The shooting organisations are glaringly absent on this issue, come on B.A.S.C. pull your bloody fingers out!!!, (Maybe write them another letter!!!)
I'm not sure the BASC has much to offer to help the FAC-applicants of the future escape mentoring conditions.
The following vignette is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any organisations, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
BASC: What's this with the mentoring conditions already?
FLD: Yea, well, they're absolutly super, aren't they?
BASC: What on earth do you mean? No basis in law, no justification for further restriction of this sort, blah, blah, blah. Explain yourselves!!
FLD: Well, we just tell new applicants they have to have a mentor. They don't seem to mind. In fact, most of them expect it. Many seem positively overcome with gratitude to get a FAC at all!
BASC: what about the experienced chaps who
are the 'mentors' - haven't they seen through this pernicious anti-libertarian charade?
FLD: No. In fact, they're simply falling over themselves to help us out. Like we said, the condition is really, really popular. Some of them even make a few bob out of it; and even it they don't, they get to feel really important and to write us letters and so on. We see it less as a restriciton and more as a way of keeping FAC-holders' morale up, really.
BASC: Oh well, there we are then.
The remedy for this condition, as has been demonstrated in more than one case, seems to be for the
person about to be conditioned to challenge it politely and in writing.
As I've mentioned on previous threads on this subject, I think it can only be to the good if the people who might act as mentors, while continuing to offer support and guidance to new FAC-holders simply refused to get involved if there was a 'mentoring condition' on the novice's FAC. My take on this would be that if the police aren't sure he's going to be safe, they shouldn't issue the ticket. Not issue it and expect me to take the rap!