Just had a call from Christopher Graffius Director of Communications at BASC & he assures me that they are putting every thing they've got into fighting this legislation & are in constant dialogue with the Home Office & EU shooting Organisations.
I must admit I'm feeling a bit better after chatting to him.
I know that this is a touchy subject - especially on an open forum
But many of us here - if not the majority - are ex military
In addition to enjoying the technicalities and challenges of shooting we, (though would never admit it) feel that we, at least, have the means to 'look after ourselves'
Government would love to dis-empower us - replacing that self sufficiency with the 'chinless wonders' from the civil service - and a police force so totally out of its depth that it could not hope to render assistance in the event of a major crisis.
It is far easier to control an unarmed clueless population - however criminals and terrorists are neither clueless nor unarmed
The problem is it might effect us all. We're licensed for target or vermin, not zombies or whatever else that might be interpreted as. Excuse the pun, but in the current climate, let's not given them ammunition to use against us.
Just got this back from UKIP who seem to think it will go through
Thank you for your email to Mr Farage, apologies for the delay in responding to you, we have had a considerable number of emails on this subject.
At Mr Farage's request I have discussed this issue in detail with colleagues, and listened in person to the views of Registered Firearms Dealers. The EU Commission's draft law has not yet been discussed in the relevant European Parliamentary Committee, so we are not in a position to comment on the detail. However three points are very clear.
First, the weapons used in the Paris atrocity, and more generally the weapons used in most terrorist attacks, are illegally-held weapons. Changing the law on legal gun ownership is therefore unlikely to have any significant impact on the availability of illegal weapons to terrorists. Indeed the EU is clearly the problem, not the solution.
There is extensive evidence that for example Croatia, which recently joined the EU, is a hotbed of smuggling – not only of arms, but also of drugs, people and human organs. It has also been said (and it is no exaggeration) that free movement of goods and people in the EU (and especially the Schengen area) has led to free movement of Kalashnikovs.
Secondly, so far as we understand it the UK already has some of the tightest regulations on firearms in the world. We do not believe that further legislation at the EU level will make any additional contribution to public safety. In any case we in UKIP are opposed in principle to any extension of competences at the EU level.
Thirdly, I understand that the proposed means of deactivating weapons will prevent inspection of the moving parts, actually making it more difficult to identify a weapon with a false certificate of deactivation.
I can therefore confirm that UKIP will be opposing the new EU Firearms proposal. Sadly, however, we fear it will be approved anyway. There is nothing MEPs like more than a nice piece of gesture politics in response to public concern – whether or not their gesture has any practical effect.