Evilv

I agree about that. I have a son in the TA who may be off to Afghanistan in the springtime. What was that song about Springtime in Paradise? Thanks for your patience in the face of my tirade.

LOL - there's no freedom of speech any more, just like there's no presumption that we're to be trusted. Most certainly. I thought we had been.

Here here! That IS the point.

Given the story you reported about the couple wanting to shoot intruders, and what else I know, I'd say you shouldn't do anything of the kind. I think that I as a respectable citzen would have felt obliged to say something like, 'You do realise that what you are proposing is a serious offence and that you are expressing an intent to commit that offence.' I would then ask the gun dealer if he intended to enter into their conspiracy to commit that offence by supplying the air rifle, but that's just me an ordinary citizen. What I would not do is then go on to propose that because I had witnessed some individuals with bad intent, all Englishmen should be prevented from buying an air rifle unless they can satisfy the local constabulary that they are fit and proper citizens. You see mate, the English law has a presumption that we are innocent until we demonstrate that we are not. Now I don't want to offend Peltman who is obviously a fan, but where Blair goes wrong is that he and his vile party are quite prepared to remove such presumptions from minority groups like shooters, because it is popular - not because it is effective or anything, which we know it wouldn't be, but because it would help disguise the state of ruin that every branch of the Home Office is now in. What hs the Home Office got right in the last twenty years? Tell me ONE thing. Instead of doing something about all the pond life, why not ACT in some senseless but popular way against an unpopular group - trample all over their fundamental rights just so that they can hide the miserable failure to catch tha actual offenders and punish them properly - eh? Yes that's the slimy Labour 'spin' ticket mate. By the way - one other thing Mimic - one might like to ask why this couple ever conceived of the thought that they had to shoot at intruders with an airgun..... Could it be that they had like many reported minor crime, over and over again and been left high and dry by the 'need to prioritise crimes' so that only murder and mayhem actually get dealt with? What does that say to the average citizen? In my book, it says, 'Sort it out yourself mate, because we don't think it's important.' Meanwhile - the Chavs rule and they will until we change the government and societies tolerance of welfare sucking , criminal parasites instead of hiding under the stone of swamping ordinary free men and women with burocracy and having a permit to breathe....... Don't get me started or I might get cross....

Only if we let it happen Henry. Oppose ANY anti-freedom legislation with all your might and denounce all those who want to tie us all up. We should take a leaf out of the American book here (though I have a lot of issues with some of their ways). To be honest, and I realise this might seem an offensive analogy and I don't want to offend, but this proposal here coming from us shooters seems a bit like Jews in Nazi Europe suggesting it's a fine thing to get registered for a yellow star so they can demonstrate what good citizens they are.

Of course not. Licensing air guns would have no more effect on airgun yobbery than banning hand guns has had on stopping yardies, and gangsters of all kinds getting them and using them in our cities. Criminals NEVER take notice of our laws and will use their native cunning to get hold of anything they want. This is why Chavs, Neds and all manner of yobbos have all the heroin, crack, guns, unlicenced / uninsured cars, your property and mine, and any other illegal thing they want. Why should anyone feel they and their little rat of a brother won't get himself an airgun if he wants one? I mean - isn't it obvious that the airgun yobbery we all object to is illegal already? So what is the point of making the average sensible lad or man who wants an airgun go snivelling to the local plod for a license to do what he should be fre to do anyway? This last point is actually the most important thing for me - the relationship between the state and the individual; should be an enabling one. However, here in Britain, and all the more so since that Tw*t B. Liar got into power in 1997, the relationship is more and more of worthy, head shaking nannies telling free human beings how to think, speak and what they can have. Sorry Axe - I like you and you gave me much good advice last year when I took up air gunning in my early retirement, but honestly old chap, I am not in the mood to surrender ANY more of my autonomy to Tony Poppins' Nanny Party, so they can send me to friend Plod and ask permission to do some harmless hobby. I am am a man of 55 with a thirty five year clean driving licence and nil convictions, but I'm damned if I will tolerate any more looking over so I can walk down the street and buy a popgun. Most people are sound and law abiding. Those who aren't need to be dealt with severely and you don't do that buy tieing up the good people in useless red tape and burocracy. The joke is, when Ned Chav gets picked up for shooting at cats nothing happens to him. He gets a fine, walks out of court and pays nothing. There are billions owed in unpaid fines, meanwhile Joe Citizen, duly fills in the forms, jumps through hoops and his compliance does nothing at all to solve the problem of Ned Chav and his nasty ways. The Tony Poppins Nanny Party however, loves to show the citizenry how they are all so much safer because they have 'acted' against airgun crime........ What a load of old twaddle mate. A few whippings of Ned and his mates might be a more useful direction to head in, but that would be far too nasty, wouldn't it, so lets just lead the rest of us around the hoops like a bunch of gelded donkeys instead. Bravo - nail meet hammer. Those who think controls will help stamp out crime need to look at some of the figures for hand gun crime since all legal hand guns over .22 were banned outright. Look at history and learn from it, I say. Sound man. Post more often. Couldn't agree more. Well said.

