With the VCR Bill still being a pretty hot topic articles covering the issues are appearing, obviously some are more biased one way or the other though.
There’s an article on the Beeb’s site at the moment (thanks got o Alex for pointing that story out to me) with a few quotes from Wolf Armouries that is at least fairly balanced though, although unreferenced statistics and figures are quoted and thrown about with gay abandon.
One point of note though is that the 2004 “66% rise in offences involving imitation firearms” is actually an inflation in reported crime figures for everything that cannot be identified, and includes unidentifiable reports and callouts – basically it includes every call to the Police that mentions a firearm when the weapon itself has not being identified. The figures do not represent actual crime either, merely reports/calls from the public even if they are never followed up by the police. With the increased hysteria and paranoia around anything that looks like a firearm, mostly created by poorly implemented legislation and incorrect information, it’s no wonder that people are making more reports. You’d achieve the same increase in UFO reports if you told people that aliens were coming to Manchester and to keep an eye out for them, no doubt the ensuing “66% rise in visual reports involving UFOs” would mean that they really are here.
Back to planet Earth for a second though, for anyone that didn’t see it there’s another interesting story on the BBC concerning one of the MAV (Mothers Against Violence) supporters being charged with the illegal possession of a section 5 firearm (a sawn-off no less). The irony of an anti-gun/violence campaigner being caught and charged for the possession of a highly restricted firearm is well… there’s not much point in going further is there? It’s obvious from her actions that such vocal campaigners believe that whilst anyone with a legally obtained license shouldn’t be entitled to own a competition rifle or go clay pigeon shooting and can be unfairly compared to the likes of Genghis Khan, the present laws of the land simply don’t apply to them.
