Gun Culture

Friday, August 10, 2007

Broken Covenant

The Royal British Legion believes that the service our wounded servicemen receive is inadequate. 
I agree.
Do you?  Click the image to sign up.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Another police shooting accident

This one didn’t seem to get much play in the press, certainly I only noticed it in the Daily Mirror I read whilst waiting for my chinese on Friday night.

A policeman is recovering in hospital after being shot by a colleague at point-blank range in a training accident.
The officer, who has not been named, was saved by his body armour but suffered severe bruising.
The incident occurred at the Sussex Police range at Gatwick.
A source said: “The armour saved this officer’s life but he was left in a lot of pain from the impact.”

Lucky bugger.  Presumably this was low profile because he wasn’t badly injured, but it could easily have been a fatality.  There’s no getting away from the fact that gun clubs up and down the land have a far higher safety record than these ‘professionals’.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Firearms Amendment 1997 “A waste of space”

Following the shocking shooting of that young lad in Liverpool, Albert Kirby, Former Detective Superintendent, Merseyside Police has the following to say.

“Fire arms can be obtained very cheaply and after they have been used criminals can dispose of them because they are so cheap - a handgun can be bought for about £25 a time.

Fire arms are so readily available that you can go out on the street, make the necessary enquiries and come up with them. It is that easy.

The legislation that came in after the Dunblane shooting in 1996 has been utterly and totally ineffective. It was a waste of space.

With the borders disappearing in Europe there are no checks on firearms coming in from abroad. They come from Eastern Bloc countries, recommissioned firearms, and a steady flow coming out of the world’s conflict zones.

Merseyside Police have done a tremendous amount of work to recover firearms. But bearing in mind the amount of firearms that are available it is very difficult.”

Hat tip to Mirage for the info which appears in The Daily Telegraph.  Given the last tip Mirage gave me got me a uniformed visit, I hope this one doesn’t provoke the same response!

Albert Kirby clearly knows what we shooters have been saying for a very long time - legitimate sporting shooters are not the problem.  If there was the slightest ounce of common sense the Government would stop persecuting respectable shooters with ridiculous restrictions, stop treating us as the whipping boys everytime a firearm issue pops up and put hanguns and semi-auto rifle back on Section 1.  Having done that they could address the real problem which is the porous borders and wholesale lawlessness.
I shan’t hold my breath.

Mind Your Own Fucking Business EU tossers

Dontcha just love Texas?
Whilst celebrating 400 scumbags iced in the State of Texas, the all knowing EU expressed “great regret” at the killing.
Robert Black, spokesman for Governor Rick Perry had this to say about the EU sticking it’s fucking nose in:

“Two hundred and thirty years ago, our forefathers fought a war to throw off the yoke of a European monarch and gain the freedom of self-determination.” ...
“While we respect our friends in Europe… Texans are doing just fine governing Texas.”

i.e. “Mind your own fucking business”
Ooo-rah!

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

But of course…

I believe that I now know where the prompt for my visit by two uniforms came from.
I received an email today from the webmaster of the British Association for Women in Policing informing me that a link I had to their site was now broken.  Which was nice and I’ve now fixed the link and pointed it to a Wiki entry.
Lightbulb!  Given that the officers biggest beef with me seemed to be the largely tongue in cheek post regarding a spokesman for BAWP commenting on large handgun’s unsuitability for women firearms officers this seems to square the circle rather.

Defenestration Home Owner - No Charges

As noted by Kevin of The Smallest Minority, the householder who was arrested after a burglar took a fatal dive from his window is to face no charges.  As also noted by Kevin, the commentary on this from the press is scant.
Why was this man ever arrested?  Was he considered a flight risk?  What ever happened to “helping the police with their enquiries”?
Det Insp Will Chatterton said, before the ‘no charges’ decision

“He has not only been disturbed in his flat by a burglar, which must have been an horrific event, but he has also had to experience being arrested and held in custody which must have added to his traumas.”

Well why did you arrest him in the first place?  This is surely a presumption of guilt.  I’m sure that it is common practice to arrest everyone in sight in these occasions but that practice is wrong.  A decision should surely be made on a case by case basis.  In this case inviting the householder down to the station to make a statement and asking him to stay would surely have been more sensible, instead he was likely cuffed and put in the back of the van before having his DNA taken and stored on the sinister database.  Perhaps I have answered my own question right there.  If he hadn’t been arrested it wouldn’t have been possible to put another citizen on the list.

