Though Cowards Flinch

Scotland on Sunday reports that around five hundred crimes a year are perpetrated in Scotland using airguns. The SNP is now trying to appear tough on crime by demanding a system of licensing for the owners of all airguns. In June, Kenny MacAskill wrote to Jacqui Smith suggesting that such a system should be piloted in Scotland. His rhetoric outside of that letter was just a tad extreme: “Quite simply, we must not and will not allow firearms to get a grip on our communities.”

Until I began to move among the farming community here in the South-East, I’d never met anyone who owned a proper air-rifle of the sort that fires pellets. I’d come across plenty of kids with handheld BB guns, which they used to shoot out windows on derelict buildings and occasionally to shoot each other – but those weapons aren’t so high powered as their pellet-armed, rifle equivalents. Indeed even now, above a certain strength air-rifles require an FAC license.

The weapons requiring a license are often the multi-shot gas powered weapons, and the application procedure involves a police background check and visit to your home to ensure that it is secure. To own any airgun, you also have to be over 18. Also, weapons can no longer be ordered over the internet. Bearing this in mind, and despite the rise in attacks upon domestic animals, one has to query what the government can do outside of barring the weapons altogether?

Given the number of freelance shooters who acquire permission from farms to shoot vermin such as rabbits and, in hunting seasons, to shoot game animals, I think that a complete ban is impractical. While we might suggest an extension of the licensing laws to all BB and pellet weapons, we need to question how effective this would be. Who is it that is committing the crimes and how are they getting away with it? What type of weapons are involved?

It could very well be that either 1. the weapons being used are illegally obtained anyway or 2. that they were obtained legally and could still be obtained even with further restrictions. People can still be bastards to dumb animals even without airguns. People can still hold up other people with knives – or if they are serious criminals, they can get around whatever restrictions we put into place. I don’t think everyone should have guns – but only in unusual circumstances are airguns the tools of crime.

In the cases of young people with airguns, I hate to invoke ‘the family’ but parental supervision might not be a terrible idea. It just can’t be legislated for. Even when older, people embarking upon the use of airguns should have some training – and if that means that we require people to register for X number of hours safety training at local shooting clubs, then that seems fair enough. However, we shouldn’t pretend that our communities are suddenly going to be held in thrall of airgun toting criminals.

Nor should we pretend that legislation and tighter restrictions on availability will solve this problem. Weapons are not permitted to be carried openly through the streets – so people wielding them criminally are already breaking the law anyway. Indeed the SNP’s idea that only members of a local shooting club (i.e. those who use their weapons within a confined environment) or farmers should have airguns would effectively kill the pasttime of a large number of peoples with skills in the natural environment.

Whilst being against the random and unchecked availability of guns anywhere, whether in Scotland or elsewhere in the UK, let’s not loose our heads in the debate.

Also, as with the SNP, let’s try not to be so hypocritical: Alex Salmond’s antics, documented in this fortnights Private Eye, in trying to keep himself out of the story of Councillor “Kalashnikov” Hanif who, on a visit to Pakistan forced his daughter and other children to fire AK-47s. Hanif’s daughter Noor emailed Salmond to criticize him for not condemning her father even despite the SNP leader’s big talk on the rise in air-gun crime in Scotland.