I thought he just did Henry old chap. I agree with just about every word he said about law, order and government (apart from the bit about the url which I know nothing about). A. ****.

I shot about 180 rabbits last year with an 11.8 ft pound air rifle. It would do the job at 20 35 yards pretty well if I was dead on in my shooting. The problem is, I'm not always dead on - who is honestly? That's why I've gone for rimfire. I don't like runners - not a bit, and I know nobody does so I'm not pointing fingers at anyone else. Since I got the CZ a month ago, I've had about a hundred stone dead, instant kills. and one that I needed a follow up shot for because of wind drift. What would have been runners with the old gun, just twitch for a few seconds. The only worry I have is that I could err towards the nose and do some horrible damage without an outright kill. To avoid this, I always aim at the area betwen the eye and kneck over about 40 yards and if there's cross a breeze, I won't shoot unless it's the rabbot's body that is down wind rather than its nose.

In my experience magistrates are not at all always against the accused. I spent a lot of time observing courts this year since I was thinking of applying to be a JP. I saw laughably guilty people walking free - I mean obviously guilty, but being given the benefit of the doubt.

Fister is completely right in what he says. I have the long barrelled CZ 425 standard and I can't speak highly enough of it. This is a test target I shot in 15 mph wind yesterday at 60 and 70 yards aiming at the centre spot. I always do a check before I start on the rabbits when I go out. The holes are about an inch apart on the 60 yard target and a bit less at 70, but obviously a bit lower since I am using the really silent Eley subs with a sound moderator. I find this ammo just brilliant. Devastatingly effective at 50 - 60 yards. Some of the heads are just emptied at that range - just like a cracked open egg shell. I do shoot further - up to about 80 yards, but for me, that's chancing it because my scope is a cheap one. I only do that because the places I'm shooting are over-run, and I have to get a lot of control done. At one warren yesterday, I approached to 50 - 60 yards and shot seven rabbits stone dead with consecutive shots. They were all there at the start of the shooting and the gun is so quiet that none of them even noticed what was going on. It was just 'Ping - TWACK', reload, 'Ping -Thwack' right through the lot of them.

Shot a few rabbits with funny eyes of late. A sort of baldness around the eyes. One appeared to be blind on one side and had obvious fleas. Most of my rabbits are pretty fit but I examine every carcase I take for human food for basic healthy condition. Some have liver fluke from one place - even the young rabbits. I saw some cysts in a rabit around the liver yesterday - they were kind of in a mucous trail in the chest. They might have been tape worm cysts - I don't know. Since I went over to hollow point rimfire, it is often difficult to examine the eyes. There is often not a lot left if shot at 50 - 60 yards. They don't argue much mind - 'Ping - SLAP' and they roll down the hill. I still can't believe the CZ is much quieter than any of my airrifles.