Monday, August 13, 2007

30 Years Ago

Blimey.  Who’s that handsome young devil in the stylish jumper?  Yes, it’s your humble correspondent flanked by my elder brother on my right and some random person with Rupert Bear strides on the left.  Might have been our cousin but I’d have thought I might have remembered such groovy kecks.
Chap who seems to be ‘a little teapot’ in the background behind Rupert Bear is Pater.
In the foreground are the winning trio of grey faced mule gimmers which swept the board of the local agricultural show which used to be held in one of the fields on the farm.
This is one of two photos taken by the local rag at the time, the other below having just been reprinted this weekend in a nostalgia section.

Not quite sure what I was so pleased with, perhaps I’d just uprooted a particularly satisfying bogey.

MI5 is watching

I occasionally joke about being watched by MI5 or whatever on account of this blog, this of course became less funny when two coppers pitched up at my door.
On this line of thought from an article in the Sunday Mail

I first met David when we were both working in F2, the counter-subversion section of MI5, where we were repeatedly reassured that MI5 had to work within the law.
We were young and keen to help protect our country. I noticed David immediately, as he was very bright, and always asked the difficult questions.
Over a period of a year we became friends, and then we fell in love.
In the run-up to the 1992 General Election we were involved in assessing any parliamentary candidate and potential MP.
This meant that they all had their names cross-referenced with MI5’s database.

MI5 say in Myths and Misunderstandings

Ministers and MPs are not subject to vetting.

As Mandy Rice-Davies nearly said, well, they would say that wouldn’t they?

Peaked Cap Syndrome

Peaked Cap Syndrome - where a person becomes a little Hitler upon donning the uniform of a security guard.  AKA Pissed on Power, related to Jobsworth.

Street wardens seemed to have been the forerunner of the PCSO, and as before, mixed feelings.  More like Peel’s Principles but why not make the Police more representative of Peel’s Principles?  Cut out the PC bullshit, scrap PACE and have a paperwork bonfire.  We used to have Allerdale Street Wardens but I haven’t seen any in ages so I assume they have been replaced by PCSOs.  All uniformed jobs run the risk of attracting those prone to Peaked Cap Syndrome but it would be nice to think they were weeded out in the selection process.  Not so in Peterborough it seems.

A man spotted wearing a T-shirt bearing an “offensive” slogan in a city centre has been warned he risks an £80 fine if he is caught again.
Forklift driver David Pratt was told by street wardens in Peterborough he could cause offence or incite violence.
The slogan on the garment read: “Don’t piss me off! I am running out of places to hide the bodies.”

What a load of fucking bollocks.

Aren’t the (plastic) coppers getting younger?

Wonder if this post will get me a visit?
Ho hum.
Plastic coppers or PCSOs as they prefer to be called are very much a feature of modern policing these days.  I’m kind of torn between approval and frowning disapproval.  On the one hand these people are more true to the policing model set out by Sir Robert Peel at the very inception of the concept of a police force.

1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder
2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions.
3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.
4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.
5. Police seek and preserve public favor not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.
6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient.
7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions, and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.
9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

As the PCSO will be found “pounding the beat” engaging with the community, point 7 of the principles can be more readily fulfilled.  Their exemption from certain ‘police powers’ makes them more the citizen bobbie than the standing paramilitary the ‘proper’ police are more and more resembling.  Peel said that “The police are the public and the public are the police.” This principle has been relentlessly eroded over the past 30 years to the extent that the police refer to non-police as civilians, making it abundantly clear that they are no longer citizens employed professionally to carry out the duties encumbent on each and every citizen.
If the PCSO are the true police force what have the police force become?
Anyhow, I digress.
The point of this article is that two 16 year olds are to become PCSO in the Thames Valley Region.  Blimey.
As I said when I first heard about this over at airgunbbs.com, I really don’t think that a 16 year old - regardless of how mature for his/her age - can posses the requiset maturity, life experience or gravitas to perform an effective policing duty.  Really I think 25 would be a more realistic boundary for either models of the police service.
A “police spokesman” said

“I can confirm that we have two 16-year-old recruits. This is well within the regulations set out for PCSOs.
“These two young people have passed all the assessments and tests that PCSOs are required to undertake and are now undergoing their training. They reflect the community in which they serve, that includes all ages, genders and races.”

