot his f was working with air machines and in the and b adjectives.” tank corps with motor vehicles. In his spare When an officer is lecturing them about time it was motorcycles and he describes in an air machine: this book racing a Bristol aircraft from “He confused incidence with the dihedral.” Cranwell to Lincoln in fifteen minutes – We’ll have to look that one up. riding a hundred miles to pick up the best On the death of Queen Alexandra (20th bargains in bacon, dripping, rolls and eggs November 1925) with which to feed his mess in the evenings. “Our distrusted chaplain preached one of The lack of good food, and enough of it, his questionable sermons.” features throughout the book. Men buy from And a sentence I didn't get first time: canteens to supplement what’s provided and “Incidentally, for the near sighted or his ton-up shopping trips made a treat for all political, it has a national side: upon the start – that they paid him for – and cooked on the we give our successors in the arts of air will hut stove. depend their redressing our eighteenth It is said (elsewhere) that he owned eight century army and silly ships.” Brough motorcycles, which is roughly one a He sees the minting process as, not so year for each year he was in England from much destroying individuality, as bringing rejoining the RAF in 1925 until his death the intake “instinctively to a corporate life.” (coming off his last Brough) in Dorset in Unmentioned in the book is that it all 1935. He calls his Cranwell bike Boanerges, ended suddenly for him when he was ‘outed’ ‘sons of thunder’ (St Mark 3.17): whether he – identified as Lawrence and forced out of bought a new one each year, or had more the RAF in February 1923, he dived straight accidents than the fatal one, would take back into obscurity by enlisting in the Royal more research and that isn’t relevant to this Tank Corps as T E Shaw. Unhappy in that book review. role he petitioned to get back into the RAF What you get if you obtain a copy of this and was readmitted in 1925. He resumed book is an absorbing read about a series of

18 vignettes that were noted down nearly a hundred years ago. Reading this in 2016 at the time when a new verdict of suicide was recorded in the ‘Deep Cut’ case of Cheryl James (aged 18 in 1995) it seemed to us that her experience of that variant of the mint (breasting the whole wave of life at once) was little different to the way it was seventy years earlier. So many of the quotes above would resonate with her and her intake, that one can only think of the harsh process of minting a professional military that both turns out the best armed forces personnel in the world and is clearly also a weeding out process. One of the reasons it worked so well for Dead on Time, by John McVicar, Lawrence/Ross is that ‘time out’ he was Blake Publishing Ltd 2002 obliged to take from 1923-5. People who ISBN 1 85782 364 8 really struggle to cope first time around, but Jill Dando died on the doorstep of her don’t want to fail in their career choice Fulham bachelor pad on 26 April 1999. usually do much better at the second go. The Barry George was convicted of her murder trick is having an exit strategy in which they on 2 July 2001 and his conviction was can pull out without flunking out that will quashed on appeal on 15 November 2007. allow them a second try after a gap year. In McVicar’s book, published shortly after his case, of course, it was involuntary, but it Barry George was convicted and long before does make the point that a way of taking the the conviction was quashed (which he pressure off young recruits can be made. anticipates), is not a study of the crime. It Treat the first attempt as the inoculation, works better if you think of it as a slice of and the second go will work much better and McVicar’s autobiography covering what he produce (using the ‘mint’ analogy) bankable was doing around that time, from his lying results. The real skill is spotting those who about his age to an Eastern European need that detour in their career track, student he fancied, through his media whether they be young soldiers or university involvement as a crime expert on various TV undergraduates: “Young fellows shyly bred shows to his articles in Punch about it and were too often overwhelmed when they tried then his time covering the trial and losing his to breast the whole wave of life at once.” dog in the River Thames. He was a columnist It works for special forces personnel: not in ‘Punch’ at the time and the style of his a few of the best got in at second attempt column is also the style of this book. and therein a lesson for universities and In passing, McVicar also studies Barry basic training units, where “Some of those George from the ‘I know who dunnit’ angle who exercise their authority upon us, do it in and features some less than flattering the lust of cruelty.” sketches of the other players in this ‘carry on up the Old Bailey’ caper, including some of the jurors. The police ‘Oxborough’ investigation team come in for a lot of stick, at least in part for their reliance on the computer procedural investigation system ‘HOLMES’. That came out of looking for a better way than the football league style

19 card index system used in the Yorkshire was the third offender profile to be Ripper enquiry, which flagged up interest in prepared, but Alison Saunders (DPP London the eventual culprit six times and sent at the time) denied the existence of any of officers to see him nine times without them to the defence, according to Michael connecting him to the general suspect Mansfield QC in one of the TV reports. description. There’s a distinct lack of continuity in the McVicar has nothing complimentary to way the book was put together, so he’ll say about Jill Dando herself, dismissing her follow a point into minutiae at the trial, then as one of a string of pretty faces who could back out to what he was doing before Barry read from an autocue. She’s like the victims George was arrested, forwards and in NCIS, CSI etc.: irrelevant to the plot. Her backwards. Two eyewitnesses at the scene career was starting to wane in 1999: she’d said which way the suspect left along Gowan lost some of her anchor work and had Avenue: that direction was, to John McVicar, announced her engagement, so she would counter-intuitive (being toward the busier probably have faded off our screens road) and what they saw wasn’t used to following her planned role in the BBC’s construct the ‘e-fit’ of the suspect anyway. millennium output into some other line of Instead, the police made one of the ‘sweating work had a bullet not intervened. The man’ seen at a nearby main road bus stop outpouring of grief when she died, which whom nobody had seen in Gowan Avenue. was a mini-version of reaction to Princess Another red herring was the speeding Range Diana’s demise the year before, was pumped Rover, now best remembered for up by the media, as one of their own, and highlighting the limited chances that speed that irritated him. cameras had, in the 1990s, of actually What irritated us at the time was the reading a number plate. Other sources police fumbling the investigation. They suggest that more than a hundred potential asked for public help about the cartridge suspects had not been eliminated from the used, but failed to articulate what they were enquiry a year after it started and when asking for. Then they turned up on Barry George was charged. ‘Crimewatch’ with a pistol, again asking if Several witnesses saw Barry George in the anyone had bought/sold this pistol etc. long area on the day: hardly surprising, as he after the handgun ban had kicked in. Jack lived there. Timings are vague, leading to the Straw had said, when pushing for the bans, ‘did he/didn’t he’ have an alibi. He comes that the knowledge of firearms in the UK had into focus arriving at the housing office to be destroyed: so a year later and with Jack (HAFAD) without an appointment and Straw as Home Secretary nobody wanted to making the sort of fuss that caused staff to admit any knowledge that could have both remember him and report their resulted in them disappearing into one of the suspicions to the police, who ignored them. new Labour Government’s gulags for He pulled the same stunt twice at a nearby possession of prohibited knowledge. taxi office and also left flowers at the scene. The choice of pistol was interesting, being So having inserted himself, by accident or a blank-firing type similar to one that Barry design, into the immediate location and near George was known to have owned. By the the right time, he attracted no police time the Oxborough team got onto attention for ten months, as their computer Crimewatch again with a ‘profile’ of the system did not weight him enough to killer, they’d already seen Barry George at warrant their time despite the hot tips. Their home and the ‘profile’ seems to have been first search of his digs seems to have been designed to persuade the public to put concerned with clothing – the murder Barry’s name up. That, says the author, led to weapon has never surfaced – and in their the investigation misdirecting itself. This

20 second trawl they arrested him and took coincidence, Jill Dando was on the cover of everything he had. the Radio Times on sale that week, wearing a Eventually, there were two bits of leather trouser suit. The back cover had the forensic: a small piece of thread of a type not word ‘murder’ printed on it. inconsistent with the thread a pair of Barry George’s trousers were made of that was found on Jill Dando’s coat, and a Cecil Gee coat recovered from Barry’s digs that was found to contain a minute particle of what the crown said was gunshot residue in one pocket. Gunshot residue (GSR) has become Back cover of Radio Times 24-30 April 1999. It’s a book ‘firearms discharge residue’ (FDR) in Home club advert. By the time of the trial two years later, Office newspeak, as the word ‘firearm’ McVicar had come to the view that the continues to be demonised at every suspect went the way he did (towards the opportunity. HAFAD office, or away from where Barry McVicar points out that the Cecil Gee coat George lived) in order to create the alibi and, is nothing like the garment worn by the since Barry turned up at HAFAD not dressed suspect eyewitnesses saw leaving the scene, as the suspect, he must have had a ‘drop’ nor is it anything like what Barry George somewhere to change clothes. He did not was wearing when he attended the housing have time, in McVicar’s opinion, to go home and taxi offices (or that – different again – and change as the Crown suggested he had – worn by the ‘sweating man’). He also notes that being in the opposite direction. that the taxi office despatcher remembered McVicar makes a note to himself to find it. Barry wearing a long sleeved yellow shirt on Then in a conversation he reports in his that occasion and none such was found book it comes up that he has found this among his possessions a year later. location and finally he mentions the location, McVicar’s contribution to the case, but says nothing about how he found it or according to his book, was to spot the how he concluded that it was the right place connections between Barry George, his to hide the gun and clothing since he doesn’t infatuation with the late Freddie Mercury, mention finding anything there. the yellow shirt, the remark in the taxi office, McVicar makes little of the crime scene “look up to the sky” and thus to pinpoint a evidence. His only reference to the post motive, which was Jill Dando’s friendship mortem is that the gunshot caused entry and with Cliff Richard that somehow put the late exit wounds. He makes no mention of the Freddie Mercury’s nose out of joint. bullet being recovered: several sources He also gives us various options for the mention the cartridge case and particularly meaning of dan-do in Japanese: the accursed the crimp, without understanding what that dando is a monster in ninjutsu mythology. means. 1999 was 5760 in the Hebrew calendar – the McVicar says the priming compound was year of the beast – and Jill’s wedding to Alan Remington, which he says is about 20% of Farthing was scheduled for 25th September, the market, but he doesn’t say which market. the traditional date of Christ’s birth in the We do learn that it’s a 9mm short case. old Jewish calendar. Barry George had a Neither McVicar nor the investigative Japanese wife, briefly, had learned some reporting type TV shows you can catch on phrases and took an interest in ninja YouTube mention the bullet, so there is no literature. What McVicar missed is that evidence in the public domain to link the ‘dando’ means ‘giving’ in Portuguese cartridge case to the bullet. (according to Google translate), so he makes Bullets are crimped into the case to be nothing of this coincidence. In another firmly seated, so that they don’t fall out or

