The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

doesnt NI still have concealed carry? also some eastern european countries allow lience holders to also carry their pistols

Yes some do , but there isn't the same hysteria regarding firearms among the public and population in Northern Ireland, compared with the rest of the UK.

ordnance wrote:

doesnt NI still have concealed carry? also some eastern european countries allow lience holders to also carry their pistols

Yes some do , but there isn't the same hysteria regarding firearms among the public and population in Northern Ireland, compared with the rest of the UK.

can any FAC holder apply for it or do you need to prove you are under threat ?

ukrifleman wrote:I have a shooting buddy in the US, who's father has a concealed carry permit and was involved in a violent road rage incident with a much younger driver.

He didn't need to pull his pistol, he just showed the guy his permit and the situation was immediately defused!

ukrifleman.

i wounder what would happen if the same thing happened here and you pulled out your FAC and showed it to the guy

can any FAC holder apply for it or do you need to prove you are under threat ?

Police carry on and off duty, prison officers can apply for a PPW, civilians would have to be seen as under threat from paramilitaries etc. They have tightened up on issuing PPW/s since the peace process. There us to be around 11,000 in circulation.

A total of 2,924 licences have ‘Personal Protection Weapon’ among the conditions of use. These holders include ex-PSNI, civilians and prison officers.

The PSNI’s Personal Protection Weapon policy states: “The procedures for dealing with applications to possess a PPW must take account of the unique and individual circumstances surrounding each application and that protecting the life of the applicant is a concern that must be balanced against that of the safety of the public and the peace and the general undesirability to have handguns for personal protection.”

Sim G wrote:

Fedaykin wrote:One rape is too many but all I will say Blu is divide 22,116 by 53.9 million the latter figure being the population of England.

It is rare taken against the whole population.

FFS....

And?

Chuck wrote:

In the meantime I have a question Chuck, are you prepared to pay with increased taxes if concealed carry was allowed for in our country? Explain later unless you guess the point first....

Why should our taxes go up? Have they gone up for all legal FAC?SGC holders??/ How much of our money is spent on victims of crime as it is? How much is wasted on police time bringing criminals to court only for them to be released? Do you not at the end of the day thing people should have a CHOICE?

If carry was legal as of NOW, what do you think would happen?. Should all those murder, rape and assault victims not have protection??? After all, it saves ONE LIFE! It is NOT the gun that is effective, it is the possibility that an intended victim may just be armed - that is the deterrent!

I explained it a few posts back Chuck but just in case you missed it I will quote myself:

We operate to an armed response model of policing within the UK, if concealed carry was legalised (and that would require the 97 ban to be repealed as well) the police would have to change their model and issue guns to all Police Officers in the country. Any incident that a Police Officer could face would now have the risk of a gun being involved. How much do you think it would cost to equip and train every Police officer in the country? Who pays for that?/quote]

If concealed carry was legalised there would be no choice but to arm every Police officer as any incident they could get have the possibility of having a gun in the mix. That would be highly costly, those guns would have to be procured, stored, maintained and training provided. That would cost lots of money which would have to come out of taxation Chuck, are you prepared to pay for that? Do you think the general public would?

There is another issue as well which came to me as I was pondering it yesterday evening, this is a country where the Death Penalty is not legal, what do you think the cultural and judicial considerations would be if we extended the right to the general public to perform extrajudicial capital punishment when that sentence is not even legal under our court system.

To avoid any long discussions I am:

a) Against the death penalty
b) Because I find it repugnant
c) It should never be returned to and if you want a reason Google David Bentley

Also I want to take you back to the thought experiment I proposed have you considered the consequences of the shooting organisations trying to push some form of right to conceal carry for self defence in the UK? How would it be portrayed in the media, how would it be reported if the antis can point to FAC and SC owners calling for Concealed Carry.

This is Pandoras box and all I ask people to do is consider carefully what they are actually calling for and what the consequences are for the wider public image of the sport. In our shooting sports bubble what you are calling for Chuck might seem reasonable to some maybe even the majority but we as a whole of the population are a minority. We also tread a very fine line in a PR sense, calling for Concealed Carry when there is no hope of it ever getting onto the statute book for innumerable reasons is an exercise in futility.

In many ways I feel I should apologise to you all, I feel the way I stated my opinions was probably a bit too blunt earlier but...

hand on heart guys do you feel all your responses have been well thought out or totally in consideration of the points I am trying to put forward.

