Un-licensed users of shotguns - spot police checks

[ContinShots]

Unfortunately, you're not correct. The Criminal Justice Act 1972 updated the definition of a public place to be:



The pertinent bit there is have or are permitted to have access which does include any private land to which any member of the public has been permitted to have access at the relevant time. So in the stately home example, Blaser243 is quite correct to state that the home becomes "a public place" for the duration that the public are permitted to have access, at least as far as the CJA is concerned. It reverts to being a private place once the permission for the public to enter has been withdrawn.



As for the rest of the story and the actions of the Police - this to me is either connected to some other activity that has caught their attention or is the result of someone very overzealous looking to make a name for themselves somehow. I strongly suspect it is the former rather than the latter...

Yes. Quite correct. And while that Act mostly relates only to England, provisions relating to firearms also apply in Scotland, so that definition of 'public place' apples all over GB, whereas very often such definitions will vary depending on which country you are in.

 

[DRZ]

Good to know - I'd not considered Scots law as I know almost nothing about it!

 

[Elshad]

Our laws are ridiculous.
Unreasonably convoluted and open to unintentional error from those not versed in legal terminology.

Making the law abiding into law breakers by making things massively over complicated and confusing.

This country is doomed.

The purpose of a system is what it does - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[enfieldspares]

There were at some times (before the Tory handgun ban) some pistol clubs that got unannounced visits to check if some were not using unlicensed pistols. Usually these would have been bring back Lugers or similar that said member had either inherited or acquired (by honest means albeit unlicensed) from the person that originally owned it or from that person's family.