Offensive and Dangerous Weapons Consultation – Affects .50 and MARS Rifles

We have written about this one previously but the consultation is now up. The parts relating to legal gun owners are just sensationalistic scaremongering nonsense. It is vital that shooters respond to this and correct some of the real misunderstandings that seem to be present here and highlight that this isn’t going to affect terrorists or criminals who have made it quite clear that they can obtain firearms illegally quite easily.

Shooters beware the same flawed reasoning behind these proposals could easily be applied to anyone of us. Remember today it’s .50 cal and MARS type rifles but the language used to describe them and the logic behind banning them could easily be applied to any of us so please show #unity

Find the consultation documents here.

The community on our Facebook page have been asking for a template letter to send to MPs regarding the latest attack on shooting sports. We are not going to provide a template as they have software to filter those out and to be honest it comes across as lazy… This is our sport, so let’s show some passion and energy.

However, we are going to provide some key points that should be included. We suggest you also make it personal and add any other information you feel relevant.

• Legally owned MARS type rifles and .50 calibre rifles have, to our knowledge, never been used in any crimes, nor have they been stolen from legal owners and then used in a crime.
• Legal gun owners are consistently shown to be amongst the most law-abiding people in society and are held to higher behavioural standards than an average member of the public. Yet we are still often the victim of badly thought out or discriminatory regulations and laws.
• Such legislation is nothing more than a PR exercise to fool the public into thinking they are being made safer, yet it only restricts people that are no threat to public safety anyway and have gone through the checks to prove it.
• Restrictions on knife sales will affect many independent small businesses and no evidence links such sales or items with crime.
• It is disingenuous to throw such non-issues into a consultation about acid sales as attacks featuring acid have been in the news recently and may make the public fear there is also an issue with the aforementioned firearms and knife sales.
• Handgun crime doubled after the ban, gun crime is up in London by 42% and of course, the IRA obtained .50 calibre rifles illegally. Legal gun owners are not the cause of this.
• Also, try to tailor it to your MPs party ideals and point out that as a shooter you feel you are discriminated in a way that would not be accepted towards other minority groups and are no longer prepared to accept it and will vote accordingly.
• Please research your constituency if the results were close point out to your MP that local certificate holders may be the difference between victory and defeat.

Please prepare your responses and send them in as soon as possible. Here’s how you can respond:

• Online form, click here.
• Email Offensive.Weapons.Consultation@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
• Write to them: Tackling Crime Unit, 5th floor, Fry Building, Home Office, 2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF
• Don’t forget to also contact your local MP, use this website to find their details.

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