Sim G wrote:You said this fella was just an aquaintence, personally, knowing what you know now, I'd steer well clear. There are former criminals, who have been to prison, have been issued SGC's after a period. As mentioned above, refusals are a "big deal" and people are not refused easily, or often!
I wouldn't be so sure. My university club had a rather odd response to our monthly return of members once, along the lines of "we are not happy with Member X." We asked plod (Met) why that was and they absolutely would not say anything more, beyond "if this individual applied for a firearms certificate we would not be happy."
Me and the secretary asked Member X, then aged in his early 20s, whether he'd be happy to have a quiet chat with us. It transpired that when he was 18 he'd got involved in a bar brawl after someone started having a go at his girlfriend and he was unlucky enough to get caught afterwards. Being 18, naive and not knowing what a solicitor was, he was talked into accepting a police caution for ABH, he told us.
In the end we gave him airgun membership only, and agreed amongst the committee that he wouldn't be given unsupervised access to those.
I'm guessing in this day and age the police aren't taking any chances at all.