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Checked with my FEO today who frankly was too busy being non-committal to be of any use whatsoever but my local RFD was convinced I can send direct to the RFD in Scotland.

Thanks Oly

Every time I've sold one face to face there's never been a reason for any amendment to my cert.

A chap in Scotland is wanting to by a shottie I own. Can I mail it direct to his local RFD for them to handle the face to face part or does it have to go via my local RFD to his local RFD? If I can mail direct are there any stipulations on the courier? Thanks

Technically you are correct in that secondhand private sales are affected in that the age is raised to 18 but in reality they are going to continue as before. It's not 17 year olds causing problems though and do you believe the chap selling his old Meteor at a car boot will know about this law let alone care about it? It's not the gun that's the problem - it's the thug and there's already plenty of laws in that area. It's the lack of belief they'll be caught and then the lack of belief they'll get a harsh punishment that is the problem.

With secondhand private sales totally unaffected that same kid can walk round a car boot sale with his £30 and buy one. The only people this bill will affect are the already law abiding. It will have zero effect on current airgun misuse. What is needed is more enforcement not more laws. All that this VCR bill has done is to kill off internet sales from UK businesses. This will mean huge price rises for airgunners as RFDs no longer need to compete with the mail order guys. Whilst ever the gun itself is the target of legislation the laws will simply not work. The misuser must become the target of the law as they are in just about every other area. Take cars - are cars harder to buy because some drunk drives one into a bus queue? No - the misuser is dealt with. Until such an approach is used with guns legislation will continue to fail. It's depressing that so many shooters miss that point.

Here's a review I did several years ago:- Using a Laser with an Airgun Much has been written about lasers, a lot of it by folk who've not persevered enough with the system to fully understand it. I hope that this review will clarify some of the murky areas. Laser type You need a laser that has a good bright dot. To achieve brightness that means a tight dot at distance. The poorer lasers have a beam that diverges at distance and thus the available light is diffused over a larger area. As ALL lasers are limited by international agreements in terms of the power output you are not looking for a more powerful unit but a better-made unit. As well as of a good bright small dot you want a unit that is easy to mount (more of which later) and easy to aim in the required direction. Ignoring the cheap Asian units (these are simply awful with dot sizes of 2 inches or so at 10 yards) there are three main players in the airgun laser department:- Crosman Claim to be the world’s most powerful etc etc... As I said they are all the same power. The Crosman unit is one of the worst for dot size so leave them alone. Beamshot Make a range of different models and prices. They are similar looking to the Crosman but much better in terms of dot size. As a rule, the more you pay the better they are. Like the Crosman unit they have a simply awful zeroing system so unless you enjoy hours of frustration attempting to zero the thing you'd do well to leave these too. If money is tight then the basic Beamshot will do but be prepared for the zeroing problems and bright sunlight will prevent you seeing the dot! Corsak By far the best of the bunch for both dot size / brightness and a zeroing system that makes the other two obsolete. There are two types of zeroing systems on offer from Corsak and both are easy to use when compared with the competition. This unit has a dovetail for mounting. These are available at £68 from Soviet Bazaar and are far and away the best bet unless you've got £500 for a green laser! (I'll ignore the mega expensive units for this review.) Where to mount it Now the bad news. There are no commercially available mounts that I consider to be worth a monkeys! Why? Well to be of most use to an airgunner the laser should ideally be mounted at least 4 inches above the scope. There are differences of opinion here as to what's the best height but the experts’ opinions all fall somewhere between 4 and 7 inches. See my home brewed mount as to how to construct one. A pair of high mounts and some M10 threaded bar are all you need. Why so high? If you get one of the pellet trajectory programs such as Ian Pellant’s Airgun 7.5 or Chairgun (they are free to download so you have no excuse) you will see that by putting the laser up high and with careful choosing of the zero for the laser (not necessarily the zero of the scope) you can create an additional tangent to the pellet’s flight-path. In other words as your pellet falls away from your crosshairs beyond your chosen zero the laser can pick up the flight-path for another 20 yards or so (dependant upon many factors) giving you an aim-point accurate to half an inch or less if required out beyond 55 yards in .177 or approx 45 yards in .22 at 12 ft/lbs. It is useful to have a multi-aim-point reticle so you can dab the laser on the target to see where the dot intersects the reticle, then use that part of the reticle to aim at the target. A zoom scope is useful too. At some point the pellet is going to arc away from the laser beam (around 58 yards for my set-up) so I set the scope magnification so that the laser coincides with a certain point on the reticle at 55 yds - this then tells me when I am out of range as the laser will appear below this mark to indicate this. If you want to mount your laser elsewhere (under the barrel for instance) you need to create the maximum distance from the scope centreline to the laser centreline as with a laser below the scope you are going to use the laser as a rangefinder rather than an aim-point. This is because with a laser lower than the scope the dot is going to appear above the crosshairs at distances above the zero. You should zero the laser at the scopes zero and then spend time on the range working out what the different divergences of crosshair-to-laser mean in terms of pellet drop to work out your holdovers. As you can see this system is of less use but does have the advantage that the combo will still fit in your gun bag. A larger version may be needed for the high laser. Anywhere offset to the side of the vertical from the crosshairs is a compromise and should really be avoided if at all possible. When you have got your laser set up as you want it you'll find that it's every bit as accurate as a big mag. FT scope for telling you the distance to your target but is MUCH faster and cheaper than that system. I can range-find and aim at any target within 8-58 yards in the time it takes just to aim. This is invaluable out in the field whilst hunting rabbits. A rabbit will happily sit there and have a laser pointed at it without running whereas birds will usually fly off at the first sight of the dot so you have to range-find quickly behind them. I can honestly say that the high laser has NEVER been a problem in the field for me in terms of catching the unit. I think this covers most aspects of laser use for those likely to be interested enough to have got this far. There are other ways such as high scope / low laser for a bullpup or laser on top of barrel for ratting but what's written will cover the majority of users. So to summarise, get a Corsak, download a trajectory program and spend a few minutes playing around with different heights of laser and different zero ranges then make yourself a mount and hit what you aim at more often. And here's a more recent addition to it:- I've recently been playing with a green laser off ebay with turrets for adjusters. The turrets are fairly coarse like the corsak units and the dot is a fair bit bigger than the corsak's too but the dot is substantially brighter and easily visible in any daylight conditions. Alignment is a doddle and this time I've slung it underneath the silencer. The silencer is 30mm and the laser is 1 inch so it's fairly simple to bolt and bond two scope mounts to make a laser mount for this. Being below the scope it's use is as a rangefinder only rather than an aimpoint so dot size is not as critical as seeing the centre of the dot versus the reticle is relatively easy. It only cost £35 posted so is much cheaper than the corsak one. You'll see that lasers of >5mw are now freely available on ebay whereas they were hard to get when I did the original article.

