GP reports update

[Davee]

Well Lincs's latest move in that they won't consider any applications without the Medical Report means that they are passing even more onto the GP. He now in effect does the preliminary screening for them!
As an aside a Lincs FEO told an applicant that zeroing a rifle using expanding ammunition on a club range is illegal!!! Just how are we supposed to work up the best load and zero your rifle? Surely a range is safer -and more in the Publics' interest-than Joe Blogg's field!

 

[zambezi]

...Lincs FEO told an applicant that zeroing a rifle using expanding ammunition on a club range is illegal

Using expanding ammunition in a national target competition is prohibited AFAIK. And individual ranges may proscribe expanding ammunition based on butt construction. But zero'ing on a range prior to going stalking is not illegal per se.

It is true that the 2016 HOG makes some distinctions between expanding and non-expanding ammunition. However, those differences would appear to have been abrogated by the later Policing and Crime Act 2017 ammendments. Here is the BASC explanatory on the change in categorisation of expanding ammunition.

In short: expanding and non-expanding ammunition are both in Cat 1.

 

[Woodsmoke]

Perhaps focussing your energy on getting those shooters who are not a member of any organisation to join the fight would be more productive

Would it? Or would it rather increase your membership subscriptions and allow you to continue to do absolutely sweet FA, but with even MORE money?

 

[Dalua]

Would it? Or would it rather increase your membership subscriptions and allow you to continue to do absolutely sweet FA, but with even MORE money?

To be fair, I didn't read 'join the fight' as meaning 'join BASC'.

In fact, I think the role of individual shooters maintaining contact with, or pressure on, their own MPs is often underestimated: not by BASC, certainly, who seem quite good at encouraging their members to take action individually; but rather by the shooters themselves, who perhaps find having to do some letter-writing or MP-visiting irksome.

The complacency that often appears to result from membership of an organisation, resulting in shooters leaving everything to BASC or whichever bunch, is IMO very harmful - particularly when the organisations' higher level approach results in something markedly different from the desired outcome.

 

[Dalua]

In short: expanding and non-expanding ammunition are both in Section 1.

I suppose by default they are.
However, it's probably important to note that this is not because the Firearms Act defines them in two categories and places both in S1. It is just because they are both ammunition for rifles, and are therefore in S1.

In competitions and on ranges one should, of course, abide by the rules and the range orders.
However, the unlawfulness of using 'expanding' (however that's defined) ammunition on ranges or in competitions presumably depends on whether breaking the comp rules or the range orders counts as 'breaking the law' in some way.

 

[jimbo1984]

Would it? Or would it rather increase your membership subscriptions and allow you to continue to do absolutely sweet FA, but with even MORE money?

Exactly this !!!

 

[David63]

Oh for goodness sake, All I ask is that we encourage everyone to play their part. Those who are members of organisations get updates and calls to action from their chosen association, those who are not members may miss out. Surely it makes sense for us all to work together? But as usual, the usual few turn it into an opportunity to take a dig at BASC...
To say BASC does nothing is totally ludicrous, but I know it makes no difference what ever I say some of you will dismiss it. Never the less, BASC will keep lobbying, and keep encouraging members to lobby on this and a range of issues, we will keep on helping members secure their shooting opportunity, keep on helping people take up shooting and learn more about it, keep training thousands of new comers to shooting, and so on.

 

[enfieldspares]

But if you don't "get" it that lobbying isn't working what's the point?

Lobbying didn't work in Scotland with GP Reports. It hasn't worked in Lincolnshire with GP Reports. It hasn't worked in Thames Valley with GP Reports. Do you not understand that there's no point in claiming that a Judicial Review is ill advised as "we might lose" when by not taking a Judicial Review you lose anyway as you accept unchallenged the changes you don't want.

Yes, for goodness' sake all shooters ask is that everyone plays their part.

And what they perceive is that the body that claims to be "the authoritative voice of shooting", with over one hundred employees and an apparent cash reserve of eight million Pounds isn't. Lobbying isn't working is it! And where are the ten year FAC and SGC lifetimes that we were told were to be the result of this lobbying? Because that what some were claiming wasn't it?

 

[Woodsmoke]

Lobbying isn't working is it! And where are the ten year FAC and SGC lifetimes that we were told were to be the result of this lobbying? Because that what some were claiming wasn't it?

And lobbying didn't prevent the passing of unnecessary, invasive, unwanted, and unwarranted air rifle legislation, either.

