On Sun, Mar 06, 2005 at 05:15:35AM -0800, Mickey Juif wrote:

> This question is just to satisfy my curiosity: Legally, what is your
> access to these antique weapons (either authentic or working replicas)
> in the U.K.? Are you allowed to go out and shoot them anywhere? I was
> just wondering because I heard that gun laws were more restrictive in
> the U.K.

As at the time of writing, one is still allowed to use the word
"gun". I'm expecting that to be made illegal fairly soon as well.

Antique muzzle loaders are still allowed (to keep the Sealed Knot
happy, basically) on the grounds that it's quite hard to go on a gun
rampage with them.


Pretty much everything else down to and including pepper spray are
illegal. You can be arrested and charged for "possession of an
offensive weapon" for having anything which "could be used as a
weapon", which on a bad day means things like your tyre spanner.


(rant follows)


This is all on the logic that we have an all pervasive CCTV coverage
and a nice speedy 999 service.

From personal experience, the response time to a 999 call saying "I'm
being attacked by some guy who's gone berserk" was a less than
brilliant 45 minutes.

Given the central police station was all of a mile away - had I known
their response times I'd have just walked there - I have to say
Coventry City police are definitely good contenders to knock the sloth
off the top spot for "slowest moving land animal". Non-emergency calls
are presumably passed on down the generations of the "service" until
the caller and all their descendents have either died or emigrated to
found colonies orbiting distant stars.

The week before this happened, a nurse was stabbed to death in the
other car park at that hospital. The CCTV cameras covering that car
park weren't working and the killer has never been caught. In the
intervening week, nothing had been done and it transpired the CCTV on
this car park wasn't working either. Given the way hospital security
shrugged and said "ah well", I'm guessing the CCTV still doesn't work.

When the police arrived (in a car with faulty lights) they ran a PNC
check on me to see if I was wanted and then had a look at my car to
see if they could do me for any faults on it and then when they
couldn't find any they went on their ineffectual way.



I'm not a fan of our gun laws and I'm certainly not a fan of this idea
that there's no need to arm the citizens because we have such
effective law enforcement. It certainly doesn't make me feel safe.

While I don't think I'd have needed to shoot the guy, I think the
option of being able to defend myself would have been nice. As it was,
he merely punched my car, threatened to punch me and then didn't chase
me when I left.

Perhaps when the weapons ban includes people like him having his fists
cut off, I might agree with it. Currently, I'm disarmed and he's not.