The fifty seven thousand

It's good to see that the unfair ban on the sport of pistol shooting is back in the news:

To add to the concerns of the London bid team, another bit of lobbying has begun which could influence IOC members when they vote next July. This will highlight the way in which the Government have treated the Olympic sport of pistol shooting. The Sportsman's Association have written to the director general of the IOC, explaining how British pistol shooters (unless living in Northern Ireland) are severely discriminated against if they wish to compete in the pistol-shooting events in the Olympic Games.

Joe Kelly, chairman of the Sportsman's Association, in his letter asks the IOC "to use what influence they can to persuade the British government to amend the two Firearms (Amendment) Acts, 1997, so that at least the British and county pistol squads, and all shooters aspiring to such positions, may prepare themselves properly for competitions such as the Olympic Games".

Shooting is a major sport worldwide and the French have already made the treatment of shooting sports by our Government as an issue to lobby behind the scenes against London. The International Shooting Sport Federation are an influential governing body and will not be keeping silent either. The sport is second only to athletics in terms of numbers of countries affiliated and at the Sydney Olympics shooting had the third-highest numbers of countries competing.

During the Commonwealth Games two years ago in Manchester, a military operation was mounted to guard the competitors' pistols on their journey from the airport to the competition venue at Bisley in Surrey. As Joe Kelly points out in his letter to the IOC, if the UK wishes to host the Olympics in London in 2012, the Government will have to again introduce these special arrangements, which, he says, were a costly farce.

In the aftermath of the Dunblane tragedy and the knee-jerk response to ban all handguns, no consideration was given to the plea of the legitimate shooting sports that competition shooting should be able to continue. Despite the ban, there are more illegal weapons on the streets than ever and the only people being punished are our talented athletes, who have to keep their pistols abroad and travel to Switzerland to train. This is an expensive undertaking and means that the opportunity to compete internationally is denied to many.

Both the current Labour government and the conservative party are fully to blame for the current ban on the sport of pistol shooting in this country and it is not something that many of us can easily forgive them for.

When it suits the suits, they argue that one should not overreact and legislate on the basis of isolated incidents. Bad law is often the result. Yet, when it comes to the private ownership of firearms for sport, they seem to lack the moral stature to stick to their guns.

The unfairness of the legislation is made worse by the almost immediate increase in the criminal use of firearms that came after the ban.

Of course, the argument goes that the intention of the ban was to prevent another Dunblane from ever happening again and its success can be measured by the fact that no such event has reoccurred.

Obviously, to believe that you would also have to believe that the ban on legal sporting use of handguns has acted as a significant barrier to anyone wanting to get hold of such a gun. No sensible person would or could actually believe that. One just needs to recall any number of recent uses of illegally obtained and held handguns to see through that one.

But the real truth is that the ban and the argument for it is only acceptable because those affected were a minority of about fifty seven thousand law abiding individuals.

Politically it was nothing but a numbers game. Had there been 15 million sporting shooters the suits would have been dazzling in their defence of a perfectly reasonable and safe pastime.

And they want us to re-engage with them. On what passing, temporary and politically convenient principle would they like us to do that?

Posted by John at December 13, 2004 02:23 PM | TrackBack