21 get pushed deeper into the case when pistols have a slide lock to prevent the action handled. Revolver ammunition is roll- opening on firing. That makes the gun crimped: the case mouth is turned in to hold quieter and retains the cartridge case within the bullet and so as not to snag on the chamber. Zip guns likewise. Most chambering and the rim headspaces the improvised firearms don’t come with cartridge. Auto-pistol ammunition is taper- extractor mechanisms, so the presence of the crimped, so that the case mouth headspaces cartridge case at the scene suggests (a) a the cartridge – stops it against the chamber weapon that ejected it, leaving marks on the step – so that the primer is in the right case, or (b) manual ejection, such as to position for the firing pin. Eastern European reload or (c) it was there anyway and had pistol cartridges turn up with punch marks nothing to do with the crime. around the mouth, serving instead of a taper If one strips the McVicar bits of this book crimp to hold the bullet in position. The out, what is left is an essay about the police recovered cartridge case had six of these, investigation going wrong, although he does (Three would be ‘normal’ in Soviet military not go so far as to suggest they got the production) which McVicar associates with wrong man. His only access to the evidence the chrysanthemum flower, sacred emblem is what was presented to the court, where he of the ninja warrior and Imperial Japanese would only have heard about evidence that power. The judge said they were hand- the jury were shown. It is an interesting read stamped. for the author’s recollections of The gun used is pure speculation. The contributions he made to speculative (now) defunct Forensic Science Service daytime TV – for which he was booked wanted it to be a reactivated de-ac, or a because of his ‘expertise’. The problem there modified blank firer – anything on their hit is murder is a crime rarely committed by list for additional vilification, not to mention criminals. Women are usually victims of that Barry George was known to have owned someone they know, five times out of six and one. That may be why police turned up on most convicted murderers have no prior Crimewatch waving one of the type Barry form. had owned in preference to following the McVicar’s notoriety stems from his earlier evidence. It might not have been a gun at all: career as an armed robber and prison a simple tube crimped near one end with a escapee, in which occupation and pastime pipe cutter for the cartridge to headspace on practitioners seek to avoid harming anyone with a simple firing pin would have done, in if possible. He mentions replacing lead shot the style of a humane killer or zip gun. for rice in a shotgun cartridge in this book to Pressure-wise, 9mm short has a lower make that point, so his approach to the chamber pressure than .22LR, for which geographical clues in the Gowan Avenue New York gangs made zip guns out of car area are those he would have taken to aerials in the 1950s. planning a robbery – how to get in, how to Nearby witnesses did not hear the shot, get out. but 9mm short is subsonic and McVicar says That leaves Barry George looking like a it was a contact wound, so Jill’s head patsy – he’d done the opposite by associating probably served as the primary expansion himself to the area in close time proximity to chamber to absorb the sound; which brings the event – i.e. before (or almost before) he us back to the cartridge case. Nobody could have known about it unless he did it. mentions whether it had extractor claw We think the story broke as a footnote at the marks on it; none would suggest an end of the 1pm Radio 4 news and led the improvised way of firing it, while claw marks 2pm bulletin. Jill was shot around 11.30am, would point towards the weapon type. so Barry George had been in HAFAD and the Officially manufactured Makarov silenced taxi office by the time Radio 4 caught up

22 with the story. We need more clues, and suspects’ type arrest, having previously been having become more attracted to the case interviewed about Rachel Nickel in 1992. The sequence of events through to Barry George’s acquittal in 2008 is peppered with mention of other events and evils, as they played out across the media in those years: George Harrison died, Ronnie Biggs got married, Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells were murdered, Dr David Kelly might have been, PC Ian Broadhurst was, as was Ken than to McVicar’s Bigley. book, we needed another author. Other trials and outcomes also stuck in his mind and diary, so Ira Thomas was acquitted (on appeal) of a shooting in which the We turned to ‘the battle to clear Barry forensic evidence was deemed unreliable. George of the TV star Jill Dando’s murder’ Jeffrey Archer lost his libel appeal (and his (Kindle Edition) by Mike Bourke perjury case), Susan May’s conviction was (sometimes Burke) and Don Hale (OBE), quashed after she’d been in prison for published in 2013. Mike is Barry George’s twelve years and Sion Jenkins third trial date Irish uncle and was a London bus driver was announced for 2006. (He’d been during the period covered by this book. Don convicted of the murder of Billie Jo Jenkins in Hale was a professional footballer before 1998 and was acquitted at his third trial). th turning to journalism. Mike Bourke set up The 7 July 2005 bombings in London took the ‘Barry George is innocent’ websites place and Jean Charles de Menezes was shot (since taken down) and was sometime dead two weeks later. instrumental in keeping his incarcerated Mike Bourke had no direct access to the nephew’s case and appeals in the public eye police case, so he heard about things the jury for most of the time Barry was locked up. We saw. The prosecution prepare a bundle of get the impression that Barry distanced him evidence: statements, photographs and toward the end; so writing this book was copies of documents that are referred to in about getting it off his chest. Don Hale’s court. All the participants in court have them contribution is not clear, but he wasn’t the – the judge, lawyers, defendants and jurors. proofreader. Witnesses will have a copy of their own Mike met John McVicar at the Old Bailey at statement and as the case unfolds, the jury both trials and quotes from his book quite are directed to which page the case is on. freely. He also adopted McVicar’s style, but The press and public galleries don’t see with the more rigid structure that results those papers, so they hear what’s said, but from his notes being in diary format. There’s don’t see the evidence. a lot less of him in this book, but as an Mike usefully fills in a lot of Barry George Irishman he comes with the baggage of background. Barry was a gun magazine miscarriages of justices inflicted on Irishmen reader and not one to recycle newspapers during the troubles – the Guildford four and and magazines after reading them, so years the Birmingham six both rate mentions, as old reading matter became prosecution does Carl Bridgewater, so he does keep track evidence. His access to firearms amounted to of his own movements and tells us which 29 attendances at Territorial Army meetings bus/train/ferry etc. he was on when getting and an attempt to join the Kensington Rifle to and from the court, the prison visits and and Pistol Club, where Peter Brookesmith so on – setting up his alibi just in case. He was secretary at the time. The club’s says Barry was also concerned about a ‘usual

23 evidence was that he did not shoot a firearm Bailey at the same time as Barry George’s when he attended. trial. There was scuttlebutt around to Mike tells us that the gunshot residue in suggest that Angela was a hitman target, but Barry’s coat wasn’t an exact chemical match this did not get into the public domain at the to that found on Jill, as it lacked antimony. time. This point seems to have been overlooked in The Serbian connection is mentioned the trials and appeals. He says that the several times, Jill Dando having fronted an polyester fibre was too small a piece for the appeal for Kosovo shortly before an attack dye to be identified and it was found on Jill’s on a Serbian TV station killed technicians coat, which had been cut off her body at the and presenters: because she could read an scene by first responders treating her autocue. The cartridge case punch marks collapse as an emergency and left on the instantly remind everyone apart from the ground in the front garden for nine hours police and the experts they consulted of before being bagged: so likely contaminated Soviet production and an Eastern European by lots of people after the murderer left. would be familiar with that technique if he Motive exercises his mind more than a had to improvise his ammunition. But why little. Celebrities are apt to be stalked, would he? If he took the bullet from the case, although the CCTV from the day suggests did he put it back, or use a substitute. nobody was tracking Jill, who was living with Nobody says. The Soviet Makarov pistol Alan Farthing in Chiswick and treating ammunition is rimless 9.2x18mm and the Gowan Avenue (in Fulham) as an office. pistols started escaping the collapsing Soviet Quite a few people probably knew she was Union a long time before the ammunition going there on that day, but any stalker or appeared – so American gun writers all test foreign assassin would have been outside fired Makarovs with readily available .380 the loop. Mike Bourke looks on the style of auto AKA 9mm short. the killing as evidence of hatred, so to him Except it’s too narrow, so it doesn’t it’s more personal that a hired hitman would connect with the rifling, which means that be, because if Barry didn’t do it, someone the bullets won’t have rifling marks else must have. The police hadn’t gotten engraved on them. Our other observation of around all the potential suspects who knew Makarov pistols is that they are simple Jill for elimination purposes when they blowbacks and the proper ammunition settled on Barry George, who didn’t know causes a fierce slide velocity. We measured her. That leaves a trail of people who might the distance from our Makarov pistol to have had personal reasons for ending her where the cases landed as 25 metres on test. life, but the police didn’t follow through on 380 auto cases went 15 metres; so the more than a hundred of them. presence of the case in the garden, if not a Mike also considers the several mistaken random coincidence, suggests it hit identity scenarios that emerged, as Jill might something absorbent after ejection. A left- not have been the target. The next-door handed shooter might well have stopped the neighbour Richard Hughes’ (who saw the brass with his body, for example. suspect leave the scene) wife was also blond Mike Bourke’s involvement and thus his and had the same car as Jill so might be book ends with Barry’s release from custody mistaken for her from behind except Jill was (which nobody had planned for) at the end four inches taller. Another one was Angela of his trial, so to think about the case some Peppiatt, who lived in the area and had a more, we turned to another author. similar car and hairdo. She was involved in Jeffrey Archer’s libel and perjury trials. Justice for Jill: how the wrong man was These took place several years apart with jailed for the murder of Jill Dando, by the perjury trial taking place in the Old Scott Lomax.