 

[VSS]

Well it's obvious that what we need to do is all dress up in red skirts and gate crash a private party of politicians in order to peacefully distribute brochures outlining our concerns. That's a sure way to get attention.

 

[Benelli m2]

There has been a big rise in applications for sgc and fac over the last few years I sure they don't like it
They want to see more empty cabinets

 

[enfieldspares]

There has been a big rise in applications for sgc and fac over the last few years I sure they don't like it.

It's anecdotal but it is said that the Home Office were concerned that so many new FACs were being issued for handguns in the 1980s that there'd be a "tipping point" when there were enough owners to become a big enough number to "lobby" for their use for self-defence. And that realising that they had missed the chance after Hungerford (and the increase in FACs for handguns issued after 1988) that the same civil servants were determined not to miss the chance after Dunblane. Or maybe I'm just a cynic or in need of a tinfoil hat?

 

[Apthorpe]

It's anecdotal but it is said that the Home Office were concerned that so many new FACs were being issued for handguns in the 1980s that there'd be a "tipping point" when there were enough owners to become a big enough number to "lobby" for their use for self-defence. And that realising that they had missed the chance after Hungerford (and the increase in FACs for handguns issued after 1988) that the same civil servants were determined not to miss the chance after Dunblane. Or maybe I'm just a cynic or in need of a tinfoil hat?

I think so. We now know that the opinions of voters carry no weight in the Home Office.

 

[kes]

I am bound to silence over one org but I have to say that promising something and doing nothing (GP's Lincs) is like digging a hole and not stopping by claiming there may be gold in there somewhere. There is no gold - we are being shafted, properly shafted and for some of the most intelligent people in the country thats shameful.

I dont understand people who just keep digging in the same old hole.

 

[Tim.243]

Tim.243

 

[Dalua]

Oh for goodness sake, All I ask is that we encourage everyone to play their part. Those who are members of organisations get updates and calls to action from their chosen association, those who are not members may miss out. Surely it makes sense for us all to work together? But as usual, the usual few turn it into an opportunity to take a dig at BASC...
To say BASC does nothing is totally ludicrous, but I know it makes no difference what ever I say some of you will dismiss it. Never the less, BASC will keep lobbying, and keep encouraging members to lobby on this and a range of issues, we will keep on helping members secure their shooting opportunity, keep on helping people take up shooting and learn more about it, keep training thousands of new comers to shooting, and so on.

I am still at the moment a BASC member, as I have been for many years.

My concern is not that BASC doesn't do anything, but that the things it does do appear recently to have had worse outcomes than if it had done nothing.
'Horse-trading' the liberties of shooting-folk with the Home Office and the Police, who I'm afraid to say hold nearly all the aces and have had decades of practice at getting their own way without their 'negotiating partners' noticing until it is far too late, does not seem to have brought about the 10-year certificates - but have crashed us into a world of unimagined (by BASC, at least) inconvenience and expense at the hands of the Healing Profession, aided and abetted (unsurprisingly, for why would they not?) by the FLDs.

I am far from anti-BASC. But I am anti hubristic attempts at 'negotiation' with bodies like the Home Office and the Police - of whom we should continue to beware.

 

[kes]

The GMC is about to fall out of favour anyway since their announcement that charging NHS 'tourists is RACIST. Rather suggests the tourist come from a particular colour/country ? The Government wont like that since GP's make up a very small percentage of the voting populace.

 

[Orion]

Oh the irony of it.

So they don’t mind frittering away untold millions of taxpayers money treating those who haven’t contributed to the system, but won’t complete the simple ‘tick box’ enquiry from the police despite it being previously negotiated!

 

[enfieldspares]

I've just re-read Colin Greenwood's obituary by Bill Harriman on the BASC website. This paragraph stands out:

Colin never ceased to remind anyone who worked for a shooting organisation that they were employed by the members for the members’ benefit. He would not tolerate lazy or ineffective people who did not have a 100% commitment to shooting.

Colin Greenwood 1931-2017 - BASC

basc.org.uk

 

[Dalua]

Having read a good deal of Colin Greenwood's work in Guns Review (where he wrote inter al as Cadmus), I think he would not have been impressed with the present situation.

The injunction from him quoted in Mr Harriman's obituary, '... and don't stop kicking those bastards' might have been overlooked lately - but one could always take it up again?