I think what I am raising is valid, I would rather there was reasoned debate then an argument based upon emotion or a personal desire to be able to conceal carry. There are wider considerations for our sport and for the very fabric of our nation.

Oh and nobody take this as a retraction of my opinion ! The points I am making are rational and correct as far as I am concerned.

I completely feel that concealed carry by license firearms owners in the country should be an option, however, the fact that we have an overzealous handgun ban in the first place would make it nigh on impossible to get passed.

I do also feel that if this were an option, that in the current climate with the ever growing threat of terrorism, a lot of law avoiding citizens may exercise that right if it was open to them. Being a defenceless soft target is what will keep encouraging these terrorists to continue to attack us without fear of any resistance

How much do you think it would cost to equip and train every Police officer in the country? Who pays for that?/

It would cost no more that a training and equipment that already use. Who pays for that, it could be phased starting with new recruits. How do most other countries in Europe including a UK region manage to arm and train the police. There might be different reasons and arguments on why British governments don't want to arm the police but cost is not one of them. But as I said citizens carrying firearms for self defence is not going to happen. Successive British Governments and civilians are opposed to the police being armed, so there is no chance of them supporting civilians carrying firearms.

a) Against the death penalty
b) Because I find it repugnant

Me as well just to be clear, if its illegal for an individual to kill someone why should it be ok for the state to. But that's different than killing someone in self defence, something that is already legal in UK law. There is a difference between self defence and an execution.

Any incident that a Police Officer could face would now have the risk of a gun being involved.

That is already par for the course nowadays mate..

I hear your argument but it was not that long ago the UK populace COULD carry a gun for self defence. So what has changed: the notion that the police will protect you, which is of course nonsense as it isn't their job and is physically impossible in the ratio of front line police to people. Or maybe government feels that one day it will overstep the mark and it doesn't want the masses able to remove the government by force or defend themselves?

Supply of new weapons etc if we were to arm the police: those would be tendered out and the cheapest would win. Training? Well that's a different issue because the thought that "armed police should have no interest in firearms" is contradictory to high end training. however, for legal reasons I would reckon that only "approved techniques" would be acceptable to avoid law suits from aggrieved relatives of criminals shot by police.

Even in the USA there are some abysmal gaps in training and ability depending on the department and officers concerned and their attitude. Some cops I have trained with here are quick on the uptake but many are just "too macho" and have learned everything from John Woo and TJ Hooker. Heck, they walk about with holsters hanging loose, canted at weird and wonderful angles: one clown even had his in such a way the grip was facing UP so the muzzle faced straight back behind him.

An armed civvie will likely spend more on training than an armed cop who may see his training as a job requirement and no more, supplied by the force itself..Then again it would be a new system so training standards could be implemented - not just standing at a static point meaninglessly blatting holes in a target "in your own time" but things like confrontation skills and training on how to AVOID situations. With rights come responsibility and carrying a gun IS a responsibility.

Costs: I am sure those could be recouped from the cash generated by those cash generators known as speed cameras (or "safety cameras"

Death penalty: I agree with you there but on the grounds there are NO "fair trials" and not every police officer is 100% clean and honest. Bentley was a vengeance execution as a warning, he didn't pull the trigger. Timothy Davey on the other hand was innocent but he died anyway. I am sure there are many who were executed wrongly. Also there is a problem with judges who would see someone executed to bring about a closure. if I remember rightly, in one of the IRA "miscarriages" that saw the accused freed after many years of appeals etc I think it was Lord Denning who said "if we had hanged them then this matter would not arise"...Innocence was not the issue, it was political expediency!

Bottom line, it is a subject for debate (armed self defence) and I believe we should BY LAW be allowed the choice of having (or not) defensive weapons like our EU counterparts, either through a permit as in a firearm or tazer or openly available like in a spray or baton. BUT, there should also be swingeing penalties for anyone using them to attack people or in connection with committing any crime. That part is hard due to inconsistencies in the system and the willingness of every judge and do-gooder to accept "I was on drugs/ drunk/abused as a kid" as an excuse for just criminal behaviour from bad people./.

BTW: Would not recommend flashing ones FAC at an aggressor, sure way of that being changed to "threatened with a gun" when the scrote reports you.

However last bit and something that really gets on my t1ts is billionaires like this screwball little facist, surrounded by armed guards and bum kissing media trying to remove protection from ordinary people:

https://www.nraila.org/articles/2015011 ... -reporters