Vince Green

They always give you less for cartridge cases because they are supposed to sort it by hand for live rounds. Or so they tell me. Our local scrapyard give you about half the brass price.

I take them to the local nature reserve and scatter them around inside the hides by the lake when nobody is looking.

Being the secretary of a big and busy pistol club for ten years means you meet all sorts of people. Pistol clubs I'm afraid attracted all the wrong sorts but I think we were best equipped to weed them out. We saw them week after week. The third man had always been a bit odd but started telling us that people were spying on him and he thought his phone was tapped. it turned out he was being treated for paranoid delusions and was on medication. His Doctor didn't know he was a shooter because he had concealed it from him. He had also concealed his medication from the police. The good side of these events was that the police came to realise our club was straight and tightly run and they gave us a lot of respect. FEOs are unlikely to spot problem people in a one off visit no matter how well trained they are. Clubs are much more able to spot problems but then you have a real dilema deciding what to do about it. Thomas Hamilton, the man who shot the kids in the school at Dunblane was refused membership of a club just before he did it. They must have had concerns about him but they didn't tell the police. Its a shame they didn't, it might have prevented what happened later. For a club to refuse membership to an established shooter and an FAC holder indicates to me there must have something quite major. The drink driving guy was heart wrenching, i had known him for years and he and his wife had been guests at my wedding. He just spiralled out of control after being made redundant. Although I suspect his redundancy was because they had spotted his problm at work. I never thought they would wait for him outside his house. I had advised them to call at his house unannounced one afternoon and they would find him the worse for wear. He never spoke to me again and I don't blame him. He died last year, I'm suprised he lived as long as he did considering what he was drinking.

Don't underestimate him though, Professor gives him the status of "Expert" in the eyes of lots of the public. And he is, or he used to be , a Home Office advisor.

This bloke had a few run ins with people in the club over trivial things that he over reacted to agressively. Finally after a major flare up he was told not to come back and the police were told he was not a member of our club anymore. ( which we have to do). He could have sorted it out easily if he had stayed reasonable with the police and gone off and joined another club. Instead he chose to throw all his toys out of the pram and got into a shouting match with the poice making threats and allegations.

People can put on an act for the duration of a short visit from the FEO. If they are dodgy they are not going to let it show. Thats the point I think they are getting at. Police rely more on phone calls from the public. when I was secretary of a club I made several such phone calls. I didn't like doing it but it was my job and my responsibility to do it. Three people had their guns taken away because of me, it didn't feel good. One was an alcoholic and a good mate who never spoke to me again, He got pulled up in his car and breathalysed one morning a hundred yards from his house and lost his licence because of my phone call. They were waiting for him. He's now dead. Another was a psycologically damaged ex soldier and the third was just becoming more weird and worrying as time went on. When I found out he was on medication and hadn't disclosed it I had no choice but to report it. The ex soldier went ballistic, made threats against me and my family and allegations against me to the police that resulted in my house getting searched one Sunday. He was later charged with wasting police time but the charges were dropped. The point is all three had passed visits from their FEOs at renewal time. Was I wrong to do it? I often wonder.

If nothing has changed since the last renewal why have a visit? They never used to do it. Its one of those things that just evolved. I used to renew my FAC and SGC years ago and never saw anyone. People may find this amazing but I never saw anyone on my initial application for a FAC! You have to realise that the Gun Control Network is the most cranky of the antis and always push themselves into the limelight at every opportunity. One of the shooting organisations (I think it might have been Shooters Rights) tried to do an investigation into where they got their funding from and apparantly its a can of worms.

Primers can be a very deceptive indicator of pressure. Some primers, Winchester for example are very soft and can look really flattened while others don't look too bad even though the pressure may be the same. Modern rifles generate high pressures anyway and anyone who thinks they can tell the difference between a safe and an unsafe load from primers alone is either very experienced or over confident when it gets to that last little bit.

Exactly the point, how can a new start gunshop compete with them on price? He is not going to be able to buy cartridges from the manufacturers at the same price as the big boys do. He's going to be buying cartridges at virtually the price they are selling theirs at. The manufactures are not going to upset their big customers by offering him the same discounts they are giving to Just Cartridges. Its a catch 22, very common in business. Ask any small grocers shop what they think of Tesco's or Sainsbury's.

its just a symptom of the times. Nobody wants to hold much stock of anything so you get shortages.

A gunshop is about the worst business you could ever think of starting. Low margins, high security, fire regs, limited customer base, complex legislation, ******** customers telling you they can buy these cartridges £5 a thousand sixty miles away.

One of the big problems with a gunsafe is that it leads to over confidence. If a burglar sees one he may leave it alone but he or one of his mates will be back later with a grinder. Its only a tin can.

And yet at our club the two Baikal o/u club guns were very popular and led to quite a few people buying them because they got on with them so well.

I would not eat it until I had learned more.

Its good to keep a diary of events but not if your FEO asks to see it. thats the thin end of the wedge. Soon they will be asking everybody to keep a diary and produce it at renewals.

Years ago I used to know target shooters who would routinely wipe the wax off their ammo. I have seen them sitting in the club wiping their ammo before going in to shoot them.

The best load is not always the max load. Some loads work really well below the max. pay attention to group size and you may easily find the group starts to open up again as you approach max. Its a harmonic and every rifle/ load combination is different.

Foxes are creatures of habit. Probably out raiding the bins on the local housing estate, only returning in the early morning. I was at a customers this week, nothing to do with shooting. Dog bowl on the patio and a big pack if Morrisons dog food on the side in the kitchen. "you haven't got a dog says I" "no she says its for the foxes" they feed the foxes every night. Loads of people like her. What can I say? She's a customer. No wonder the foxes are off the permissions. Easy pickings in the town..

My vote, poxy silly law anyway. You don't have to paint the whole gun just the end of the barrel. Henry Kranks are still selling blank firers anyway . What is the law?

As long as its straight and the rifling is squared up on all the grooves/ lands thats good enough. The damage comes from pull throughs wearing the edges. Not a common problem these days.

Cheap thinsulate padded gloves. **** for shooting but you take one off when the time comes. Warm and practical.

Use 3 in 1 its just as good. might not smell as sexy though but I can't help that. If you want to get your missus going wave some money under her nose. Works with most women. New shoes, new hand bag etc

.308 for foxes ? are you serious? theres dead, very dead, extremely dead and mush. There was an article in target gun a couple of months back where the guy seemed to be using cast .308 bullets for fox. Interesting thought. My mate uses 11-14 grains of Unique behind a .308 cast bullet for target use. He reckons its ace up to 200 yds.

Cartridge companies prefer plastic wads because they go through their automated loading machines more efficiently and they are much cheaper to buy in bulk. There was a lot of selling hype around plastic wads years ago but that has largely been discounted since. They are simply cheaper.

I still load the equvilent cartridges today. ounce and 1/8th. fibre wad and slow burning powder like green dot. Real cartridges. I love them.