I just saw this reading my local rag and came here to post about it , its much much better than many of the recent proposals both for a landmark for the area (non spitfire related) and a tribute to the spitfire/ RJ Mitchell , I also think its marvelous that they plan on adding a visitor centre so people can learn more and see its much more than a sculpture but a tribute aswell.
Problem is the proposed locations by a junction on the M27 , will there be enough incentive for people / famillies to drive there and look around the centre as opposed to it being somewhere central i.e down near the docks where it may be more accessible , on top of that the locations suggested are notoriosly bad for being traffic hotspots and for accidents too , having people eyeing the sculpture would surely add to this.
regards
John

Equal regards to yourself for your last.

Precisely my point John, and I think that of several others who are of the same heart here, these bans, to be credible, must do something to reduce the level of firearms related violence in the UK otherwise they were just the panacea (to borrow entirely the correct word from HPSauce) to the ‘righteous indignation’ all ‘right-thinking’ citizens displayed following Dunblane. Essentially you were literally criminalised, for possessing a firearm, for no more reason than a PR gimmick for the Govt. to prove it was doing ‘something’ in the wake of Dunblane.

I am sorry to me that is plain and simple victimisation of a minority and a blame shifting exercise that far too many folks bought in to. Simply put Thomas Hamilton should not have had 4 handguns and 743 rounds of ready ammunition that day as the Police had already a significant dossier on his suspect behaviour and actually has advocated the revocation of his license. Had they been more intent on their jobs and not on the ‘possible’ waste of funds trying to get his license revoked he, Hamilton, would have been aware of the scrutiny he was under and very likely dug himself a deep hole to get lost in.

To be honest I can only recall two incidents of the misuse of legal firearms in the UK in my 33 years. One in 1987 and one 9 years later in 1996. Downplaying the significance or sickness of either incident is obviously reprehensible and I wouldnt attempt to do so, however, such a very low frequency of events was not indicative of a massive subculture of Rambo-wannabe’s or psychotic cases in the UK smallbore or fullbore shooting fraternity. The use of illegal firearms in the commissioning of crime, by comparison, in this country is daily…not something with a 9 year interval. More people die through the criminal use of illegal fireams in this country than ever have from legal ones. The governments actions though target the legal gun owner….thats what make the ban invalid…the injustice that legal shooters have been stigmatised on the strength of no credible evidence and to provide convenient scapegoats for the inadequacies of the local Constabulary.

The point is that a Sports Car is not required to travel via road in the UK. A high performance car requires greater skill to be handled properly than a normal runabout. When handled recklessly a high performance car is a very dangerous piece of kit yet an 18 year old can go out a buy a Mitsubishi Evo straight after passing his driving test and kill himself and three friends on the first bend he comes at. Thats not illegal. Purchasing a Ruger .22 semiautomatic target pistol, keeping it at home in a police-verified secure gun safe, for the sole use of going down to the local range to pursue a skillful and demanding sport is not only illegal but marks you as a danger to society for even considering it. To my mind there is a sincere intellectual disconnect there!.

I am sad to say that you have little trouble with communication from my standpoint. Sad that is because the lack of response you describe to what is seemingly, an irreversable decline in the interest in our basic and fundamental freedoms. Not only ours but those of our kids. I, for one, am trying to teach the values of personal responsibility to my 11 year old, yet, I find myself more and more having to tell her that we are constrained in what we can say and do to avoid getting in trouble with the authorities and I can see her looking at me like I’m mental. Frankly I am at a loss to see how this is going to get any better.

Steve
I just wanted to say that I do feel the bans did stop more potential incidences of gun crime of a certain type and even though I believe the govt had to act due to the position of the public at large , I think they probably would have anyway given the prior event at Hungerford.
The other thing i wanted to pick up on and maybe its just me but I didnt see it as loosing a fundamental freedom , I didnt see owning a handgun as being a fundamental right I saw it as being a privalege , handgun ownership in the UK was a tiny percentage of the population and maybe as such always vulnerable to being swallowed up.

