Begging for your rights

This is what happens after you give up your right to keep and bear arms. You are reduced to begging to have even a small fraction of them restored:

Dear Home Secretary,

As I am sure your officials will tell you, there was absolutely no evidence to suggest that by banning legally-licensed cartridge pistols and closing legally-operating shooting clubs, we would all sleep safer in our beds. Yet today there are more hand guns on our streets than 10 years ago.

When London won the bid for the 2012 Olympics, the British Olympic Association and the governing bodies of shooting put forward a case to your department for legislative exemptions which would allow our pistol shooters and a large squad of sporting hopefuls to be granted dispensation under Section Five of the Act so that they could retain their sporting pistols at home without ammunition in order to do their daily ‘dry training’. Registered regional shooting clubs would also be designated as a place for weapons to be used.

It looked like a way forward could be agreed. The sports minister, Richard Caborn, assured the BOA that he had written to the Home Office giving his support for exemptions. An Early Day Motion in the Commons attracted significant support from all sides of the house and the public have, I believe, realised that target pistol shooters were victims of rough justice in the 1997 legislation. An e-petition on the No 10 website for the restoration of target pistol shooting under suitable controls is gaining signatures every day.

However, somewhere in your department the paper trail has stopped and the silence is deafening. Time is running out.

Target shooters are reliable, trustworthy and an asset to their communities – the kind of people your department want to support. Don’t you feel ashamed that most democracies have more faith in their citizens to participate in one of the oldest Olympic sports than we do?

Over to you Home Secretary – we need a decision urgently.

Yours sincerely, Kate Hoey
Labour MP for Vauxhall

Boomershoot 2007 is sold out with a waiting list of eight teams or I would again offer free entry to peasants from the U.K. They need get a glimpse of freedom even if it is just for a weekend.

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2 thoughts on “Begging for your rights

  1. My understanding (http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-explo_pub/2005/p53004/gen_info.pdf) is that the Feds only have additional restrictions on foreign nationals in regards to sales. I could be wrong on this however. If you have additional information on the topic I am very interested in findout out about it.

    Some states (Washington for example) have additional restrictions. Idaho has no such restrictions.

    Additional evidence is that Canadian hunters visit the states with their firearms. Lots of paperwork to be sure, but they are allowed in with their guns.

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