24 ISBN 978 - 1844544042 (7.65mm). It was the 1960s before 9mm Scott Lomax is described by Mike Bourke parabellum started to catch on as a pistol as a young journalist, keen to make his way. round in policing circles. He paid closer attention in court (but uses We know from McVicar that the interior ‘splatter’ to describe ‘spatter’) and probably of the house was searched at some point, as attended more sessions than Mike did, so he he (naturally) remembers mention of semen tells us the cartridge case was a Remington stains on the mattress. Mike Bourke says Peters .380 auto factory case, not previously Jill’s clothes were given to a charity shop, so fired. The six indentations were added no attempt to match the fibre to her own manually post-production; speculation is to clothing to the suspect thread was possible reduce the noise of the shot. Apparently, the and nobody tells us whether Alan Farthing’s police had never seen such marks before, wardrobe was checked – after all, she’d nor had any of the experts they consulted. come from there that morning. Scott comes What he says about the bullet is that up with another mistaken identity option – rifling didn’t mark it. It did exit Jill’s head that of Jill’s sister, whom he says might have and made a dent on the door. It was been intending to go to the house that day. recovered at the scene, so it has proximity to She was en route home from Europe and the cartridge case, but he doesn’t record was in Calais that day. anyone linking the two in evidence and Scott is the most thorough when dealing provides no details of the bullet. with the successful appeal. Mike Bourke was If it was a factory case and primer, not distanced from Barry George by then and previously fired and the punch marks were McVicar had already published. The problem manually applied post-production, one has at the original trial was that innuendo to wonder why. If one pops the bullet with a pointed to Barry George. Beyond that, the kinetic bullet puller (such as to alter the evidence took second place to both sides powder load) and then one reseats the bullet using high profile theatrical lawyers. The manually, the tension of the taper crimp will only hard evidence left at the scene were the hold it. bullet and case – if they match. Surprising The Crown says it wasn’t a re-used case, then that so little was made of them. The we’re left wondering why there’s such a fibre could have come from anywhere and dearth of information in the public domain the supposed gunshot residue found in a about the one piece of evidence that the Cecil Gee coat pocket at Barry George’s digs murderer left at the scene. Since the case didn’t have the same chemical signature as was a Remington Peters 9mm short, was the that found at the crime scene. It was a tiny bullet one of the type they load into such piece. There’s probably more FDR to be cases? And if bullet and case match, wouldn’t found in Court 1 from other case exhibits, adding a punch increase chamber pressure? but since this bit of nothing was the lynchpin The police will naturally keep some of the prosecution case, the defence attacked information back when they think they’ve it as contamination. There were armed got something only the perpetrator would officers at the search of Barry George’s digs, know that may trip a suspect up in according to one witness, so they could have questioning. The other reason for not brought contamination with them. The coat explaining such details is that they don’t was photographed in a studio where know. The .380 auto has a long history. It firearms etc. from other cases had been was a popular cartridge for both policing photographed. The residue gets everywhere, and military use in Europe through both even without direct contact with firearms. world wars. A lot of the smaller framed Nevertheless, prosecution witnesses held pistols, Beretta M1934, Walther PPK etc. firm that contamination was unlikely. were made in both this and .32ACP

25 They sang a different song at the second than getting into a confrontation while appeal, downplaying the significance of this armed with a banana against a worse villain evidence. In effect, the evidence was neutral, or an outraged taxpayer who has a real gun. helping neither way and it was the trial Interestingly, the biggest armed gang in judge who built up its importance for the town – the police – don’t seem to feature on jury - is how Scott says they put it. Without their radar. it, nothing connected Barry George to the There have been a series of crimewaves death but that which he’d inserted into other resulting from bad guys wanting cobble-up peoples’ recollections himself: his proximity, guns since the handgun ban. Several people things he’d said. And the case against him, had a go at reactivating Mac 10 pistols. The such as it was, collapsed. first one had to solve the engineering He’s not the first person to have become a problem that caused them to be deactivated suspect by inserting himself into police in the first place – they didn’t work – so he thinking. Jeremy Bamber called the police to had to strip off all the deactivated parts and say there was a problem at the family home, make new ones, then figure out why it didn’t then met them outside and waited several work and solve that problem by which time hours with them for dawn, when the police the police were on to him. The later went in and found the family dead. Then the attempts, one was a police special constable crime scene was trampled over by more who, it seems, was being run by secret than sixty visitors before any forensic squirrel and the other bought blank firers investigation began. Jill Dando (like Dr David and attempted to convert them. It would Kelly, later) was treated as an emergency have been cheaper to start from scratch. through to her body being removed to After the handgun bans, air cartridge hospital before someone decided it was a revolvers started turning up with adapters crime scene, by which time a lot of people in the cylinder chambers that enabled the had left their footprints in her garden. revolvers to be used with .22 ammunition. Two eyewitnesses described the suspect Brocock altered their product to prevent this they saw leaving. Nobody saw him hanging happening (the sleeves were commercially around beforehand, despite which the inside made in a free country to enable .38” users of the house does not seem to have been to practice with cheap .22 ammunition) but investigated as the place where the gunman the government prohibited Brococks could have lurked, undetected by passers by, anyway so the bad guys turned to converting for hours or possibly days. The police e-fit Makarovs. These are available in Europe was of a man not seen in Gowan Avenue. The without restrictions as paintball guns, firearm was never recovered, but if it didn’t teargas guns etc. so they have been re- have the appearance of being a firearm, worked abroad and smuggled in, and usually would search personnel have spotted it? in .380 auto. Genuine Makarovs escaped the Our interest in such cases is that they collapsing Soviet Union from 1989 and on, prove the point that banning the sporting but the ammunition was hard to get, hence use of handguns by law-abiding taxpayers the widespread use – by gun writers and does not stop firearms crime. The handgun crooks – of .380 instead of 9.2x18mm. bans actually spawned increased criminal The case itself still bubbles on, but not in interest in firearms. It’s a well-known police circles. They are stuck, the same as unintended consequence. The sociology is everyone else, by not having any new this: when the scrote community thought evidence and in this case there has never that handguns were ‘available’, they weren’t been a motive that has stood whatever interested in cobble-ups, toys, replicas etc. scrutiny it has been tested with. Jill Dando’s ‘cos if it doesn’t work it’s like taking a murderer is as unidentified as Jack the banana to a gunfight. Better being unarmed Ripper.

26 (any theory should be at peace with all the WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN DALLAS? facts) so our approach was that we would 12.30 local time in Dallas Texas on the have taken as Lee Oswald’s defence expert 22nd November 1963 is a much-studied witness, had he been arraigned. In the moment in history. The presidential 1990s, nobody was ready to look at this case limousine carrying John F Kennedy and from that perspective. The Warren Texas state governor John Connally and their Commission Ballistics input all came from wives turned into Dealey Plaza. Abraham lawyers. Zapruder started his 8mm colour silent To be fair to the American Bar, movie camera and recorded the car passing investigating is what district attorneys do, so below his position. During that time, shots in conjunction with law enforcement were fired striking both the President and agencies and firearms experts, they worked the governor. up their conclusions about what happened. We discussed the case with Massad F The Warren Commission approach has no Ayoob when he was in England teaching his counter-balance: that which Oswald’s ‘Stressfire’ programme in 1995 and we defence team would have worked up if visited the scene in Dallas, Texas in January seeking to challenge the peoples’ evidence. 1996 – as conveniently both the American The other problem is that they tried too Society of Law Enforcement Trainers hard. Instead of using the evidence to track (ASLET) annual conference and the their way to the facts, they got involved in Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade trying to head off the early conspiracy (SHOT) show were in town. theories and in so doing made the whole We conducted a number of tests in thing a lot more complicated. 1995/6, having acquired several Carcano There were two associated deaths that rifles. We also modified a Smith and Wesson day in Dallas, as JFK was mortally wounded Victory revolver for tests. We didn’t publish at 12.30 and Dallas police officer J D Tippit anything at the time because the was shot to death less than an hour later. Lee Handgunner magazine we took to the SHOT Harvey Oswald was initially the suspect in Show hot off the presses was the last ever the Tippit murder. He was arrested about edition. Editor Jan A Stevenson was not half an hour after it had been reported. He satisfied with the Warren Commission was identified by eyewitnesses at the crime report at the time of its publication, scene and subsequently spotted emptying primarily because of the bullet found at cases from his revolver, discarding his jacket Parkland Memorial Hospital on the stretcher and entering a movie theatre without paying. used to take Governor Connally to the One has to feel for the Dallas police emergency room. department. One of their own was slain, Massad F Ayoob took the view that had along with their President and the state Lee Harvey Oswald lived, a jury would governor was badly wounded. They got probably have convicted him of the murder stuck into the investigation, supported by of Dallas policeman J D Tippit. He was less badge-holders from other departments who confident that the evidence would have were there. Cine-film from the day show a supported a conviction for the Kennedy police officer with his revolver drawn assassination. running toward the grassy knoll. He found For good reason: 2,000 and more books nothing there that related to the case. on the subject, not to mention the 26 Eyewitnesses including Howard L Brennan volumes of evidence supporting the Warren had seen a rifleman at the 6th floor window Commission report and Oliver Stone’s ‘JFK’ and the book depository was quickly locked movie, many of which want Lee to be down. An employee check showed that innocent. We had problems with a lot of that;

