GHE

I think you may be missing the point. Shotgun ownership is a right, for people who meet the requirements - permanent address, good character etc. The police have to come up with a good reason to refuse or revoke that right. Your proposals would help to remove that right, and that is the main reason why I won't support your petition. Yes, people do need training, especially in safety. Fellow shooters provide that at clubs, we don't need extra training from an official body of any kind. Training won't do anything to prevent SGC & FAC holders from going on killing sprees. It's possible that nothing can ever stop that, but it's a popular belief that Ryan, Hamilton & Bird were all people that shouldn't have been granted certificates in the first place and certainly shouldn't have been allowed to keep them. The fact that they were allowed to have shotguns and firearms is the fault of the police in each case, it has nothing to do with training.

Greystone Wood Otley this Saturday (alternate Saturdays) from 12 noon - Moor Lane, Asquith, Otley. And on the alternate Saturdays, same time, There's Nobby's shoot at Moreton, Nr. Keighley - PM me for directions, it's a bit tucked away.. Both are excellent, friendly shoots with plenty of time to do 2 rounds if you want to.

Well, that's up to the mods, personally I'm not bothered. If the police read it they may learn something. It's high time that they did what they are paid to do, re-interview Bill and pass the file to the CPS. and it's high time that the CPS make a decision so that we all know where we stand. I have absolutely no problem with individual police officers, but their organisation is chaotic and hopelessly inefficient, they really ought to get their act together. If the scum who attacked Louisa & Bill read it, so what? I'm sure that they already know where to find us if they want to.

Bill nearly always has a shotgun over his shoulder for pest control, or in the tractor cab, when he is on his land. I'm just glad that they went there when they did, if they had gone half an hour later it would have been dark and the gun would have been locked up in the cabinet. As for being forced to use the gun in self defence, it would have been better if he had been in the loader tractor with the big spike on the front, but he wasn't and had to use the tool that he did have

I appreciate that you can't be sure that I'm who I say I am. My name is Garry Edwards, I post on other shooting forums as GHE and you may have seen me on both ITV Calendar and BBC look North yesterday, being interviewed about this. I'm fairly well known as an advertising & commercial photographer and post under my own name on this forum. If anyone sends me a private message I will happily provide them with my address and phone number. I'm sure that some members of this forum will know me personally and shoot with me, and will also know Bill.

Thanks, we are both members and so far have only spoken to them about the actual incident - but although we assume that the police will want to rescind his certificates we don't know that yet, so there isn't really any point in taking that up with BASC yet.

Thanks for your messages of support. Whatever happens, I expect Bill to have problems with his S1 and S2 certificates, but we will fight them every inch of the way if we have to. Right now, we are trying to get the various shotguns, rifles and ammo that were stored at home returned, as frankly we don't trust the police to keep them safe and to look after them properly. When they removed them, they didn't bother to put them into slips, they just put them into the back of one of their cars, complete with bolts and ammo, and then left the car unattended outside the house for hours. Even getting them returned is a fiasco - there is no legal problem with the shotguns as I have plenty of storage at my W. Yorkshire home, and I also have plenty of storage capacity for the rifles, the N. Yorkshire police have told me that they are happy for me to have the rifles too, but my own licensing authority of W. Yorks won't let me have the rifles because they don't consider even temporary storage to be 'good reason' - so I have had to apply for a variation, the good reason being that as they won't let Bill have his rifles for fox and vermin control, I will have to do it for him.

As the father of the young man suspected of attempted murder, it might be helpful if I comment on the various points raised on this forum, as well as in the Daily Fail article. It wasn’t actually scrap cable, it was far worse than that, it was cable cut from various machines, the cable was worth thousands in scrap, the damage to the machinery was far worse. And to add insult to injury, not only did the thieves damage and steal, they also fly tipped a load of building waste onto our land to make room for our property. Not that that makes any difference, the amount of damage and financial loss wasn’t known at the time. He fired because he absolutely had to. When there is a sudden and urgent need for self defence we need to use whatever tools we have to hand. In this case, he happened to have a shotgun over his shoulder. His mum knows nothing about guns, he ignored her suggestion that he shoot out the tyres for reasons that every reader of this forum should understand. No.5 shot would have just bounced off them, he would have had to shoot all 4, as there was no way of knowing whether it was a front or rear wheel drive transit, which was impossible, it wouldn’t have done any good until the van had been driven for whatever distance it took for the tyres to come off the rims, and there wasn’t time anyway. Nobody knows why his mum was arrested, I’m guessing that the police chose to interpret ‘shoot the tyres’ as an incitement to murder, who knows? He didn’t have a heavy load, he used what he had in his pocket and as above, it wouldn’t have saved his mother until the engine had been running long enough to overheat and seize up – she would have been dead long before then. What does that have to do with anything? As it happens, that photo was of him shooting in a competition, which he won. 3 weeks after the incident, the police still haven’t even interviewed him properly and neither the police nor the CPS has given any indication of whether or not they intend to charge him with anything. That’s probably because he was shooting my gun in the photo, he is a right hander, I’m a leftie. But he still won the competition, not that that has anything to do with anything. According to the DM article, I am divorced from his mother – wrong, we are not divorced. There were 2 thieves in the van – wrong, there was only one. The other one had run away Bill fired at the driver side of the van – wrong. He fired at the passenger side They said that he said he acted in desperation – wrong. He has said absolutely nothing to the press. They said that his mother was dialing 999 – wrong. She had probably been speaking to the police for around 5 minutes when she was attacked. They said that Bill and his mum were arrested by armed police who arrived 45 minutes later – wrong. The armed police arrived about 3 ¼ hours later, Bill and Louisa gave chase in Bill’s car, gave a running commentary to the police and as a direct result of this, after 5 miles or so the police forced the van to stop and arrested the driver. They also arrested Bill and Lousia, and as a token of their appreciation for helping them to catch the criminal, they also seized Bill’s car and charged him £150 to get it back when they had finished with it. They also failed to replace door panels etc that they had removed, tipped the contents of his glove box into the front footwell, turned his toolboxes upside down and so on. What actually happened is that the first thief ran away, he was arrested later. The second thief got into his van, Louisa and Bill thought he was leaving, but he changed direction and drove straight at both of them. Bill jumped clear, his mother was too slow and she went down. Bill ran over to her, the van reversed and then drove straight at her again, as fast as he could. At that point, Bill un-slung his shotgun, loaded and fired at the windscreen. He fired several shots, the van then reversed again and drove at her again, and Bill fired again. The van driver then stopped the attack so Bill stopped shooting. If Bill had wanted to shoot him then he could easily have done so, but what he actually did was to shoot only at the van, to slow down or stop the attack on his mother. The police record all emergency calls so have the whole thing on record.