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Shooting Times has asked the police to take a more sensible approach to legitimate firearms users
By Selena Masson
Thursday, 05 November 2009
Consultation response calls for improvement in the way police forces handle incidents involving legitimate shooters
As a key element of Shooting Times’s ongoing “Campaign for Common Sense”, the magazine last week sent a submission, on behalf of readers and all shooters, to the National Policing Improvement Agency’s consultation on the Code of Practice on Police Firearms and Less Lethal Weapons.
The consultation, which closed on Sunday 1 November, sought input into revisions to the Code of Practice, which governs the way in which chief police officers address procedures, training and good practice relating to authorised police firearms users.
Shooting Times identified this particular consultation as a critical one for the shooting community following several widely reported incidents, notably of law-abiding pigeon shooters being arrested by armed police at gunpoint.
Especially well-known is the case of Wiltshire shooter Kenneth Wilson, who was arrested by police while pigeon shooting in a cornfield near Swindon in July. The story of Mr Wilson’s arrest made headlines in the national news, yet no stories subsequently appeared to explain how all charges against him had been dropped and his confiscated guns returned to him. Many in the shooting world were shocked by a photograph of him being led away in handcuffs by armed officers, one of whom had an innocuous bag of decoys slung over his shoulder.
The rest of this article appears in 4th November issue of Shooting Times.
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