You can convert by swapping the breech block and buying a mag. By the time you have costed such parts it'll be cheaper to sell the S400 and buy a S410

Every shot from my unregged S200 will be identical too. I don't fill above optimum and don't run it empty. What's the difference? Also most regs simply can not match a knock open valve for shot to shot consistency. I've had S400s that would run an entire sweet spot charge at a total variation of less than 9fps. I have NEVER seen any regged gun match that.

Dave Brayford at SCR has regged these though Ben is not entirely wrong in that the room the reg takes up means that the shot count is hardly an improvement. I have a longer tube on my S200 (unregged) and that does 70 shots (in .177) on JSBs or 60 on Mozzies. ANY unregged gun should have a full charge run over a chrono to find the sweet spot. Once you know the optimum fill pressure for your gun a reg is a waste of money and just something else to go wrong.

An 11.5 ft/lb .22 will have enough energy for a clean kill well beyond any range you can shoot accurately at so the question is moot. Only by using flatheads or hollowpoints will the pellet have lost enough energy to worry over the longer distances. Any good roundhead such as Fields / accupells or FTT will retain sufficient energy well over 55 yds. Shooting over a known and fixed distance is frankly a doddle and without wishing to deflate your ego it bears no resemblance to hunting in the field where you have to rely on judgement to get the range correct. A .22 has a very loopy trajectory and this combined with shooter skill is the limiting factor in max range shooting. A typical .22 shooter needs to be limiting themselves to 35 yds as getting the range correct above that is just too critical for all but the best people to consider. When .22 shooters come off many 45 yd max HFT courses they have often hit less than 50% of the kills and they are 40mm ones above 35 yds. No quarry has a 40mm killzone.

Not the forerunner but the same gun. AA buy them off CZ. CZ themselves sell the same gun under their own brand in other markets.

You are right Mark. Too much do we worry over what others think or believe. By all means educate, encourage, and where necessary correct others but at the end of the day shoot your gun regardless of others oppinions. Pining to those who dissaprove is pointless. It isn't your actions they dissaprove of but your gun itself. They are pro nothing and anti gun so can not be turned from the dark side. So long as your actions are legal and safe then stuff the opinions of others up their collective backsides. I remember well one anti upset at me bagging a dozen pigeons with both barrels of the twelve bore as they were on the ground and feeding on the newly planted crops. I was polite but politely told him to eff off and mind his own business. I could have wasted hours arguing with him but I wouldn't have changed his opinion one iota so why bother. He left as upset as he arrived which would have been exactly the same as if I'd wasted my day pointing out the benefits my activities bring to him in cheaper food with less vermin infection.

Appeasement of the antis is the policy we have trod for years and has led us to the point where we are today. Put simply you can not EVER appease the antis. They are not anti unlicensed guns they are anti ALL guns and will not stop until their goal is met. It dismays me to hear shooters talk of appeasement in the hope it will either cut down crime (it won't) or stop calls for more restrictions (it won't). Each tightening of gun law has led to an increase in gun crime. All the new laws do is affect the law abiding. Those who will misuse guns now will do so in light of further laws too. What is missing is the fear of being caught and the fear of harsh punishment in the unlikely event of being collared. Airgun crime is actually decreasing (home office figures). Also do not forget that we have an excellent choice of British made airguns precisely because they are not licenced. Involve a FAC in every sale and it's doubtful whether 1 manufacturer would survive the loss of sales. Simply put it would be the death knell for all manufacturers.

I've seen 6ft/lb at the quarry end (not the muzzle) fail to despatch a large rabbit. That was with a perfect shot BUT with the rabbit front on. 6ft/lb simply couldn't make it through the skull even in .177. Side on it'd have probably done the job but front on it didn't. I know as I took the shot and also the second one that killed it. The first shot was embedded in the skull on a direct path to the brain but didn't reach. Never took another front on shot after that.