Regards
John

and

I appreciate that you’re not a rabid antigunner, and not just trying to be perverse or contrary, but I confess I’m puzzled by what you say. I don’t know what part of the country you’re in, or what your shooting club background is/was, but your experience is utterly at variance with mine. I did not speak to one member of my clubs at the time, or other shooting people I met (and have met since) who professed to understand the ban and accept it as you do. Ten years on, everyone I know in shooting remains angry, disgusted, cynical about politics and the news media, and unapologetic about their love of guns & shooting.
I suppose I’ve met one or two gun owners I found a bit weird, but nothing like the seemingly significant numbers of people with mental problems (are you a health professional? I wonder how qualified you are to judge mental states – ?) you claim to have encountered.
As soon as I heard about Dunblane I had a feeling that this would mean the end of our handguns, but even I was taken aback by the wave of hysteria, rabid lying, crude anti-shooter propaganda and political dishonesty that followed in 1996/97. I’ve always been interested in politics, but it’s highly instructive when you’re part of a minority that suddenly finds itself being persecuted by politicians of whom Dr Goebbels would have been proud. I never for one minute felt I should be glad about giving up my freedom to own a handgun, and I don’t think you should either.
hps

my parents were avid smallbore rifle shooters and prominant committe members of a rifle club , I grew up around “shooters” at the time of the bans I was a committe member of different but large rifle and pistol club in the se and I can recall many conversations along the lines of ” that person shoudnt really hld an FAC ” . I have never been a health professional but have had a keen interest in psych and mental health for 20+ years , I do however not profess to have any superior knowledge on the subject over and above a well read layman.
Maybe you are correct and I am more forgiving of the ban than many and I could perfectly accept as fact what you say about shooters anger over the ban , moreso i would expect this and know this to be true in other areas of the country .
Like you “we” in my circles knew there would be severe ramifictions for handgun shooters following Dunblane and indeed a ban would be most likely given the events of Hungerford , as you say the public backlash was unprecidented ( the petition was huge IIRC) and at times yes I felt victimised and yes no doubt the public feeling had to be apeased and that must have weighed heavy on the govts decision .
I ask you this , what else could have been done instead of the ban ? yes after the fact much was know about Hamilton and yet nothing done and maybe I am in a minority here amongt shooters but doesnt the stopping of another and in my view very real potential tragedy outweigh the small number of handgun shooters .
When we talk about the losses of our “freedoms” we think of not only our own personal rights and freedoms , we think of the freedoms we have living in a society more than that we accept there are aspects to living in a society that as individuals we dont like but can do nothing about as its a majority decision , its at times like these we take one for the team or join a new team , as you have already said we as shooters were a minority and we wernt only persecuted by the politicians ,there was a groundswell of feeling so great the majority won out,.

Regards
John

John,

Your point is both clear and well made and it echoes the similarly veined posting made by lovemigs. You are both stating that the attrocities in the recent issue and Hungerford and Dunblane were all committed with legal weapons and therefore removal of legal weapons would, and has, forestalled any further repetiton of such a horrific event.

The only problem with that is that you are cherry-picking ‘attrocities’ to suit your argument. The incident in Jan 2003, in Birmingham, when 2 teenage girls were killed and 2 others wounded was no less tragic than Dunblane yet seemingly because it was in an inner city, not some middle class redoubt, it doesnt seem to count…as if its not as shocking so nothing need be done about it?.

Gun crime with illegally held weapons is responsible for many times more deaths and injuries than Hungerford and Dunblane put together yet the actions taken by the government do nothing to tackle illegal gun ownership and do everything to place suspicion on any person who happens to find sporting interest in a firearm.

The correct analogy here is the same as any time a carload of teenagers fatally wraps a Golf GTI or Subaru Impreza around a tree or some innocent child is killed on a crossing by a speeding motorist. The cry goes out, from ‘Concerned of Cheshire’ as to why we need to have cars that go 100mph plus or have great big 4×4 Jeeps used by mums on the school run.

The reality is that there is no need for a car to do 101mph in the UK and the only British people I can conceive of needing a 4×4 on the school run live on the Outer Hebrides, the Highlands of Scotland or on the Falkland Islands. It is also the reality that in the cases above the car is not the issue….its the manner in which its being driven and ‘Concerned of Cheshire’ is barking up the wrong tree in every important respect.

There is no fundamental difference between the availability of barely-road-legal rally car clones like Mitsibushi Evo’s or 200mph Porsche super cars and firearms. Both, in the publics hands, are intended for sporting purposes and both are entirely unecessary in everyday life. I used to enjoy going for track days at Oulton Park with friends driving Skylines, DIMMA’d Peugeots and Caterhams because there, on the track, I could drive like I would never dare to on the public roads. I also liked, on the rare occaision, to do a little smallbore target shooting at the local gun club when I was invited. One is now legal and one isnt and there is absolutely no logical justification for the difference.

Hi Steve
I appreciate you writing a well balance post without the childishness.

I am honesty not cherry picking attrocities to suit , its just the ones mentioned were the main primers for the bans. I agree there have been many incidents that could have and should have warranted more respect and who knows why they dont, maybe its the scale of certain events , maybe its simply the scale of the publics outcry as happened at Dunblane and without doubt had a influence on the ban.

I agree 100% that there doesnt appear to be any effective measures against the illegal guns and yes they do account for more killing , but does that in itself make the firearms bans any more or less valid and yes I too felt the stigma from having an interest in a shooting hobby.

