The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

If the Warwickshire PCC gets his way...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-co ... e-27031957

How do we make this esteemed functionary understand that the shooter doesn't benefit from the licence, the general public do, thus they ought to bear the costs...

Madness, but just the sort of thing Milimuppet would love.

Sensible policies for a smoother application process

Seriously though, someone needs to let the PCC know that sportsmen/women are tax payers as well and probably don't use a quarter of what they pay their taxes for. Badger, do hope that you and the other 35,000 FAC and SGC holders will be letting the PCC know your feelings on this. Might be interesting to start a petition and see how many signatures that gets now that it affects some of those in the "not interested in shooting pistol" crowd.

Blu

"There are about 35,000 gun certificate holders across Warwickshire and West Mercia, Mr Ball said."

How many of them does Mr Ball think will vote for him in the next PCC election?

StanDeasy wrote:"There are about 35,000 gun certificate holders across Warwickshire and West Mercia, Mr Ball said."

How many of them does Mr Ball think will vote for him in the next PCC election?

He probably doesn't give a toss mate. Just getting his 15 minutes of fame in the media, any other time he's just another nobody.

Blu

We may ask the BASC and NRA to look into this - we're a member of both. Perhaps the PCC just needs appraising of the facts - after all, he may innocently be spouting some rubbish fed to him...

Now we're not a smart investigative journalist, but a little trawling revealed this...

http://www.warwickshire-pcc.gov.uk/news ... ?nid=15407

Some different numbers for starters, and the aim of providing an efficient service doesn't tally with the letter we received from the Firearms Licensing Unit last week apologising for the delay in processing our FAC renewal which they ascribe to being overloaded...

BASC are already aware of this, Simon Clarke posted this on the Pigeon Watch forum two days ago,

"The Police and Crime Commissioner in Warwickshire has no power to change fees. He seems to be talking from an out-of-date briefing. The police suggested a rise of something like this magnitude over a year ago.

That was stopped before it went through and we now have a working group examining the issue, working through the home office and bringing in BASC and others plus the Association of Chief Police Officers.

The bottom line is that fees have not gone up since 2001 and some sort of increase is due, if only to account for inflation.

The various arguments that the police need £200 to cover costs and taxpayers are "subsidising" the process have been rejected.

BASC has insisted that any increase should be a fair price for a fair service - with the police making improvements in service delivery and efficiency. We have also insisted that the police should be clear and transparent about their real costs.

BBC Midlands is covering the story today based only on the PCC's comments. Mike Eveleigh from the BASC firearms team was on BBC Coventry and Warwickshire this morning. You can listen to it here, the item starts at 01:06:54 from the start of the programme.

Victoria from the Shotgun and Chelsea Bun Club (women's shooting and networking club, with cake) was live on BBC Midlands TV at lunchtime and should be on Midlands today (West Mids) tonight if the story still runs."

He should be taken to task on camera, get him to categorically state that the wider public are not the beneficiaries of firearms licensing and then get the debate going on what the actual benefits of FL are*

It might be a good way to actually get some kind of cost/benefit analysis done on the whole process, which has never been done, its always just been accepted that our "strict" firearms licensing system is for the greater good. The greater good.....

*supposed to be

Tell you what, I'll pay 200 quid for an FAC when they modify the legislation so that everything is akin to the present Section 2 criteria and I'm not having to eff about with variations, limits, conditions and the like.

(Such has having an FEO tell me that my .44 BP revolver is more dangerous than a .223 rifle because the "numbers are bigger"!! The firearms manager reckoned the FEO had never heard so many different swear words in the same sentence, with none being repeated! Lol!)