Well Mimic, I AM an old ***, only this old *** expects to be allowed to free and not to have every aspect of his life taken over by useless burocrats who want to license and regulate everything to no effect. The point is the regulation will not work with chavs / neds because they take no notice of any law and seem able to obtain every sort of controled substance / article and use them against the rest of us without any hindrance at all, and when they do get caught they get let off or fined, and then they ignore the fine and carry on willy nilly. The answer is in my signature, but the lefty do gooders won't hear of the effective punishment of offenders and devote their attention to head shaking and control of everybody else. Any form of licence will just be a prelude to total control and banning. Until 1920 anyone could have a firearm and the assumption was you'd treat it responsibly. Firearms crime was virtually nil. Now - well you know the rest. Of course once registered, control got more and more severe and all on the basis of the acts of isolated nutters like Michael Ryan, Sartin and Hamilton. The actions of three nutters led to a ban on semi auto centrefire rifles (which I used to enjoy shooting in the 1980s) pistols (which I used to enjoy) and semi auto shotguns. I'm afraid the term 'turkeys looking forward to Christmas' sums up the pleadings of shooters for more control. History shows it pretty clearly. It's all been said - we control and regulate cars, the chavs drive anyway and ignore every rule in the book. Respects to all - we have different opinions on this and won't agree or convert one another. Best regards - EvilV

Oh yes, like nobody is shooting up Nottingham city centre with hand guns every night of the week are they? Handgun crime has NEVER been so high, so what price the handgun ban? Like I said earlier, you can bring anything you like through the Channel Ports. They don't have enough manpower to stop smuggling on a massive scale. I'm told you can buy a handgun and ammunition for three or four hundred quid in some places, so how will a licensing system stop yobs getting new air weapons, let alone any of the hundreds of thousands of airguns that are legally held now?

Well said. I agree. There is a stupid idea gaining ground that the more controled we are the better and happier we will be. I've even heard freaks demanding number plates for bicycles because some plonkers in lycra jump traffic lights. NOTHING gets my goat more than having to ask policemen and burocrats if I can do ordinary things - excercising freedoms that we've had for years. Law should start with a presumption that the citizen is free to engage in whatever hobbies and pastimes he likes, unless in doing so he damages the rights of others, and that doesn't mean that he might, or that he conceivably could do harm if he happens to be mad. That was the basis of the handguns ban, the repeating shotguns ban and a whole lot of other bans - that some nutter could flip and do harm, so the presumption must be that everyone is a nutter. Every time some loony does something horrid, the cops are demanding more and more controls and mandatory sentences. Jeez - my own Chief Constable was recently on record demanding a mandatory five year sentence for anyone found in the street with anything sharp about his person - I kid you not. Now we have sporting shooters calling for the assumption to be enacted into law that people who might buy airguns are probably not responsibel enough to have them and should be banned from buying a milbro pellet because they probably want to blind a cat with it. By the way, I got banned from airgunbbs for taking this line with some self appointed 'representatives of the better sort in the sport', who advocated that no one should be allowed to have an airgun unless they had been OKayed by people like them who ran shooting clubs after a probationary period to see that they were thoroughly the right sort (ie, just like them, a bunch of opinionated old ****).

Having read further, I can't believe how many control freaks there are in here advocating total control of airguns. What next - certificates for carving knives, hammers, knitting needles? You don't need to restrict access you need to punish offenders. The whole relationship of the state to the individual is going wrong in this country. I should be free to acquire objects, and act in liberty until I injure the rights of someone else. Then, the law should act against me. Turning the country into a big jail where you need a bit of paper to show you can walk the streets (identity card - another wish of control feaks) only makes us all like slaves. Hundreds of thousands of people enjoy their airguns in their back gardens, fields and at clubs. A few dozen do stupid and deplorable things with them. Punish the guilty NOT the innocent.