27 Oswald was missing, so an alert was put out forming from the head for the 19mm of to find him, using Brennan’s description. ‘original British’ case length, which would That’s what J D Tippit was responding to make a match, as would the hammer mark when he stopped a pedestrian in Oak Cliff. on the primer, so in a ‘points to prove’ test, This officer had joined the department in the spent cases ejected at the scene linked 1950. In WW2 he served in the US 17th the revolver Oswald was arrested carrying. Airborne Division, gaining a bronze star in The Warren Commission reported that the ‘operation varsity’ - the Rhine crossing in cases were matched to the revolver, but not 1945. how. Our explanation comes from our tests. There was a brief conversation: Tippit in Nothing is straightforward in this case: the driving seat and the suspect talking to conspiracy theorists will say that Oswald him through the passenger window. Then could not have arrived at the crime scene the officer got out of his vehicle, whereupon until after the shooting, but that’s an issue of the pedestrian drew a revolver and fired a few minutes either way by people using several shots hitting Tippit four times. Eye different timepieces or ways of estimating witness Domingo Benavides said the officer the time. The clear forensic connection had drawn his revolver and fell on top of it. between the revolver he was carrying when The suspect ejected cases as he fled, of which arrested and the cases at the crime scene four were recovered, two by eyewitnesses means if Oswald didn’t do it, someone else who subsequently identified Oswald. did and slipped him the gun afterwards. Oswald was arrested in a cinema shortly Without the cases left at the scene, the after, carrying a loaded Smith and Wesson evidence was circumstantial: with them, it ‘victory’ model revolver number V510210 was persuasive, although that came later. and five additional cartridges. He had a Oswald was charged with the murder of J D holster for his revolver but had left that in Tippit on the day, the investigators being his room. A paper trail shows him buying it satisfied with the chain of eyewitnesses that under an assumed name. His ammunition he was the guilty party. was a mix of two headstamps, all factory The function of a defence expert in a loads and readily available over the counter firearms case is firstly to check the at all sorts of retail outlets. prosecution’s evidence and then to explain it The ‘victory’ model had been to the defence lawyers, pointing out any professionally re-worked: the barrel inconsistencies or weaknesses in it in the shortened from five inches to two and a process. In Tippit, the forensics are tidy and quarter and the chambers milled out to take assuming the defence expert gets the same American .38” Smith and Wesson Special result on his tests, there would be nothing cartridges. As a ‘victory’ model, the technical to contest in the prosecution’s chambers had originally been cut for the findings. Oswald did not deny possession of British .380”, which is shorter and slightly the revolver found on him when fatter cased than the Special. Firearms interrogated. Policemen who seized it from chambered thus also have different calibre him marked it with their initials for chain of barrels: the British cartridges are .359”, evidence purposes, so the connections were while American .38” specials are .357” all sound. calibre. Back at Dealey Plaza, police found three Hence the bullets recovered in autopsy spent cases in the 6th floor room where not having rifling marks to match to the gun. Oswald worked. A crime scene investigation They didn’t match each other and test-fired found a bystander who may have been rounds likewise did not record consistent struck by debris and a kerbstone likewise. At marks from the barrel. Nevertheless, the Parkland Memorial Hospital, a spent bullet recovered cases would have a distinct fire- was found on the stretcher that was used to

28 get Governor Connally from the limousine to The Secret Service regarded the President the emergency room. The continuing search as their responsibility, dead or alive, and on of the 6th floor room found a Carcano rifle the ‘leave no man behind’ principle, acquired number C2766, containing a live round in a coffin, put him in it and took him back to the chamber and a bag eyewitnesses saw the Air Force One aircraft so that he left with Oswald bring into work that morning, into his widow and the new President Lyndon B which the rifle would fit if the action was Johnson. dismounted from the woodwork. That denied Dallas medical examiner Earl The FBI established (on the day) that the Rose a cadaver to autopsy. The body went to rifle was bought mail order by ‘A Hidell’ the Bethesda Naval Hospital where the from a Chicago company. Documents in autopsy of JFK was not to the standards it Oswald’s room showed he’d rented the box would have been if undertaken in Dallas. and he had an ‘Alek J. Hidell” selective They didn’t have the coffin the body left service card in his wallet when arrested. Parkland in (The Secret Service had to Police went to Marina Oswald and asked smash the handles off it to get it into Air for the rifle. She showed them the blanket it Force One, so a new coffin was acquired in was stored in, which proved empty. Police DC and any forensic in the first one went to got two photos from her showing Oswald the bottom of the Atlantic where they holding the rifle and wearing a handgun in a dumped it.) or (to begin with) the Hospital holster while holding two newspapers. medical notes. Oswald said the photos were fakes, his head Abraham Zapruder recorded Kennedy’s on someone else’s body. last moments on 8mm film. He started The documents identifying Oswald as filming as the motorcycle outriders rounded Hidell and thus the buyer of the rifle was the corner: he stopped at frame 132 when he sufficient for a holding charge of murdering realized the limousine wasn’t in sight, John F Kennedy to be put to him after started again at 133 when it was and then midnight, after which the interrogation stage kept going until the limousine left the scene of the justice process concluded and under the triple underpass bridge. About arrangements were made for his transfer to twenty six seconds of film, recording at the county jail. about 18 frames a second: give or take. That plan fell apart in the police garage To make sense of what happened, one has when Jack Ruby stopped by to shoot Oswald to reconcile the physical evidence to the with a hammer-shrouded .38” Special Colt Zapruder film. That starts with the rifle and Cobra that he usually kept in a bank coin three spent cases found in the sixth floor sack in his car. room where Oswald worked. There’s the one The early stages of the investigation were recovered bullet found on a stretcher at marred by inter-departmental rivalries, Parkland Memorial Hospital, various although you won’t detect that by reading fragments from the casualties and the the Warren Commission report. The FBI vehicle, and some non-penetrative damage wanted to take the lead in the investigation, to the limousine windscreen, caused from but had no jurisdiction and Oswald was behind. There’s the wounds sustained by initially the suspect a local police homicide, Governor Connally and the autopsy of John F not of the President. By the time he became a Kennedy. person of interest in that enquiry, he was Working backwards through the Zapruder already in custody. The FBI settled for film, frame 313 shows the impact on investigating the firearms and did sterling Kennedy’s head, which is regarded as the work that same day to generate questions final shot. Frame 224 shows the lapel of for Oswald’s interrogators to put to him. Connally’s jacket flipping out of the way of the bullet exiting his torso, as Kennedy

29 emerges from behind the road sign raising serves to push the cartridges up for the bolt his arms into the Thorburn position, both to catch and once the clip is emptied, it is men having been shot through at frame 223. pushed out of the bottom of the magazine by The time lapse from 223-313 is about 4.8 the next clip being loaded in. seconds. When recovered, the Oswald rifle had an Kennedy is smiling and waving before empty clip in the receiver and a live round in disappearing behind the sign at frame 205, the chamber, so he could have fired again. so is apparently uninjured at that point, just The FBI tests calculated 2.3 seconds to over a second earlier. Governor Connally reload, which takes us from frame 313 to said he was looking to his left when he heard around frame 360, at which point Secret the first shot and immediately turned to his Service agent Hill is climbing onto the trunk right. That movement is captured starting at lid of the limousine: Mrs Kennedy is also frame 160, or two and a half seconds earlier, climbing onto the trunk lid from inside the so if Connally is correct in his evidence, the vehicle and John F is slumping out of sight. time lapse from the first shot to the third is He didn’t have a shot at that moment, nor around eight seconds. subsequently, as Mrs Kennedy and then There is no evidence of a bullet strike on Agent Hill obstructed his view. the vehicle or the people to confirm a first The proposed sequence is a miss at frame shot, although down the street James Tague 160, recorded by Connally snapping his head was struck on the cheek by something and a round: then the shot that cut through both search around where he was standing men at 223/4 and the head shot at 313; just spotted the damaged kerbstone. The FBI’s over eight seconds of shooting. The first shot examination found lead and antimony but was probably a negligent discharge, him didn’t stretch to claiming it was a bullet catching the trigger while sliding the rifle strike from that day. Tague believed he was into position. That went wide and might be hit by the second shot, as he didn’t see the what hit the kerb and James Tague. The headshot strike. second shot (3.4 seconds later) – the ‘magic’ So on the face of it, Oswald bought the bullet - just missed Kennedy’s spine and rifle, smuggled it into work, was seen with it came out through the knot in his tie, entered at the window and taking the shots, fled the Connally near his right armpit, exited near scene afterwards, killed a policeman who his nipple, disrupting his lapel as it went on, suspected him of something and then denied tumbling, through his wrist and into his leg. everything in interrogation. Theories that The holes all line up with each other and make Oswald a patsy, fall guy, stooge or draw a line back to Oswald’s window. You innocent have to ‘alter’ or discount these can see in the Zapruder film that both facts. Author Flip De May (2016) for Connally and Kennedy are reacting together example, decided that Brennan couldn’t see at frame 223. It’s one shot from behind and Oswald from where he was photographed above. standing, which means he made up the What Jan A Stevenson didn’t like about description of the gunman etc. etc. this when he read the Warren Commission The bolt action Carcano rifle was made in report was the bullet being found. That is 1940 for the Italian army chambered for the rare in any incident involving a rifle, but not 6.5x52mm rimless bottleneck cartridge. The unheard of and in this case explainable. Put ‘Mannlicher’ addition to the rifle’s your hand inside a jumper and push away designation in the context of this case comes from your body with a finger. You’ll be able from the six-round clip with which it is to stretch the clothing much further than loaded being a Mannlicher design. To load you could your flesh, such as by pushing the rifle, open the bolt and press the loaded against your abdomen with the same finger. clip into the magazine. A central spring arm The bullet had been through two torsos,

