UK Competitive Shooters Can't Train at Home
CNSNews.com ^ | April 24, 2006 | Kevin McCandless
London (CNSNews.com) - Lawmakers here want to change gun-control laws - some of the strictest in Europe - that force Britain's competitive shooters, including those hoping to compete in the 2008 Olympics, to train abroad.
Nearly all private ownership of handguns is outlawed, and shooters say they must travel to other countries when they want to practice, a time-consuming and expensive exercise.
Labor Party lawmaker Kate Hoey, who has been campaigning for a relaxation of the law, said she expected to hear within weeks whether the government would consider lifting the ban for sport shooters.
Britain traditionally has had stringent gun-control laws, but the handgun prohibition was put in place after a deranged former scout leader shot 16 school children and their teacher to death in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996.
Hoey said the ban was understandable given the circumstances but argued that it had done little since then to curb the trade in black market firearms.
"The pistol ban was one of those knee-jerk things," she said. "I think people realize now that the pistol ban hasn't done anything to reduce gun crime."
John Leighton-Dyson, a coach with the national shooting team, said around 100 athletes were affected by the ban, in addition to the next generation of up-and-coming competitors.
Each year, shooters spend thousands of dollars to travel to Zurich, where their cartridge-shooting pistols are stored and where they may legally train.
For the rest of the year, team members train using air guns, which he said was having a detrimental effect on their skills.
"It's nowhere near sufficient," he said. "We're not last in the competitions but we're not first either."
When the English city of Manchester hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2002, the government temporarily relaxed the ban. Even so, competing shooters were constantly watched by armed police marksmen, even during practice.
Leighton-Dyson said he expected the government to eventually grant exemptions to a select group of athletes, but he added that the days of legal pistol-shooting competitions in Britain appear to be gone forever.
The current push to relax the ban comes as the government is preparing to further tighten controls, by banning possession of imitation guns.
Although exceptions would be made for museums and for historical re-enactors, the buying and selling of realistic replica guns would be severely curtailed.
In the 12 months up to April 2005, government figures show that 86 gun-related murders were recorded in Britain.
In addition, according to Home Office statistics, there were 10,979 firearm offenses in England and Wales in 2004-2005, a six percent increase over the previous year.
Anecdotal evidence from police reports shows that many of the guns involved in crimes were either imitation firearms, modified starter pistols, or BB guns.
Peter Squires, a criminologist with the Gun Control Network, said replica guns should be banned because they forced police to waste time responding to crimes committed with them.
Squires also said complaints from competitive shooters about guns laws were overblown since most Olympic events, such as those using air pistols and small bore rifles, were still legal in Britain.
"A lot of top-line athletes train abroad," he said. "Our bobsled team doesn't practice in Britain either." |
