You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
Under initial ECHA proposals, ALL lead ammunition plus lead fishing weights were to be banned. Those proposals were successfully watered down by negotiation and exemptions to the universal ban were conceded. Your National legislation is following a similar trajectory. There was absolutely no chance that the majority of shooters would not be affected in some way by the ban, therefor the national shooting representatives prepared their members for the transition.
Exactly what I would both want and expect them to do.
We’re all still waiting and its no deflection.
You constantly harp back to the past, you refuse to engage with the future. Its an utterly pointless exercise.
There was a strong resistance from the officials to granting any exemptions to the regulations, you listed 6 in half a sentence, just not happening, in no small part due to our proven track record for non compliance with existing restrictions.
“you continue badgering me for what is in reality irrelevant information. I am not able to dictate the terms of future legislation.”
Absolutely not true, I asked you how you would deal with the current HSE proposals, which are a matter of public record, not speculation.
At no stage did I request that you “ dictate the terms of future legislation”.
We still await your roadmap for the future of shooting.
Once again, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Lead restriction proposals have been the subject of constant discussion and negotiation at EU level for over 40 years. The national shooting bodies of all member states were present and not one of them has succeeded in challenging the official position, this includes your UK bodies pre BREXIT.
Your national bodies have no more let you down than have ours or any other EU countries.
We simply could not counter the scientific arguments supporting the proposed restrictions.
I know that there are several contributors who reject the scientific WHO findings that lead is harmful, we tried that and got laughed out of the room by adults who had actually read the studies. They weren’t accepting anecdotal evidence of 90 year old aunts who smoked, drank and ate lead sandwiches every day of their lives with no ill effects, they weren’t interested in lead flashing, they weren’t interested in lead pipes and they weren’t interested in naturally occurring background environment lead contamination.
They had a single item agenda, restricting lead in ammunition, thats what they stuck to, thats what they did.
Under the circumstances, I think your shooting representatives and ours did rather well.
Your contention that our national shooting representatives prepared their members for transition is just a convenient spin to deflect from the fact that those representatives did not consult their membership to ascertain how the members wished to be represented on the issue . The reality being that the membership would have undoubtedly rejected the calls for a voluntary ban being announced .
Had that occurred it would have avoided the situation where BASC et all lost credibility
by calling for a lead ban ,albeit voluntary, thus justifying the introduction of further lead shot restrictions
while maintaining they were opposed to any further legislation
while allowing their own representative to post reams of information testifying to the merit of a total lead ban by overstressing the significance of single percentage figure lead ingestion rate that they were unable to determine the extent of ,if any ,impact on population
What a mess
and you contend that you are quite happy with that performance.
The non compliance regarding the use of lead shot to take ducks on commercial shoots ,when to shoot pheasants from the same pegs is legal, is little justification for the inability to concede exemptions for clay shooting and thus the ability for historic weapons ,short chambered small bores and .410s to continue to be used. The two are not linked and had England not introduced such poor laws or those ducks had been shot in Scotland no such illegality would have occurred.
If clay loads were to be used to take game after legislation was introduced that banned the use of lead shot for game but permitted it for clay shooting then it should be dealt with through the courts not by restrictions being applied to clay shooting which consigns a lot of valuable historic firearms to the status of ornament.
Regarding the science that dictates that the use of lead shot inland carries such risk that only a blanket ban is sufficient to deal with the threat I read lots of generalisations accepting this but have not read one scientific paper that conclusively quantifies the extent of harm to flora and fauna from lead shot dispersal inland. Perhaps you could provide that evidence in your own words rather than links to studies that when read through are either inconclusive or fail to quantify the extent of the problem so that a layman could judge for himself whether further legislation was justified and if so where that should be applied to minimise risk rather than eradicate it.
I’ve never referred to lead pipes,lead paint, leaded or unleaded petrol ,90 year old aunts or John Swift in any of my posts. Nor have I attempted to include any history lessons in my posts.
What I have done is highlighted the inadequacies of the representation on shooters behalf and the hypocrisy surrounding claiming to have always opposed restrictions on lead shot use by a representative that chose to undermine official BASC policy by posting continuously in favour of further restrictions using information insufficient to justify that stance.
That you refuse to acknowledge this is of little concern to me and your attempts to deflect from this basic observation is of little concern however in choosing to accept appeasement instead of fighting to oppose restrictions creates a dangerous precedent and does not bode well for the next obstacle that will be placed in the path of shooting sports. How effective will opposition be when rather than accepting only change where change is justified we cave in so easily to ,what was earlier stated by a BASC representative, pressure from the general public, media and the UK government.
As stated earlier let’s see what concessions can be gained concerning activities which have little if any impact on the environment to protect our sport rather than so readily accepting defeat as you obviously have.