30 tumbled sideways and gone through cases would link to the rifle by examination Connally’s wrist before it hit his leg. It had of firing pin and extractor marks. sufficient force to penetrate his flesh, but did The chain of evidence connects Oswald to not go in deep enough to split the cloth of the rifle, the rifle connects to his workplace, Connally’s trousers, so when he was lifted and a bullet from the rifle connects it to onto the stretcher at the hospital, whoever Connally’s stretcher. There is no evidence to got his legs would have been pulling his suggest a second shooter. None of the trousers straight and that ejected the bullet conspiracy-type objections to Oswald onto the stretcher. shooting his own rifle detract from that Until the head shot at frame 313, Kennedy chain. The conspiracies are that he didn’t act has been slumping to his left, his back stiff alone, so he was in someone’s chain of and his arms locked in the Thorburn command; or that he didn’t act at all and was position caused by the trauma of the bullet set up as a patsy. just missing his spine. The head strike The most successful conspiracies are of caused all his muscles to tense for a moment silence. The small group that took over as it destroyed his brain and then unlocked Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire in 1938 the Thorburn. He pitches back and to the had swollen to an army of more than 10,000 left, as repeated many times by Kevin people working in huts that would have Costner in the movie. You would too, and looked like a POW camp from the air by you’ve probably done it if you have slipped 1945. A year later, they’d all gone, their on ice. As you slip, all your muscles tense. machines dismantled and it would be 1970 Back muscles are stronger than front before the government itself broke the muscles, so your head is pulled back and silence and told us that Bletchley Park had despite walking forwards at the time, you go been the code and cypher school where the off balance backwards. German Ultra code was deciphered. All those In our tests, we made crude heads from people and not one leak, so a conspiracy melons encased in plaster of Paris and involving thousands of people is possible, if despite through-shoots we got more melon they have a common purpose and nobody spattered in our direction than away from breaks faith with the objective. us. This is reflected in the Zapruder film, as Everything published about Oswald says Mrs Kennedy climbs onto the trunk lid in loner, lone wolf: a man who had difficulties pursuit of what turned out to be a piece of with authority and really struggled to form skull. any kind of relationship with anyone. The FBI linked the brass cases to the rifle Not someone you could form a conspiracy to the exclusion of all other rifles and the with or include him in. You couldn’t trust recovered bullet likewise matched the rifle. him. This is a guy who kept the adverts for The empty cases exhibited signs of multiple the guns he bought, as well as the paper trail extractions, suggesting that Oswald had linking him to the name Hidell: he had an ID practiced cycling the bolt using those card with that name on it in his wallet when rounds. No others were found in his arrested and paperwork in his apartment possession. showing that he’d rented the box address to The function of a defence expert in a which the rifle was mailed. All of which sped firearms case is firstly to check the the FBI investigation along. He had nothing prosecution’s evidence and then to explain it linking him to anyone else other than his to the defence lawyers, pointing out any estranged wife, some previous addresses inconsistencies or weaknesses in it in the and his one-man fair play for Cuba process. In this instance the recovered bullet campaign. What he could do was keep had rifling marks linking it to the rifle. The secrets. He was not one to confide in others.

31 Had he lived, the powers that be wouldn’t bullet at frame 223/4. Any theory that have been looking for anyone else in depends on avoiding a fact, or claiming that connection with the Kennedy assassination. fact has been faked, is doomed. As with the revolver that shot Tippit, Oswald Returning to the rifle, it was also claimed was connected to the rifle as purchaser. It that the telescopic sight wasn’t zeroed. was found where he worked and he wasn’t. Hmm. Quite a few people handled it between He’d started running although didn’t seem to it being found and test fired. It had an offset have a plan. Massad F Ayoob expressed the (to the left) 4-power scope. Oswald had view that Oswald was probably guilty of served in the United States Marine Corps and killing J D Tippit. There are conflicting eye qualified in a shooting test with the Garand witness accounts and the question of M1 rifle. Twice. The first time he scraped whether he could have got there in time, but into the bottom end of the middle bracket: none of that would blind a jury to the fact the marines have a sliding scale marksman- that when arrested he had the murder sharpshooter-expert, so at the end of his rifle weapon on him. course, he qualified as a sharpshooter. Two In the brief interviews for television while and a half years later, his score just scraped he was in custody, Oswald comes across as into the bottom of marksman. loving the attention. Had he lived, it would The USMC evidence to the Warren have been to enjoy a central role in the Commission doesn’t say whether he’d had theatre of the judicial system. One has to regular shoot practice between these two wonder: would he have taken the events, just that he’d been familiarised with prosecution on, thus becoming exposed as a other weapons in general marine use at the pathetic loner as they proved their case or time. Overall, he was thought to have been at would he have pleaded guilty and adopted least average and served in a unit in which the role of martyr to whatever cause not rifle shooting was not their principle utility. having Kennedy in the Whitehouse What’s missing from their evidence to the benefitted from. Commission is his medical: we’d like to We suspect the latter. What Americans know what his eyesight was recorded as like Jan A Stevenson and Massad F Ayoob when he joined. have in their common suspicion that His M1 shooting would have been over something is wrong with the Warren open sights. He was not trained on a sniper Commission conclusions is a fundamental rifle in the service, so had no riflescope distaste for a lone nut with the worst choice training beyond recreational use of his of WW2 surplus rifle being able to change brother’s .22” rifle. Second Chance body history so easily. Everyone would prefer a armour inventor Richard Davis set up a test conspiracy to a flake, but the physical rig at his company’s annual bowling pin evidence doesn’t stretch to one and at the shooting competition in the wake of the JFK time of writing, any ‘ISIS’ terrorist attack in movie to see who could make three shots Europe or the US is more likely to be an from a Carcano count from a tower at a inspired flake than a Middle East conspiracy. distance of 88 yards. The JFK movie worked off the theory that Ayoob said that two of the best were left- the Carcano couldn’t do the shooting, at least handers. They shouldered the rifle on the left not all the shots, so they added more firing shoulder, supporting it with a straight left points and increased the shots fired to six. arm and the cardboard box arrangement Central to that is denial of the magic bullet that the assassin left a crease in and worked theory, thus to separate the torso hits on the bolt and trigger with the right hand. Three two men by a second or two, yet the shots in five seconds can be done; shot 1 Zapruder film clearly shows both men starts the clock; 2.3 seconds to work the bolt, reacting at the same moment to the same take shot 2 and then another 2.3 seconds to

32 shot 3: five seconds in all. And the Zapruder Shooters’ Rights member Bob Kleasen (31 film allows three more seconds. They years old at the time) behind that fence with couldn’t use the telescope with the stock on a .22” Raylock rifle adapted to .22” Hornet in the left shoulder, but at 88 yards the iron his 2008 book ‘The Grassy Knoll Badgeman”. sights would do perfectly well. However, the badgeman theory is based on a The target was moving, so although no colorized blow-up of Mary Moorman’s (or adjustment needs to be made for bullet drop was it the Babushka lady’s) Polaroid at the distance, an eleven-mile-an-hour car is photograph and if you stand where that doing 16 feet a second, or 1.6 feet in a tenth photo places the supposed shooter he of a second. The bullet is doing around 2600 couldn’t see the President at the moment the feet a second or 260 feet in a tenth of a headshot impacts. There’s a substantial second and the distance from the 6th floor block of decorative stone in the way: window to the point at which the headshot Zapruder was standing on a similar block at struck is 88 yards – 264 feet – so the shooter the other end of the pergola. In the movie would have to aim off above what he wanted ‘JFK’ Oliver Stone gets around that by to hit. moving his ‘badgeman’ nearer to the road. That gives him a shot, but places him where ALTERNATIVE THEORIES he would have been in clear view of dozens The only other rifle known to be at the of cameras had he stood there and thus scene was an M16 lying on the rear seat of disrupts the facts. the vehicle behind the Presidential Alan Summers also identifies ‘the limousine. Author Bonar Menninger (Mortal Babushka lady’ (opposite the grassy knoll Error, 1992) postulates that this rifle was and to Mary Moorman’s left) as East German negligently discharged as it muzzle-swept spy agent Tania there with a .25ACP auto the Presidential limousine when the Secret pistol in her camera with Che Guevara’s Service agent picked it up in reaction to the blessings. She missed as well, at least in his gunfire. book. Kleasen’s involvement is derived from For that to fit the facts, the 6th floor his various comments one bitterly cold night shooter’s last shot would have been at frame in Scotland where the deer stalking party 223 of the Zapruder film, so if he fired a miss spent the night in the bar, as that had a log at frame 160, there’s a spare cartridge case. fire and the hotel had no electricity. Kleasen The ‘Mortal Error’ book suggests that this was a born liar, but some of his rants that was a previously fired case kept in the night turned into a novel and others may yet chamber as a snap cap. The FBI told the appear as more bedtime reading. Warren Commission that the recovered There’s never going to be a conclusion to cases exhibited multiple extraction marks as the Kennedy assassination until that though dry-cycled. If one of the cases had dreadful Day of Judgment when the secrets been used as a snap cap (the firing pin of all hearts shall be revealed. In the dropping on it multiple times), they should meanwhile, none of the ‘Oswald was have noticed and said so. That’s the sort of innocent’ theories have been able to dislodge thing a defence expert would have checked the solid police work undertaken on the day. and without that checking on, as it were, That might change, so we continue to keep Oswald’s behalf, any deficiencies or cover- an eye on developments. ups in the FBI’s work pass unnoticed. So, the grassy knoll: we know from cine- THE MAC 10 REPORT footage that a policeman at the scene went The MAC 10 was a 1964 design made by for the picket fence revolver drawn in the the Military Armaments Corporation until initial confusion about where the shots came they went bust in the 1970s due to US from. Alan J Summers places erstwhile government export controls on suppressors.

