A Personal view from a Foreigner

[philip964]

What a great post. But you stopped at 2005.

Please continue to present day.

Your writing is so smooth and enjoyable to read, it's as if English is your native language.

Well done.

[Noggin]

What a great post. But you stopped at 2005.

Please continue to present day.

OK well during 2004 Heard about BBCAmerica puzzled as to what all that was about ran a search found they had a forum which I then joined. After a while several members including myself moved on to another forum after a dispute with the BBC mods. I then moved to PMing someone to whom I am now married. We went through PM, email, phone, then video chat and finally in Dec 2006 I flew over to Del Rio for the Christmas?New Year holidays. Which I did again in Dec 07 and Dec 08 when we married. In between my wife and her daughter visited me in UK. Then in March 09 my wife and daughter moved to UK to live with me. Then in 2012 as daughter wanted to go to college over here as well as a few other factors, we decided to sell up and move. The proceeds from the sale of the house in UK allowed us to make cash purchases on two properties in college station. Not only that it paid for my F150 Platinum, my wife's Fusion hybrid, daughters Escape SEL, the cost of shipping the household belongings from Southampton to College Station as well as 5 first class air tickets between London and Houston during this process. I finally got my Green Card Aug 2013.

I do not know if you are aware of this but the UK government had to make a special dispensation for the duration of the games, to allow pistol shooting in the 2012 London Olympics because strictly speaking pistol shooting is now an illegal sport in the UK.

[oljames3]

Welcome to the forum, Noggin. Good to hear the British perspective from a military officer.

[twjones]

Good read. Thank you.

[Dadtodabone]

I do not know if you are aware of this but the UK government had to make a special dispensation for the duration of the games, to allow pistol shooting in the 2012 London Olympics because strictly speaking pistol shooting is now an illegal sport in the UK.

Yes, and due to the special allowance, UK team members were able to compete in cartridge pistol events for the first time since 1996. Of course they wound up traveling to Spain for training. Kind of a glass half full experience.

[bblhd672]

Great post. Thanks for sharing.

[bjrichus]

A couple of people on this forum have asked me to provide a bit of transatlantic input. So anyway here goes: This is not a formally structured legalistic post attempting to give a full account of the history of firearm legislation in the UK. This is a personal account supplemented with some facts and a bit of dark humour. Therefore if things seem a little chaotic I hope you will give me the benefit of the doubt.

Another view from an ex-pat Brit, now a Texan and American too.

My father shot "Free Pistol" (the Olympic accuracy sport) after he left the British Army from the late 1940's until he was told that all pistols in the UK (not NI by the way) were being confiscated and his firearms certificate was revoked as a result of all the mass killings that Noggin referred to. As a youth, I also shot a rifle he owned. Junior .22 25 yard Essex Junior League NSRA "D" team for me!!!! Ha-Ha!!!! I had a terrible average back then.

One for the other old time ex-British shooters, we both felt really at the zenith of our civilian shooting in the UK when he shot at Bisley Range one year in the pre-Olympic Nationals. Still remember how excited Dad was when he was at the top of his county league.

More recently here in Texas, I am doing MUCH better shooting a semi-auto pistol. Just wish we had today's weapons back then as I would have been way up there in the "A" team... I wish!!! Oh well.

I am really glad not to be back in the UK. The USA isn't perfect (just think Hillary), but gun laws here are much more reasonable than back there.

[bjrichus]

Great post!

As a fellow across-the-pond escapee, your post definitely brought back some memories

I wish we could sticky this one.

Me too. Used to shoot back in the UK (see my other reply) way back in the late 1960's and 70's. I remember (just) listening to the '66 World Cup win on the radio in the lounge of my Dad's gun club.

We lost a Jurek (hand made in Birmingham), Anschutz and BSA weapons to the confiscations. Broke my Dad's heart when he had to hand them all in to the local cop shop. Be warned about that kind of thing; The UK is certainly not the USA.