I don't want to be rude Mimic, but that's a very foolish idea. Has the control of firearms reduced gun crime at all? Has the removal of ALL pistols from certificate holders in 1997 done anything to reduce gun crime committed with pistols? We already have almost the severest control of firearms anywhere on the planet, but gun crime is running away. The reason is that it is virtually impossible to get caught bringing in an eastern european firearm in the boot of your car, or a box of automatic pistols, come to that. Since our glorious rulers leave ports virtually open to anyone in the world to walk in or ride in the back of a truck, what's the point of banning joe public from buying an 11 ft pound pop gun? None at all, I'd suggest. Of course, rather than deal with the swarms of illegal immigrants and the parlous state of our border security, the New Labour spin machine, devoted vast amounts of parliamentary time to banning fox hunting and other desperately dangerous country activities liable to bring chaos and mayhem to our nation. Who could deny that stopping a few toffs from chasing foxes and banning hare coursing was much more vital than stopping Abu Hamza from promoting treason and terrorism on our streets in full public view. I'm sure Tony will be delighted to have your support in a new initiative to make him and his useless prolls of politicians look as if they are protecting us from harm. Well done - NOT! The answer to yobbos misusing airguns is to hammer the **** out of them when they get caught. It is not to make ordinary people jump through hoops like we have to just to own a puny rimfire rifle to shoot on our own or a friend's land. Free country? Not if the likes of you get your way.

Someone on the radio just said quite rightly that he aggravated dangerous animals for a living. Stingrays don't sting unless they are under attack. People usually get stung on the foot after treading on them. The fact that he was stabbed through the heart by one tells a lot - remember how he used to jump out of boats and wrestle in the water with crocodiles...... Had it coming I'm afraid. He played russian roulette for a long time and got away with it. Mind - having said all that, if there's any justice in the world, one day I'll be stamped to death by a giant buck rabbit. Off out to murder a few more just now.

No, but a marble in a catapult is fine. Just make sure the elastic is about a 1/4 of an inch thick and keep the range under 75 yards. You need a velocity of about 44 fps.

There are that many absolute idiots about that it makes it too easy for Blair's lot to take away what little freedom there is in this area of sport. I suppose some of you heard the news on Friday about the RSPCA demanding air weapons be controled on certificate, because of an increase in the number of pets being shot with air guns. On Radio 4 some range owner foolishly came on saying that he had about three people a week asking to join so they could learn how to shoot cats. Is he just a tactless knacker or do such people hope to profit from a general prohibition of using an airgun in your own garden? Probably the latter since he sounded quite bright. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5307582.stm

Ha - I just kick them to death, but only do it in slippers because I'm nowt if not humane. Before anybody says it, I know there weren't any slippers when some of ya were lads, only clogs and oranges in stockings at Christmas, but my grandad never had any stockings, only bare feet.

Thanks for your input Dave. Very helpful. There is huge confusion certainly around these issues and a lot of mythology. I'm not sure what specific acts of parliament say about the fox as vermin, but it is CERTAINLY regarded as vermin in common parlance. The fox is vermin therefore under the normal use of the English language. Defra has fox on a list of pest species along with rats, mice and rabbits as an animal that can be killed without any form of licence - ie 'vermin' though the term that is coming into vogue is 'pest species'. On the point of non- certificated people and firearms. The 1968 firearms act specifically allows for people and young people to use firearms under the direct supervision of occupiers of land to shoot firearms. Police, according to the Countryside Alliance on this matter interpret occupiers of land to mean those with shooting rights and permissions. The idea that a person checked by police as responsible and law abiding should have fewer rights to discharge a firearm belonging to the occupier of the land in his presence than ***** Joe who has no certificate at all, is simply ludicrous and I am sure that should such a case ever arrive there, it would be very quickly laughed out of court. The bottom of this page mentions the matter of the exemptions in section 11 of the Firearms Act 1968: http://www.countryside-alliance.org/shooti...ms_Legislation/ PS - This whole area is probably a goldmine for lawyers.