33 Chris Perkins aspired to make firearms loading rifles and carbines were by then and in the 1980s, acquired a MAC 10 on his section 5, the MAC 10 wasn’t mechanically firearm certificate and reverse-engineered it, self-loading: it was self cocking. In a climate using computer aided design software. He in which the Forensic Science Service split was a probationary policeman in Sussex hairs, repainted barn doors, altered bench until he got married: that being a move notes and shifted goal posts, splitting the requiring permission in those days and difference between self-loading and self- leaving was the alternative to not getting cocking kept them at bay for several years. married. Chris Perkins got a police knock at the His innovation was to design his MAC 10 door in 1991. Sussex’s finest and Chris’s for Uzi magazines; this is a difficult part to erstwhile employer had long been puzzled make from scratch and most manufacturers about the company being called ‘Section Five buy them in from a specialist company in Firearms Ltd’ without having applied for Italy. The ‘original’ MAC magazine was one. In the pre-1988 Firearms Act, firearms derived from a Swedish design and is not in were subject to section 1, shotguns, section 2 use with any other firearm; so chances are and machine guns, section 5. Sussex nobody makes them. His MAC 10 took shape borrowed a MAC 10 from Chris Perkins and as a 9mm open-bolt pistol with a detachable sent it to the now defunct Forensic Science ABS shoulder stock and threaded for the Service for assessment. Their ‘expert’ Sionics suppressor. decided that it was, in effect, readily The Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988 convertible to fully automatic fire. His crossed his path, shifting self-loading rifles problem was that’s not an offence, so he was into section 5 and containing the unable to convince Sussex that there was interpretation ‘rifle includes carbine’. Home room, for a prosecution. Office guidance to the police – a restricted All firearms are readily convertible from document since 1969 – was being edited for one category to another with a little publication and when the 1988 Act tinkering. You have four categories – intervened, was hastily re-worked to exempt, 1, 2 and 5. As examples, you can accommodate it. That document suggested shift an antique to section 1 by loading it: a that ‘carbine’ included the Uzi but did not shotgun to section 5 by foreshortening the include stocked pistols, such as the Mauser barrels and a machine gun to exempt by broomhandle. deactivating it. Uzi didn’t make a carbine: they made a Not that the F.S.S. cared much; their job submachine gun, a large frame pistol and a was to find ways of getting convictions, so small frame pistol. The difference between a we have long reports about shoulder stocks 9mm Uzi large frame pistol with a wooden breaching the spirit of the Act, or only being stock and 32 round stick magazine and an partly detachable and other such paranoia: artillery luger with a wooden stock and a 32 all directed at law abiding tax payers who round snail drum magazine is entirely had these on firearm certificates. cosmetic. They returned the gun to Sussex who gave Nevertheless, the (now) defunct Forensic it back to Mr Perkins, who admired the new Science spent public money liberally trying tool marks on it. He said that he wanted to to weed what they perceived as violations of make submachine guns and Sussex said OK; ‘their’ legislation out of the firearm apply for the Home Office permit. The certificate and registered dealer market. agreement struck was that with a section 5 Chris Perkins obtained a barrister’s permit, Chris Perkins would not make opinion about his product. The view taken in firearms for the UK domestic market that was that it was a pistol with a thereafter. detachable shoulder stock and while self

34 Which he didn’t; two other dealers did, already registered with approved security though. One was Guy Savage and the other and a section 5 had been issued there was David Cook, each buying parts kits to previously. hand fit and finish. Section Five Firearms Ltd His application to Dyfed Powys resulted in was, for business reasons and the death of an eventual RFD, but local police wanted the an investor, wound up and its remaining alarm upgraded to a red care system that did assets transferred to Realm Defence not exist in that area. They seemed to have Industries Ltd in the 1990s. panicked about have an export business in By 1994, Realm Defence Industries Ltd their back yard, so the air was thick with had, not so much outgrown its premises in comments about the place being unsuitable Hastings, Sussex, as made the premises and not big enough for a gun factory, not to redundant by developing business practises, mention the number of people who came to such as the shadow production line. Most the premises for other reasons and the lack parts were subcontracted out and did not of ‘perimeter security’, whatever that it. become component parts of firearms until It all seemed so silly at the time. Security finishing and assembly, which only took up of stock is the responsibility of the as much room as a family car. registered dealer who is obliged to take Not needing space, but needing registered reasonable precautions. The police role premises to comply with the ancient statute, where the section 5 trade is concerned is to Chris Perkins negotiated the use of Richard issue the RFD – they have no discretion not Law’s place in Wales. Law moved there in to – and thereafter they can inspect the 1986 and by 1994 the facility was the SRA’s register and stock in hand. The Home Office office, a training base used for courses by usually consults them about security and five organisations and several freelance then gets stuck when the police don’t instructors, range and clubroom facilities approve it, as in this case, or refuse to go and used by four clubs and a venue for SRA and look, as in Chris’s case in 2011 in London. other shooting competitions. Chris Perkins So, in 1996, Chris Perkins had an RFD in was no stranger to the facility, it being Dyfed Powys, and the Home Office were where he conducted live ammunition tests getting around the Dyfed Powys obstruction during development. The army approved the by giving him authority to trade as long as he range for submachine guns at 15 metres for didn’t store guns at his premises. Restraining him. lawful trade is something Dyfed Powys have The planning application for the range form for: they’d restrained both Jan attracted no observations from the police Stevenson’s and Richard Law’s trade by after a five month pause: their reaction to stalling the RFD application for nearly five the RFD application was a search warrant years from 1987. The Charter Gun Club, raid under section 46 of the Firearms Act founded in 1986, did not get Home Office 1968 and that eventually landed Richard approval to use the range they opened in Law an absolute discharge for possessing a 1988 until 1992. shotgun without a certificate: the police The Dyfed Powys solution to the section 5 approval of the place under section 11(6) security impasse was a search warrant on 3rd having expired a few days before the raid. December 1996 and notices revoking Needless to say, the renewal application everything from the 1992 settlement. A (made in good time) was not responded to thorough investigation turned up no offence belatedly, or indeed at all. whatever by Mr Perkins or by any item Dyfed Powys eventually sought a truce seized from the premises. with respect to their liabilities by providing So without premises and trading the RFD etc. in 1992, so when Chris Perkins documents, Chris went low profile, although applied for an RFD at the premises it was his products didn’t. He handed in more than

35 seven tons of MAC 10 parts to the buy in the import/export paperwork that real ones scheme, but Sussex decided they weren’t need. Since display guns don’t need to work, firearms and gave it all back. they might as well be dummies. Chris used the stock to make non- Chris sold his original dummy set – as firearms, of which there are three types. The displayed at various shows – made more, 1988 firearms Act created ‘deactivation’ sold them and made more. After 1995, with guidelines as to how to do it. Those demand for dummy products was as guidelines were amended in 1995, so the buoyant as demand for welded solid de-acs. sought-after de-acs these days are those pre- Blank firers were always a limited market, 1995 ones with moving parts, except they being much more expensive to make and to can’t be sold without further modification feed, as well as fussy about the blanks they once the Policing and Crime Bill becomes used. law. MAC 10 products thus surfaced in various Post-1995 deactivated MAC 10s are forms when Perkins had an RFD and later welded solid, still worth money and Chris during the inter-regnum when he did not. made de-acs. Some policemen can’t work out Then they started turning up at crime how a MAC 10 can be ‘deactivated’ without scenes. Two men were later convicted of ever being live; they should ask an expert. buying bulk MAC 10s and re-using parts Back in 1982, a Firearms Act introduced from them to make working machine guns. by police federation representative Sir Eldon One such was David Mitchell in Sussex; a Griffiths MP made ‘readily convertible’ registered firearms dealer and part time replicas subject to the same category as police constable in the county, so far as we though they were live, with a statutory know all the stuff he bought and messed defence to the effect that not tampering with with is accounted for and the case features in the product was proof enough that the the official history of MI5. defendant didn’t know the product was The other is known as Grant Wilkinson, convertible. The actual target of this was the although that may not be his birth name. He late Major Noel Cory, who imported Spanish ordered a hundred blank firing MACs from flintlocks, correct in every detail except the Guy Savage, which he said were for a Bond touchhole was not drilled. movie. Guy had experience in film work, so Guidance followed the Act to show how the apparent contract for a Bond job was a replicas could be made so as to be not surprise and that led him to discussing the readily convertible and thus the trade used transaction with the police. They eventually those guidelines to deactivate real guns. The caught up with Mr Wilkinson and landed Birmingham Proof House certified them as him in gaol for remanufacturing the blank inoperable and could not be fired. Nor were firers into live firing products. We do not they readily convertible. In 1988, this know if all his products are accounted for, pattern was adopted for the deactivation but one was shown to Trevor MacDonald in clause in the Act that year. a TV show. The Met officer claimed that he The 1982 guidelines also showed how one was working with the Law Commission to should make blank firers and both the 1982 prevent that sort of thing happening again. Act and its guidance are still in force. Chris In 2008/9 Chris and James Edmiston, a Perkins and many others used that guidance former owner of Sterling in Dagenham got to make dummy firearms with moving parts together in pursuit of a military rifle export and blank firers. contract. They got the contract, premises The Perkins’ dummies actually started and tooling but could not get past the out as display guns; these are quite common Metropolitan Police opposing their earning a in the trade. In Europe dummy guns can pass living in London through international borders without all