[Noggin]

My wife reminded me that there was a serious omission to my original post. For that a I apologise, the link below covers what I should have included.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria_shootings

This incident took place while my wife and daughter were living with me in UK. My wife had heard me explain to her many times about the gun laws in the UK, which naturally as someone who was raised in Del Rio she found them to be incomprehensible. So when we watched the details of this shooting spree unfold live on the TV News, as you might expect, my wife made sarcastic comments as to how could this be possible in such a pacified country as the UK!!!!

Note:

When this incident took place semi-automatic rifles had been banned for 22 years because of an incident in which 16 people were killed.

Handguns had been banned for 13 years because of an incident in which 17 people (16 children and one adult) had been killed.

So here we were in 2010 after all those gun control measures and a nut job still manages to kill 12 people using one double barrel shotgun and a 22 rifle.

I guess you could say all that legislation achieved was to reduce the possible death count by 4 or 5 lives, say 24%.

There is an old saying "That in the land of the blind a one eyed man is King". A variation on this could be, that in a land where hardly any police have guns the man with a single shot firearm is virtually invincible. As you will note from the link the perp was tailed by police but they had to back-off when threatened, because of course the only tools they may have had would be chemical sprays. I found it interesting that on this occasion the local LE called for assistance from the "Civil Nuclear Constabulary".

The Civil Nuclear Constabulary, are unusual compared to most UK police forces:

Unlike the majority of the British police territorial forces, all frontline CNC officers are routinely armed while carrying out duties. CNC officers also operate the armament on board the ships (20mm cannon etc) of the company Pacific Nuclear Transport Limited,[10] which specialise in transporting spent nuclear fuel and reprocessed uranium on behalf of the British Nuclear Fuels organisation.[11] Such ships have an onboard escort of armed police.[12][13]

[Jusme]

Great job Noggin,
I hope that you take no offense , (or offence) But, the very reason the USA has the Second Amendment, was due to Britain's policies to disarm the colonists. I think that without that, our ability to keep and bear arms would not exist here.
I'm glad you have decided to not only make the US your home, but here in the great State of Texas.
Thanks for posting all of the info regarding the historical degradation of rights in your native land, and also, providing personal experiences, to illustrate the actual effect , those things had, and continue to have on the general public. I hope that you still have contact with friends and family, in the UK, and can help enlighten them, as to how liberating things are here. Maybe together we can help change things there as well.

[Noggin]

Great job Noggin,
I hope that you take no offense , (or offence) But, the very reason the USA has the Second Amendment, was due to Britain's policies to disarm the colonists. I think that without that, our ability to keep and bear arms would not exist here.

I hope that you still have contact with friends and family, in the UK, and can help enlighten them, as to how liberating things are here. Maybe together we can help change things there as well.

Oh I am only too well aware of the reasons for the 2A here. Which is why I get especially angry and embarrassed by Piers Morgan. No foreigner has the right to lecture Americans on their gun rights and that is doubly true for a Brit, any Brit that thinks otherwise is demonstrating a flagrant disregard for American history.

I no longer have any no family members in the UK that I have had anything to do with for 20 years. This perhaps has made it easier for me to make the move over here without any regrets. I few months ago I made contact via LinkedIn with a former Royal Artillery officer I trained with at the RMA but that is another story.

[joe817]

Noggin, I want to thank you for your candid perspective of firearms ownership and use in the UK, both from a military viewpoint and the private ownership perspective, and the disenfranchisement of the UK populace of their firearms. Most fascinating....and sad. I have to admit, it is quite difficult for me to fully comprehend the mindset of the powers in the UK that, over the years, led to that disenfranchisement. Your sharing of that information is deeply appreciated.

With that said, welcome to the U.S. and more importantly, welcome to Texas.

[treadlightly]

Dang, that's oppressive.

Gun rights are more important than knife rights, but I would hate to give up my pocketknife and my Leatherman.

No pistol? No pocketknife? What would be the point of wearing anything if you're functionally naked?