Nicked from the most excellent ARRSE forum (here):
Subject: DDM PROHIBITION NOTICE - HOME LOADED AMMUNITION
District Coordinators,
BLUF:
DDM must suspend the use of home loaded ammunition on the defence estate until further notice. You will recall from discussion at the GCM last weekend that questions were raised about 3rd party liability in the event of an accident as a result of a malfunction of home loaded ammunition.
The Facts:
There can be no guarantee that the DDM Insurance Policy would respond in the event of injuries sustained from unregulated activity that is not defined in DDMPs. DDMPs do not mention home loading. There is no nationally recognised training standard for home loading. There is no assurance regime in place to cover home loaded ammunition. There is no requirement to have attended formal training for home loading. Forestry Commission (England and Wales) do not allow the use of home loaded ammunition. DDM EC and GC are aware of the issue, must analyse the risk and act if appropriate.
Deductions:
Injuries sustained by either the stalker firing the rifle or a third party would not be covered by insurance. Home loading is unregulated and it is not possible to audit the currency or competence of individuals conducting home loading. At present, the quality of home loaded ammunition is not assured. In a court of law it is likely that ‘Industry standard’ would be taken from the Forestry Commission as the next largest landowner behind the MoD involved in deer management. On that basis ‘industry standard’ would be to use factory ammunition. Chairman DDM has decided that home loaded ammunition represents sufficient uninsured risk to warrant prohibition on its use until an auditable training and assurance mechanism is in place that would enable insurance underwriters to accurately quantify the risk. In the absence of any national standards, DDM will devise a safe training standard together with a testing and assurance regime to reduce the risk to as low as reasonably practicable. Until that is in place deer management on the defence estate must be undertaken with factory ammunition only.
Please now promulgate this direction down through PDMs to all active members of DDM.
I'm just the messenger so no idea what this means: bad news for stalkers? Especially with the "factory ammo only" directive in there. Must admit I don't know what DDM or DDMP mean - sorry, Alpha1.
It's Defence Deer Management. They will just be following the lead (excuse the pun) of the Forestry Commission by banning bench loads for deer stalking.
They've had numerous quite restrictive rules in place for quite some time.
If there is any stupidity relating to deer stalking in the UK then you can bet your boots that that those chocolate fire-guard numpties in the British deer society would be behind it.
Come on Bambi get some
Imperial Good Metric Bad
Analogue Good Digital Bad
OK D that's another NGO you have a problem with. You may be right - it's completely outside my expertise. But a handload ban in a bit of MoD is seriously bad news. I NEED TO KNOW if DDM has any influence into the professional bit of MoD before that influence hits someone that matters on the ranges side. So I need to understand how much of an issue this is.