36 That business having failed, Chris who had been positively vetted and withdrew to Sussex and applied for a shot thoroughly investigated several times with gun certificate, which was granted after a nothing found to be wrong. Still, the case six-month investigation. He then obtained went ahead with evidence from a retired premises in an industrial unit and applied Dyfed Powys officer who had very little to for registration as a firearms dealer as say about Chris Perkins. The best he could director of a new company – Hucklebridge do was to confirm that he had found nothing Engineering Ltd. It took Sussex about three to charge either Chris or his company with months to refuse him and more than eight after the Assistant Chief Constable had pre- months for the matter to reach Chichester emptively revoked the RFDs at the Welsh Crown Court in May 2014. premises, so they additionally re-revoked There were problems with the case from Chris on grounds of not trading: a problem the outset. Sussex made no claim that they caused by blocking his section 5. Perkins – or his new trading company – The Metropolitan police witness had presented any danger to public safety or the investigated James Edmiston and had a lot to peace, which is the sole ground for refusing say about him, about police policy, about registration. international policy and much else, but little Their summary argument took the view about Chris Perkins. She’d met him once for that refusing Chris an RFD was preventative four hours to interview and was irritated by justice, although they didn’t say was what the length and precision of his answers and mischief the refusal sought to prevent. particularly she hated that he knew more Preventative justice is not known to than her. Essentially, she’d had a good look common law and seems to have crept into at Chris Perkins during her investigation and England from (Roman Law) Scotland. In the found nothing improper in his activities that case of Luke v Little (1981) a Scottish court she could charge him with. upheld the revocation of a certificate on the She didn’t see it that way, having found a grounds that the Appellant had so abused lot of firearms parts in the Edmiston factory, motoring law that it was only a matter of but the CPS took the view that as the time before his alcohol-fuelled attitude material had been returned to the site by the problems would lead to his abusing firearms police, charging anyone with it (other than law. the police officer) would be a non-starter. In England, the case of Ackers and Others And if they had, we don’t think there was an v Taylor (1974) took the view that relieving offence in there anyway, as Mr Edmiston has them of their certificates prevented them an RFD in another county. committing the same offence again – which That brought the case to Mr Lock giving was night poaching with guns held on shot evidence, he being the decision maker in gun certificates. In 1991, the case of Essex Sussex. A retired London policeman, his Police v Germain followed Luke v Little, problem was that once he put details of the taking the view that irresponsible use of a Perkins/Hucklebridge application on police motor vehicle was analogous to systems, information surfaced from several irresponsible use of a firearm. Meanwhile, other constabularies. He assembled this as a however, Germain had served his driving flow chart, showing ‘connections’ between ban and was back on the road. The chief Perkins and his ‘associates’. He found that constable gave him the promise of a new Perkins had a tie-in to Guy Savage, who had shot gun certificate at the court door of the firearms convictions in 1995. Guy actually next appeal. traded on until the Met shut him down in Thin pickings then for refusing an RFD to 2010, but that’s another story. a man with no previous convictions, who Through Guy Savage, Mr Lock made a link had never been charged with anything and to Grant Wilkinson, convicted of rebuilding

37 blank firers as live guns. Other people with intervene. The judge said that the legislation whom Perkins ‘associated’ were Geoff Allen allows the court to make any order it sees fit, (Classic Arms editor, gaoled for sexual which thus does not limit the court to acting misconduct in 1999). The Perkins lawfully or complying with natural justice. connection to him was that Dyfed Powys In some respects it didn’t matter, because police passed firearms belonging to Perkins Chris Perkins had also applied for an RFD in to Mr Allen in 1998. Father and son his other company’s name and that is still Greenwood: Chris Perkins investigated the pending. He set about persuading Sussex to Greenwoods at the request of Derbyshire. (a) investigate the malfeasance in public They traded as R.I.F.L.E. in Little Eaton and office he’d identified to them in complaints were subsequently imprisoned for firearms and (b) to limit their liability for restraining related offences. Then there’s Mike his lawful trade since mid 2013 by issuing an Richardson and Peter Eliot. RFD. The only connection between Mike They thought about it. In fact, the right Richardson, who traded as Dolphin Arms hand was still thinking about it when the left and Perkins was that when Guy Savage was hand launched search warrant raids against on trial in 1995, Dolphin lent firearms for Chris Perkins at (a) his company’s registered the defence to exhibit and it was Perkins office, (b) his proposed place of business, who collected them from Richardson and and (c) the flat he shared with his trading returned them. Mr Richardson was premises landlord. They followed all this up convicted of a couple of administrative with a raid on his girlfriend’s house in Kent a firearms offences in 1998. couple of weeks later. Mr Perkins has never met Peter Eliot, who The raids netted them what was left of the now manages a range complex in seven tons of non-registerable gun parts Newfoundland and has not transacted any they’d handed back in 1997, plus several business with any company Mr Eliot was a more tons of stuff that the Met had returned director or servant of in the UK. Mr Lock was to Perkins in London. unable to explain how he made a connection. It took Sussex more than a year to get a The police had asked for three days for case into Lewes Crown Court and a jury less their case and Perkins had asked for two than two hours to throw it out again. The days for his: the court only allocated three bottom line is that while investigating Chris days altogether, so they can’t add up and the Perkins to the enth degree and casting police case used up most of the time. The aspersions at everything he did looks good court adjourned Chris Perkins part heard to and sounds good to people who think that the 12th August 2015, on which occasion he sabbing lawful interests in hope of making attended with his witnesses to find they’d them otherwise is a valid use of police time shifted it to 4th October without letting him and public funds, it only does so in the weird know. A similar thing happened to Harry parallel universe from which such ideas Potter when the ministry of magic didn’t emanate. want Dumbledore attending a hearing. Early in 2017, the lawyer for Sussex On 4th October, the court refused to indicated that they would not oppose the continue the case and turned it into a costs return of his shot gun certificate, so he asked hearing at which the police were awarded whether that largesse extended to his RFD as £6,800. There is little point making a costs well and we’ll know the answer by the next order against a company which has not been Journal, or the one after. allowed to start trading, but the point was sufficient for the police to seek a winding up of the company for non-payment. A judicial AIR WEAPONS IN SCOTLAND review did not persuade the High Court to

38 If you live in Scotland and own or possess that ‘possession’ without a certificate is less any air gun with a kinetic energy of 0.73-12 supervised than ‘use’. ft lbs you should by now have obtained an By adding ‘use’ to the requirement to hold air weapon certificate, or applied for one and a certificate without purchasing, possessing lodged your air guns with an authorised or acquiring it, casual access to air guns person pending receipt of the new requires a person who has no intention of certificate. You count as an authorised owning or storing an air gun to nevertheless person if you hold a firearm certificate and hold a certificate. you add authority for air guns to it for £5 at The regulations were published in May next renewal. 2016. Certificates could be issued from 1st The Air Weapons and Licensing July and owners could not legally keep air (Scotland) Act 2015 came into force on 1st guns without that certificate after 31st July 2016. This is an Act of three parts; part December. We thought it interesting that, 1 created the requirement for air gun having cribbed the word ‘use’ from a owners to get a certificate, part 2 relates to licensing act, the forms on which one applies alcohol licensing and part 3 to civic licensing. for a certificate are AWL/1, AWL/2 etc. We That is why it is an air weapons and figure that the ‘A’ stands for ‘Air’ and the ‘W’ licensing Act. for ‘Weapon’ or ‘Weapons’, but the ‘L’? It’s In drafting the wording, the Scots reached not short for ‘Certificate’, so we wondered back past the Firearms Act to the Gun whether they really want this legislation to Licensing Act 1870. The Firearms Act be a licence, despite having avoided making requires you, unless exempted, to get a it so throughout its passage in the Scottish certificate to purchase possess or acquire a Parliament. firearm. The word the Scots added to this The difference is that an air weapon from the 1870 Act is ‘use’. certificate, like a firearm certificate, is It appears everywhere that ‘purchase, granted if one meets the criteria AND they possess, acquire’ appear as the fourth can’t pony up any reason, real or imagined, horseman, which widens the number of to use as grounds for refusing. In the case of people who should have to apply. In the a licence, there is no such discretion. For Firearms Act, the word ‘use’ only appears in example, when you passed a driving test you conjunction with exemptions: without received a certificate of competence from the holding a certificate you can use a firearm at examiner. He’s had the discretion to decide a Home Office approved club (Sec 15/1988 whether your faults are sufficient grounds to Act), a certificate holder’s rifle on private pass or fail you and thus whether or not to property (Sec 16/1988 Act) and a miniature issue the certificate. Then you sent that rifle gallery (Sec 11(4)/1968 Act). You can certificate along with your provisional use a shot gun certificate holder’s shotgun licence to the DVLA for a full driving licence on private property in his presence (Sec to be issued. 11(5)/1968 Act) and at a place approved for The DVLA has no discretion to refuse to artificial target shooting (Sec 11(6)/1968 issue it. There are medical occasions when it Act). might be suspended, but only a court can All the other exemptions from the need to revoke it. This is to comply with European hold a firearm certificate refer to possession. law – that’s the Europe the SNP want to Gun bearers, starting gun at a race meeting, remain a part of – as no issuing authority can cadet corps, dealers and their servants, also be the revoking authority (McGonnell v slaughtermen, warehousemen, actors, ships’ UK, 2002). The Scottish government seem to equipment, signalling apparatus, antiques have missed that point; odd, given that they (but watch this space) etc. The difference is are obliged by the Scotland Act (1998) to comply with European law.

