Burglary at remote Peak District farm, murder arrest

The country isn’t safer since handguns were banned. Gun crime is much higher, and handguns seemingly just as easy (if not easier) to obtain by criminals, than back then. Incidences of gun crime are still very very low compared to many other countries - but they were before the ban, too.

I’m not saying I think everyone should have a pistol for self defence. But I am saying it is easy to ignore the actual statistics.

If we continue down the road of minimal, ineffective policing, there will eventually be a tipping point where reasonable people demand arms.

Just look at how under-served England & Wales are:



When you couple that with increasing inequality and so on, there’s no surprise crime is a problem.

The crime rates in England & Wales are far higher than in Scotland and Northern Ireland, yet the latter have far more police officers. It could be a coincidence, of course…

And what about violent crimes?



It is almost as if something happened after 2010 resulting in a four-fold rise in violent crime…

I'd be interested to know what statistics show that gun crime is higher now than when they were banned?

Appreciate this data only covers 2003-19 but it shows a clear decline over that period.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunit...

I agree with your other points regarding police/crime in general.

You describe a long barrel pistol. You can not have this in 9mm. It must be in .22 Rim Fire. I have a Walther PPQ exactly as you describe, but its in .22RF not 9mm. You CAN have a revolver in 9mm but the OAL must be 24" or greater.

The only place in E/W/S/NI a civilian can own a 9mm semi auto without having to jump through a lot of hoops is Northern Ireland. There you just need to be a member of a club, like the old days.

The law starts to get murky when you get into section 7, so we will ignore that as lets be honest out of the hundreds of thousands of FAC holders only a hand full are section 7.

As for section 5, yep some people do get authority under section 5. But again its a tiny, tiny number of people. Film and TV, maybe 10 guys in the UK with authority for sec 5. There will be a handful of people who get authority from the Home Office, the kind of people who dont exist... and beyond that you are down to stalkers and vets and they are going to be restricted to a couple of rounds and I believe semi auto is currently off the table for new applications. Farmers are never given section 5 authority for pistols, not that I know of. Maybe if they are a stalker, but then the use is going to be for HD only.

Beyond that the only way you can realistically shoot "pistols" legally in England is to get a muzzle loading revolver like a Westlake in .357. Thats about as close as you can get if you are not interested in cap and ball revolvers.

It would just be easier to become a Registered Firearms Dealer tbh.

Farmers are extremely fearful of foot and mouth. When the consequences of an infection might be your livelihood ruined, you take an interest in idiot walkers that get themselves lost on your land. Same happened to me, and I got two barrels up my nose and told to quickly leave the property.

One of my friends was mugged and defended himself fairly robustly. One of the coppers arresting him said something along the lines of "I expect you thought your life was in danger". A not so subtle hint as to what to say in interview.

That would be an utterly stupid thing for someone to do now, in the days of mobile phones.

However, far to many farmers are completely ignorant on trespassing, and do go shouting and threatening people who are lost and wander of a path, a civil matter, yet think criminal blocking of rights of way is all fine and dandy because it suits them. Many farmers are fine (I have several friends who are farmers), but some are utter tts, just like the rest of life, but most of the tts in life don’t have shotguns and vast tracts of land.

The main problem with UK gun legislation is that it punished law abiding owners by taking away their guns rather than address the problem at hand, which was and still is enforcement and administration of FAC conditions. Hamilton should not have had an FAC, nor should Byrd or Davison, yet the incompetent and inconsistent administration and enforcement goes on.

Don't forget black powder pistols. The perfect solution for self defence against hordes of zimmer frame supported zombies

Indeed. UK gun legislation is undoubtedly (to my mind) too tight (although in some ways it is actually laxer than US gun control e.g. magazine size for smaller calibres in that there isn't any) but if the alternative is US style rambo retards then maybe it's price we have to pay.

For actual self defence I'd probably be looking more at letting women carry around pepper spray and stuff like that.

In this day and age of increasing hysteria, allowing large swathes of the population to discharge noxious substances at will because they decided they felt threatened would be an absolute zoo. Arguably less so than if they all had handguns, admittedly!