What a load of shite.  Presumably the spokesman means these two have been recruited to meet bullshit diversity targets, can we also infer that the two are female and non-white?  I’ve a sneaky suspicion that there isn’t a snowballs chance in hell that these two are white males.  Your race and gender shouldn’t make the slightest difference, but it seems that these days you are at an automatic disadvantage if you are a white male.  If you are a white, English heterosexual, rural male you are completely fucked.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Are the McCanns hiding something?

A lot of people think there is something distinctly unsettling about the McCanns, whether it is their arrogance or the suspicion that they are hiding something I don’t know.  However more people I speak to are now starting to think that they know very much more than they are letting on.  The recent claim by Kate that Madeline had said to her that evening she had the ‘best day ever’ rang particularly hollow.  It sounds like a contrived thing, coming as it does so long after the alleged dissappearance.  There is little that these two do or say that rings even slightly true.  To me it looks as though they are playing out an act.  At first it seemed to me that this may have been their way of dealing with every parent’s worst nightmare.  Now it looks more and more like the guilty covering up their crime.  The Team McCann farce seems to be more like a succesful business franchise than any serious attempt to find this, almost certainly dead, child.
The British media is still treating the McCanns as untouchable victims, though we know that if they were a working class family they would have been torn limb from limb as neglectful parents.  There are serious questions to be asked of the McCanns but the British MSM will not ask.
Enter the Philidelphia Evening Bulletin and correspondent Chris Friend who asks some very searching question you can see in the Read More below.

Continue reading Are the McCanns hiding something?...

Thursday, August 09, 2007

A new Tony Martin?

From The Telegraph

A homeowner who confronted an intruder during an alleged burglary could be facing a murder charge after the man died in hospital.
The intruder, 43, fell up to 40ft from a fourth floor window after an altercation with the flat’s occupant.
The homeowner was arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm after police found a man’s unconscious body outside the apartment block in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester.
Police confirmed today that he had died in hospital after suffering severe head injuries.
The 56-year-old homeowner had been released on bail, but could now face questioning on suspicion of murder.

No doubt we will see Rent-A-Quote bullshit about ‘taking the law into his own hands’.
I hope this chap doesn’t get charged but I fear the worst, even if he isn’t charged then there is a strong chance the family of the dead man may bring civil action.
Should this prove to be as it seems then the householder should be congratulated for getting a thieving scum bastard ‘off the streets’.  Nobody but the chattering class scum Guardian reading tosswanks will mourn the loss of a burglar. 

Sunday, August 05, 2007

The Happy Dance

Time for what Kim would call The Happy Dance.
I have in my possesion a shiny new FAC and an equally shiny new SGC!
What better way to celebrate than with a new gun?
CZ 452 16” Varmint in .17HMR and a SAK moderator to match, thank you very much.  Fitted a Rifle Basix trigger to cure the horrible heavy pull and creep that you get with the CZ.  Better than the Brooks kit I find because you can adjust the pull with a grub screw rather than buggering about with spring changing and you can get rid of the creep with a sear adjusting widget rather than buggering about with brass tubes.  Sure the Brooks is dirt cheap but I’m happy to pay the extra for the adjustability.  The only difficulty was that I had to remove a little bit of stock where the sear adjusting lock nut lives but this was straight forward once I’d worked out this was why the trigger didn’t work with the stock in place.
Speaking of the stock, this is the only part of the gun I’m not so keen on - it being wood.  Not a fan of wood and I’ve not long got rid of the last bit of dead tree in my cabinet.  Tempted by one of those Wild Dog stocks but I can’t help but think that them’s damned expensive - about the same as the cost of the rifle itself.  If only Hogue made stocks for CZs like the one I have on my Ruger 10-22

Friday, August 03, 2007

Foot and mouth back?

Oh hell.

Cattle at a farm in Surrey have been found to be infected with foot and mouth disease.

From BBC News

Camo Snaps

A couple of piccies involving camo patterened stuff.
Firstly, a chip off the old block.

Secondly a cat on OP