39 The costs are interesting. In UK firearms December 2016 need to deposit the guns legislation, the fee is payable on grant, so the with an authorized person first. fee for any certificate is intended to defray Scottish politicians lobbied Westminster those additional costs that issuing the for the power to have additional controls certificate imposes on the police: the over air guns in Scotland and once they had stationery, envelope and stamp. They’ll be a that power they made it abundantly clear few minutes of secretarial time and every so that they intended to create criteria for often the printer will want a new ink getting the authority to keep air guns at a cartridge. In cases where the application is threshold that most Scottish residents (and refused, the fee is refunded, the money not many of the air guns) would not be able to being required to defray police costs that meet. That fell away as the legislation took will not be incurred. shape, but the public perception remains In Scotland, however, the fee for an air that they are expected to dispose of air guns weapon certificate is payable on application rather than apply for a certificate. The break and the legislation makes no mention of point at which a toy becomes an air weapon refunding unsuccessful applicants. The is 1 joule of striking energy – about .073ft lb. legislation also provides a specific power for This is a bit above the striking energy of the police to visit the applicant at home and most airsoft guns, so they remain ‘realistic to inspect the security in which he will keep imitation firearms’: unless it’s modelled on his air guns. And all that for £72, or less if Captain Kirk’s Phaser, in which case is it you’re under 18, a visitor, a firearm realistic? certificate holder etc. That makes the regular Anyway, our man in Scotland (aka The firearm certificate look way overpriced; on Usual Suspect) wondered whether one our calculations it shouldn’t be more than needed the certificate to keep an air gun for £12, but that’s another story. defence. This first came up when Scottish So how many of Scotland’s estimated ministers were saying that ‘plinking’ would 500,000 air weapons are now held on air not be a good reason to have an air weapon weapon certificates? The last figures we saw certificate. Aha, we said; pest control will were 2,642 applications had been made by have to be a good reason and anyone who the end of August and just 418 had been has a garden, a basement, an attic, outhouse, issued. By the end of the year, some 7,000 garage etc. may, at some point have a pest applications had been made and 18,000 air control issue caused by rats, squirrels, etc. weapons handed in, making a compliance Pest control undertaken as a sporting rate of 1.4% or even less if ‘users’ also apply. activity falls under firearms certificate That’s low compared to other controls, but what about defence of life, compliance rate estimates. The air cartridge liberty and property? revolver ban in 2004 attracted a compliance This old chestnut works thus; under rate of less than 5% by the public. The common law, one has the right to protect introduction of shot gun certificates in 1968 oneself and one’s property, with an generated 600,000 applications, or a heady obligation to turn out as militia, trained and 25% of owners: much of the ‘increase’ in equipped at one’s own expense when shot gun certificate numbers 1968-88 is summoned by the King or his representative. thought to have been late take-up of the King James II (on the throne 1685-8/9) was requirement as owners found out about it: perceived to be restricting those rights to that was not an option for air cartridge people of the Catholic faith to which he revolver owners as applications had to be belonged. Britain had, by then, experienced made by a cut off date. In Scotland, air gun more than a century of religious upheaval. owners can still apply, but since the end of The Pope thought it was up to him who ruled each country in Christian Europe until he

40 received the Declaration of Arbroath from power to amend the common law wasn’t Scotland in 1320. He excommunicated that devolved to the Scottish Parliament. So we country. In the 1540s Britain left the Holy asked Professor Adam Tomkins whether an Roman Empire Brexit-style when King air gun kept for defence requires or is Henry VIII found it expedient to do so. He exempted from the need for a certificate. needed their money; Anne Boleyn was just An MSP since 2016, he is shadow cabinet the bonus. secretary for communities, social security, Queen Elizabeth I founded the Church of the constitution and equalities. His chair is England on the doctrinal wave of that of the John Miller professor of public Protestantism, leaving Englishmen who law at the University of Glasgow School of favoured Catholicism for faith reasons in a Law, so we thought he would know the difficult position, because the head of their answer, or at least take an interest in finding church was also head of state of a foreign out if the Government he opposes has made sovereign country. That made it a loyalty a mess of things. issue; or treason to favour another state Several attempts to draw him out failed to over the one you live in. Catholics couldn’t receive a response other than suggestions hold any office of state due to that conflict of that legal advice should come from a interests. Puritans couldn’t abide the way in solicitor: an odd response from a Member of which the new Church of England was also any Parliament, especially one whose brief the local government, so they went off to includes the constitution and who holds a America and the Protestant/Catholic debacle post as a lecturer in constitutional law. ebbed and flowed from one monarch to the Historically and like many academics Prof next. Tomkins’ seems somewhat left-leaning, as James II came to the throne in 1685. The evidenced in his book ‘Our Republican Duke of Monmouth (an illegitimate son of Constitution’, in which he advocated the King Charles II) started a rebellion in the complete dissolution of the House of West Country, which failed: largely because Windsor, making unkind remarks about he could not persuade people to turn out as several of its members in the process. By the militia to support him over the King. Those time he took up his second job as a who did lost the Battle of Sedgemoor and Conservative MSP, he seemed to have then faced Judge Jeffries at the bloody adjusted his attitude enough to take an oath assizes. James II consolidated his position by of loyalty to the sovereign. franchising the powerful offices of state to When we asked the Prof about the Catholic families and disarming Protestants. progress of the Air Weapon Act we received The Bill of Rights (and the Scottish Claim the following reply: of Right) were drafted by the plotters who “Ahead of the new law taking effect, Police invited William of Orange to invade Britain Scotland received 6,948 applications for an to restate the common law: they aren’t air weapon certificate by 31 October. statutes, but served as guidance to the Certificates, or refusals, have been issued in judiciary as to which of James II’s statutes all but a limited number of cases, for example weren’t worth the parchment they were where further investigation is required or written on because they tried amending the where payment has not yet been received common law. from the applicant. Common law can be amended, of course, A further 5,436 applications were received but the Act making the amendment has to between 1 November and 31 December 2016. say so on its face, according to Lord Justice Police Scotland are processing these as Laws in the ‘Metric Martyrs’ case. No such quickly as possible, but those who are phrase appears in the Air Weapons and awaiting a decision must make arrangements Licensing (Scotland) Act and in any event to have their air weapons stored in a safe and

41 appropriate place - either with someone who “You are extremely creative at concocting has an air weapon, firearm or shot gun ingenious legal arguments that would have certificate, or a registered firearms dealer - to no chance of success in a court of law! avoid committing an offence. In addition, by Top marks for imagination (and thanks for 31 December, 18,935 unwanted air weapons reading my book!) but, in all seriousness, I had been surrendered to Police Scotland for have made my position perfectly clear. secure destruction since the summer. There is no chance that the courts would When you recall that there is an estimated rule—or even entertain an argument—that 500,000 air weapons in Scotland, you can the common law has anything to do with this see that there must be a large pool of area of law given the mountain of legislative potential criminals awaiting detection. We enactments on gun controls.” then asked: ‘British Government and Constitution’, a We note that there is no attempt to book you co-authored with Colin Turpin explain the osmosis from right to privilege. contains an extract from the Bill of Rights Nobody else has tried to explain it either. including the text: ‘That the Subjects which Undeterred, the Suspect tried again: are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as Dear Adam, allowed by Law.’ Your book then states: ‘The To the best of my knowledge, gun control provisions of the Bill of Rights are not legislation, however mountainous, applies inviolate, and some have been altered by only to firearms for recreational use. subsequent legislation; for example, it hardly The Bill and the Claim of Rights Acts needs saying that Protestant subjects no confirm the common law authority to possess longer enjoy a special privilege in the keeping defensive arms, and they do not suffer implied of arms.’ Here’s the thing; Protestants never repeal because they are constitutional. had a special privilege in the keeping of arms. If there is an act expressly revoking the At the time the Bill of Rights came into being, common law right to defensive arms, care to only Catholics had the right to possess give me a clue as to its title? defensive arms. The mention of allowing Protestants, i.e. anyone not a Catholic, There was no reply so the next attempt: defensive arms simply restored their common law right. That right still exists, bolstered by “The http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ web Article 2 of the ECHR, and I wondered if this site’s version of the Claim of Right Act 1689 might accommodate the unlicenced air includes the statement: 'There are currently weapons in Scotland? Instead of prosecuting no known outstanding effects for the Claim of people for not possessing a licence, why not Right Act 1689.' If the Claim of Right is intact, default to the Common Law? There is nothing and it states that disarming is contrary to to prevent a person applying for a licence if law, then doesn’t my suggestion about they wish to use a defensive air weapon for allowing owners of air weapons to default to target shooting. If they fail to qualify for a the common law make sense?” licence the common law would allow them to retain their property. This does not mean His reply fell short of being an answer: someone who commits an offence with an air weapon should not face the consequences of “We really have exhausted all this. There their action. However, unless the police are are no grounds for thinking the common law investigating a reported misuse of an air has any role to play. I'm sorry.” weapon, why look for trouble? The story is not over yet however; His reply read: nothing in this Journal is concluded, so we’ll

42 pick up in the next one to see what’s happening.