Ravenwood reports that, once again, the perpetually panty-twisted are up in arms over another “loophole” in Britain’s ever-more-stringent gun elimination control law (designed to make everyone safer.)
Gun law ‘loophole’
CAMPAIGNERS have called for a “loophole” in the law to be closed after the Manchester Evening News bought a potentially-lethal handgun – legally in a city centre shop.
On the same day new legislation on air guns came into force, we paid £200 ($358!) for a new German-made Walther CP88, a powerful airgun, which could maim or even kill within a distance of 10 metres. (That’s about 30 feet for us Yanks.)
The CO2 gas-powered gun – which is indistinguishable to the untrained eye from a genuine firearm – can fire off eight rounds in quick succession.
OOH! It’s a high-capacity “weapon of mass destruction!”
Bear with me.
Our purchase on Saturday just hours after new controls were introduced by the government.
(Um, that’s not a complete sentence in the English I learned. Poor editing?)
The Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 made it an offence to manufacture, sell, transfer or acquire air weapons that use a self-contained gas cartridge system to fire pellets.
The WHAT?
It’s anti-social to “manufacture, sell, transfer or acquire air weapons that use a self-contained gas cartridge system to fire pellets”?
Are we using the same language here?
For those of us who really believe that the evil that is socialism is spreading, that one sentence is a great big red flag waving in the wind.
It’s anti-SOCIAL, and the State cannot abide by behavior that is anti-social.
Firearms enthusiasts who already owned one were required to obtain a £50 ($90!) firearms certificate from the police by Friday, April 30.
Anyone now found with one of these guns could be liable to a minimum five-year prison sentence. But the Manchester Evening News has established that some potentially-lethal air guns can still be bought legally without checks or licences.
We bought the CP88 in T Stensby and Co on Shudehill. Their staff acted completely within the law as the .177 air gun falls outside the new legislation.
It is powered by gas cartridges which must be inserted into the handle and which must be replaced on average every 80 shots.
The air guns which are banned under the new law are designed with self-contained gas cartridges, which look like real bullets.
Once again the legislature passed a gun control law. Once again, the refrain from the gun-phobes is “IT’S NOT STRICT ENOUGH!!”
Disgusted
The “loophole” has infuriated anti-gun campaigners Mothers Against Violence, a group set up to fight the gang and gun cultures in south Manchester.
Spokesman Sheila Eccleston, whose son Dean, 24, was shot dead in Longsight on October 9, 2001, said: “I’m absolutely disgusted.
“I would like to see all these guns banned. We go into schools to tell kids about the dangers of the gangs and guns and what message does this give to them?”
It tells them, I would hope, that you’re horribly misguided at a minimum. But it’s nice to see another group come out and vocally advocate what we all know the leadership of the gun control groups here actually want, but dare not voice. (Except the Violence Policy Center – I will give them credit for being forthright about wanting to ban all handguns.)
Paul Kelly, chairman of the Police Federation in Greater Manchester, has called for a ban on the sale of guns like the Walther CP88.
“Anything designed to be an absolute replica should need a licence in the same way as a real firearm,” he said. “And so should any weapon that has working parts and can be converted to accept real bullets.”
As I pointed out before: That would be the license scheme that failed to reduce gun crime? That would be the license scheme that let the government know who owned guns legally but had no effect on those who had them illegally? That would be the license scheme that allowed the government to demand that all legally held handguns be handed in because they were banned? That would be the license scheme that didn’t prevent an increase in handgun-involved crime after the confiscation?
See the cartoon immediately below this piece for a visual representation of the goals of gun control groups. Here’s another sterling example.
Linda Mitchell, spokesman for the Gun Control Network, set up in the wake of the Dunblane massacre, said: “All air weapons are lethal, full stop. They are capable of serious injury and there have been deaths. We really need to see legislation that covers all air weapons.”
Now, shall we look at this engine of death and destruction?
Here’s a standard version:
Yup, looks very much like a real firearm. I can see some cause for concern, seeing as almost no one in England has any real experience with handguns with the exception of the military and police.
And criminals, of course.
Or it could have been the really evil 6″ barreled version with “compensator”:
That would surely make victims wet themselves at its mere appearance.
But here’s the specs on this “powerful airgun, which could maim or even kill” (which, by the way, sells for about $165 here in the States.)
Velocity, 4″ barrel: 380fps.
Velocity, 6″ barrel: 400fps.
If that’s not enough for you, this web page discusses how to wring every last erg of muzzle energy out of the gun. It’s obviously written by a terrorist!
Now, here’s some information on the various horrible projectiles fired by this awesome engine of destruction. The .177 caliber pellet comes in a variety of weights, ranging from about 6.5 grains (0.015 oz) to about 11.5 grains (0.026 oz) Yes, those decimal places are correct. Just to give you an idea, a standard paper clip weighs about 6.6 grains. Obviously the lighter pellets will be faster, the heavier pellets slower. They come in various shapes for different purposes:
The round one is generally known as a “BB” from “ball bearing.”
The size in the image is obviously not to scale. A .177 caliber pellet is (surprise!) 0.177″ in diameter. How big is that? Oh, about the size of the hole in a Cheerio cereal piece. The hole, not the Cheerio.
But a pellet that size, massing about as much as a paper clip, is supposedly lethal out of this infernal engine of mass destruction!
It is true that there have been deaths attributed to airguns, but not pipsqueak air pistols like these. No, the guns involved in fatalities are without exception much more powerful (and usually larger caliber) RIFLES that fire heavier projectiles at velocities in excess of 1,000 feet per second.
And even then it takes either an act of complete idiocy or an act of God to kill somebody with one.
As the commenters at Ravenwood noted, this reminds me of the scene in National Lampoon’s Vacation where Clark pulls a gun to get in to Wally World:
(John Candy) That’s a BB-gun. Are you kidding?
(Chevy Chase) This is a Magnum-PI.
(Candy) That’s an old wives tale Clark. It couldn’t even break the skin.
(Chase) Yeah it could, yeah it could. It could break the skin and start a very ugly infection.
And so could the Walther CP88.
But the English subject must fear these “potentially-lethal air guns” because the press says that it is so!
“England can do it! Australia can do it! WE CAN TOO!”
Not here.
Not if I have anything to say about it.