See I dont get the analagies between saying car owners dont need to do 100mph so why should they be allowed the potential to break the law and kill someone speeding when I cant have a gun , sorry I’m not trying to be funny or argumentative but I just never have grasped that one and again how does it make the gun bans any more or less valid ? Or is it about fundamental freedom ?

The point about the smallbore rifles is interesting and indeed some of the previous handgun shooters turned to other firearms , shotguns , black powder and interestingly enough many bought semi automatic small bore (.22) rifles , I also recall not much fuss being made about the inconcistency of being alowed some guns and not others for fear of a total blanket sport shooting ban.

I would like to say I’m trying hard not to come across as argumentative and appologise if I do , I find it hard to communicate effectively at times and I really dont know how best to describe the mood of the time from what I saw , all I can really say is there were a number who wanted to protest and fight the ban but there were more that could not put hand on heart and say they didnt see the potential for more tragedies.

Regards
John

I wonder why you persistently cite the (revised) official line, that the full-blown Acts of 1988 and 1997 – seriously important pieces of legislation, not mere adjustments – were specifically aimed at preventing certain types of very narrowly defined crime from happening again. Much bigger claims were made for these Acts at the time.
Maybe you’re a “New Labour” councillor or something… The Establishment knows perfectly well that it lacks both the ability and the will to “do something about the illegal firearms issue”: “doing something” would and should entail reversing the pitiful trend of recent years to shy away from punishing the guilty; rather, we are all to be treated as potential criminals and have our freedoms curtailed. Properly sorting out armed (and other) criminals would involve e.g. executing murderers and armed robbers, suppressing vicious urban subcultures that glorify violence, and ceasing to subsidise the criminal underclass through state benefits. But our political culture lacks the intellectual honesty and the strength of character to do this, so it pursues the soft option of knee-jerk grandstanding that dishonestly promises to “take guns off the streets” but largely just persecutes the law-abiding. Both Hungerford & Dunblane occurred not through the principle of firearms ownership by citizens, but because the police’s claim to safeguard the public through stringent licencing is a sham – they’re no good at it, and both the instances cited arose directly through massive police incompetence. But the police, of course, are far more interested these days in managing the public (they’re sheepdogs, we’re the sheep) than in their traditional function of banging-up the bad guys while leaving decent citizens to go about their business.
hps

I’m honestly not toeing any official line , I simply see a lot of people saying the measures did nothing useful and drawing illegaly held guns into the fray to validate in some way the right to own guns . I saw legal and illegal guns at the time as a separate issue and still do , I dont think illegal gun crimes would be any different now with or without the bans .
These are simply my opinions and somewhat the result of the disccussions I had with fellow shooters at the time and since. My main reasoning behind gladly giving up a hobby / sport that I enjoyed so much and supporting the ban was because of seeing on an almost daily basis ,numbers of people with clearly identifyable mental health issues that legally held firearms and honestly thinking it to be an unnaceptable risk.

All of these massacres would have been stopped in their tracks if every law-abiding citizen had the right to carry a firearm on his person. The problem in all these incidences is that NOBODY IS SHOOTING BACK!

I was very interested in shooting as a hooby when I lived in England until it became a dirty word. When I moved to the US in 1999, the first thing I did was buy a 1941 Lee-Enfield, just out of principle. Oh, and a 9mm CZ 75. It disgusts me that another country’s government trusts me to own these weapons, but my own (rather, my former) does not.

Oh, and the idea that most people handed in their guns for the cash is something the gov’t would like you to believe – most went abroad for safe keeping and a lot just disappeared – there was no requirement to prove what you had done with your weapon; all you had to say was that you had disposed of it.

Its my understanding that law abiding citizens have a right to carry a firearm in the state of Virginia where the recent massacre happened ?

I owned and regulary used my Cz 85 (amongst others) at the time of Dunblane and until the subsequent ban , so in a way I do envy you your current rights to enjoy your guns , but I would still maintain the bans were right for the UK.

I cant agree with your third point ,as far as I remember proof was required and I dont say most people handed in their guns and took the fair compensation offered because of some alledged Govt propaganda , I say it because thats what I saw , also very few firearms went abroad though I do know some that went to France.

Yawn, you can not prove that you have prevented another massacre, the fact is that it almost certainly has not. Hand guns are readily available today and anyone sufficiently determined to carry out another Dunblane would have no problem getting hold of one.

Its what might be termed self evident , The gun controls put in place mean there will never be another massacre by a “nut” legally using the banned types of firearm , it could be no other way unless the ban was lifted , ergo the gun control measures were effective.It is now a matter for the justice system to do something about the illegal firearms issue.