Now that the Scottish Government have declared their intentions there are already petitions appearing calling for an introduction of the licencing of all airguns in England (high powered airguns are already licensed). We are strongly opposed to this, and would like to build upon an existing e-petition already in circulation to prevent such a change to existing legislation.
As with the Scottish campaign, the introduction of licencing or further restrictions as they apply to everyone will have a disproportionate effect on the law abiding, safe and responsible shooters and sportsmen and women. Such a licencing scheme will offer very little additional protection to the public who are already served by a myriad of laws on the sale, possession and use of airguns. The 2007 VCR act for example raised the age at which an airgun could be purchased from 17 to 18 and forced those selling airguns to become registered firearms dealers who are now not allowed to sell via mail order. From February 2011, the Crime and Security Act makes it an offence for a person in possession of an air gun to fail to take “reasonable precautions” to prevent someone under the age of 18 from gaining unauthorized access to it. Amongst additional well established law pertaining to the safe use of airguns it is also an offence to firing a pellet from the boundary of land which you have permission to shoot on. Those wishing to do harm will ignore such legislation, as they do so already, resulting in only the safe and responsible participants to face the burden, which we feel is unacceptable.
A Facebook Page for this campaign as now been setup and we encourage as many of you as possible to Like the page, upload content and to start and participate in discussions.