How's that? Is he not entitled to fire the rifle under the direct supervision of the certificate holder? I don't know, but that is my feeling. I base this on the fact that in the 1980s when I joined a shooting club, which had many police among its members, I was allowed to hire a variety of weapons and shoot them under supervision without any certificate except my shotgun license. Many there hired all kinds of pistols and long arms that were not on their certificates and blazed away two afternoons a week without incident or question, including members who were policemen. Also, since when did the police have power to decide that you can't shoot a fox with an HMR when they granted permission for you own it to shoot vermin. Is not the common fox vermin? Of course, as with any species and any rifle caliber, no sensible man would shoot at an animal at ranges where he was unsure that he could kill it outright. While a fox should certainly not be shot with an HMR or a .22LR at long ranges, a fox can clearly be killed humanely by a shot to the head at a suitable range with either of these calibers. I would suggest that any fox shot in the head at shotgun range with a .22 will not suffer at all, and as we all know, it is perfectly possible to find oneself close enough to kill them with a 12 bore. Maybe the issue causing confusion here is that the police in some forces may not wish to grant permission to acquire a .17 for the specific purpose of shooting foxes, and hence may decline to grant it. Obviously, the centerfire .22 calibers are needed for long range fox shooting, though of course the police may decline to grant .22 centre fire for some locations.

Me too - by a long way. I can take out a bunch of three or four rabbits sitting together, one after another, and I can do it from a lot further away.

What they want to know are five things - 1. Are you a knacker? 2. Do you need to have a .22lr? 3. Is the land you propose to use it on suitable? 4. Do you understand the risks of popping off at rabbits without thinking first, 'Where will this bullet end up?' 5. Do you have adequate security arrangements to keep the gun safe. I take it that since they let you have a shotgun, points one and five are already covered, which only leaves your 'need' and safety issues to be discussed. If you have written permission to destroy vermin with the rifle you are requesting, then you can demonstrate that you have a need. If you have already been using a standard air rifle on the property that helps. I recently reapplied for my FAC after a twenty year gap and when the FLO lady asked about my shooting, it helped when I could tell her that last year I'd shot 160 rabbits on one hill farm with an air rifle, but that the population was getting away from me because I couldn't approach some parts to thirty yards without the rabbits getting news that I was there. Assuming that they find the land suitable for the rifle you are requesting, they then need to be satisfied that you won't take shots that don't have a solid backstop, or a VERY long clear view of open ground (which you have permission over) without stock or houses in the way the bullet is headed. You already know how badly .22lr can ricochet - believe it - because it does it all the time. I'm shooting over some open hill land quite a bit of the time and .22lr will hit the deck and whizz off in surprising directions. Unless your shoot is like the backside of the moon like some of mine, you need to refrain from shooting and wait for a better possibility. Yesterday I went out and shot half a dozen with the .22lr, I passed up probably ten shots that I would have taken quite safely with my air rifle. Shots down hill into the valley? Uh - oh - where will it end up if it bounces on a bit of hard earth or a stone. I shot one through the head yesterday and having passed through, the bullet struck the deck and whinned off into the distance - a distance that I had already evaluated as safe. You probably want 30 degrees either side of your target as safe and clear before you pull the trigger because bouncing bullets don't always follow the original line of travel. If you satisfy the FLO that you are well aware of the danger of richochet and safe backstop and that you really will control your enthusiasm and think about it when Mrs Tuffty Tail puts up her head, then he or she will probably think you're an OK sort to be trusted. It is worth pointing out maybe that you will obviously never shoot at anything in a tree with the aforesaid firearm, because obviously this lends itself to the bullet dropping God knows where. In the old days of my first FAC, .22lr ammo had a warning on the box - 'Dangerous at up to 1 mile'. Fired at some thing in the lower branches of a tree, it probably would be

Yes it's a 425. Fingers tripping over one another. Yes it was mounted right, nice and tight. I put the Nikko Sterling one on and sighted that in. What scopes do people recommend that aren't blisteringly expensive? I'm not about to raid my rainy day fund just to knack some rabbits. Even the Simmons worked once it was set up, its queer behaviour is just a tad annoying. I like things to work the way they're supposd to. If it says, 'One click = 1/4 inch at 100 metres', that's what I expect to happen.