Shotgun Certificates Issued To Hundreds Of Kids.

[TJC]

Good thread it reminds me my girls want their "pink" shotguns for this summer !

[Racalman]

The latest NRA bulletin announced the publication of JSP403 which contains a clause that allows access to MoD ranges for club members without lower age limits.

[Gundoc]

Well I was very chuffed to hear that one of my clubs is introducing a Junior division for 8-12 yr olds.
The more of this that happens the better in my eyes!

If you can drag them away from the Xbox, in my experience they come along a couple of times & find it boring.

My son gets a max of 2hrs per day on the Xbox on a weekend. He has been bugging me about shooting for about 3 yrs now. We let him go on the BB gun range at our funday at work, he didn't want to leave!

[SevenSixTwo]

[Gaz]

Very well played by our team.

Da ex-gang memba, innit, blew it.

God that woman was mad, wasn't she.

I'm tempted to say the social media backlash against the written story shaped the broadcast coverage - Kate Andrews is a vocal young US Republican in the UK, and there wasn't any immediately obvious reason for her to be there other than to speak up in favour of guns generally. The BASC lad was good, though of course he knew nothing about target shooting and so didn't mention it.

I suspect the woman who wrote the original story is an anti - quotes from Gill Marshall Andrews' elevenses club and mentioning gun crime stats. I was glad to see the presenter challenging the nutty woman when she spouted nonsense - "licence holders give access to gangsters" indeed.

[Fedaykin]

It is a classic example of the GCN and press preying on the Public's general lack of understanding around numerical proportionality. Just throw some big scary numbers out and hope nobody picks up on it.

Lets take a look at the headline and first figure first:

Shotgun Certificates Issued To Hundreds Of Kids

Sky News discovers that more than 670 children under 14 have been given shotgun certificates by police in the last five years.

Right so start the article with an emotive statement about children mentioning a vague large number "Hundreds". Then state a figure 670 children under 14, that sounds like a lot doesn't it! But over five years... I actually work in education services and I can tell you now 670 is not a lot of Children! FYI 670 is about the same numbers as one average sized secondary school, further from that in ENGLAND ALONE there is close to 3200 secondary schools! Now take the 670 figure and divide by five you will end up with a TINY PROPORTION of the nations Children!

So the Children getting Shotgun certificates are a tiny minority of a minority, remember as a proportion of the population as a whole gun ownership of any kind is small! These Children by in large come from rural families with a high exposure to guns for practical reasons, farming etc.

Right now lets look at the other statement made:

Police recorded 7,709 offences involving firearms in 2013/14, down from 8,135 the year before.

Well with the first question what was the baseline crime figure for that time period? I emphasized the word crime because do any of you notice something missing in that statement? They didn't mention the word "Violent" so in other words this is all firearm offences in a year regardless of context! As is well known many firearm offences in the UK are technical errors, more ammunition being stored then you are allowed to hold or dumping your shotgun in the back of the car uncovered then parking up outside a supermarket. So the figure they show for that year already shows a huge drop in that kind of crime but also considering there was about 7 million crimes recorded in England and Wales for that time period we are talking about a tiny proportion! Now also as somebody correctly noticed earlier how many of those crimes involved illegally held guns, the previous year handguns were used in 28% of all firearm offences recorded!

They offer no evidence for their attempt at correlating gun crime with allowing a tiny proportion of the nations Children to possess a Shotgun certificate. The GCN seem to be inferring that these children will be more likely to enter crime, with no evidence that is the case! This does smell of their illustrious member Prof Peter Squires who seems to think based upon his research in a Brighton housing estate with no corroborating data beyond his feelings and allegedly seeing a few air rifles propped up that all gun owners are naturally cruel and more prone to violent crime.

[ozone]

p.s
FYI I am hoping my son can become a gang member, innit, but not sure how to go about getting him away from that responsibility for your actions thing that we mistakenly pushed on to him, also that paying your way thing, not praying on the weak thing and the not leaching off society thing. In fact the only bad habit wevé managed to cure him of is that hitting the bowl when peeing thing.

Your obviously a bad parent

For advice on how to become a better parent I suggest a
month of Jeremy Kyle and maybe you will be able to do better.



ozone

.

[meles meles]

We had the pleasure of teaching a young lad to pawdle firearms safely and shoot this weekend - we're "Training Officer" at our club. He's 14 and came along with his father, also a new probationary member. He was polite, attentive and did exactly as he was told. After a little instruction on safety he was permitted to start shooting with a Noise Magnet carbine (if the can pawdle that, he can pawdle anything). Not only did he behave maturely and shoot safely, he outshot his father by a country mile ! He's not the first junior we've had in the club and hopefully he won't be the last. In our experience, most oomanlets are actually quite nice, sensibubble people.

[450 Martini]

I started shooting air rifle at 12, I had my first experience of clay shooting at 14 at my local agricultural college and I had my first full bore shooting experience at 16. I have held both FAC and SGC since I was 17.
My thought's on this.....Best Hobby Ever!

My 17 year old brother is putting in for his tickets next week.

[HALODIN]

I wonder how many of these "offences" were air rifles/airsoft/toys used inappropriately by teenagers. Quite a lot would be my guess. Anything to inflate the figures.

Police recorded 7,709 offences involving firearms in 2013/14, down from 8,135 the year before.