Locks, Stocks and Smoking Barrels. - The Bear and Badger

Unlikely

I suppose I understand the allure of going somewhere and firing a gun at non-living targets. Not sure why people would want them in their homes, though.

pantyfire

No ornaments would be safe if you swung one of them around in the house.

A few guys at the club shoot black powder pistols, they are great fun. They look like normal sized revolvers but they use ye olde gunpowder and each chamber has to be manually loaded a bit like a musket, it takes about 5-10mins to load it up.
But when those suckers go off you feel it in your chest about 15 feet away.

pantyfire

Unlikely wrote:

I suppose I understand the allure of going somewhere and firing a gun at non-living targets. Not sure why people would want them in their homes, though.

You completely forget they are there. They don't ooze a malevolent presence, unlike a mandolin slicer, those things are pure evil.

I don't have children, everyone in the house is an adult and actually not the slightest bit interested in them, so i don't have to worry about curious minds. Plus i have the key on me whenever i go out of the house (as per the roolz) and the spare is hidden away.
It is more convenient having them at home than at a club for maintenance, cleaning, tuning etc...

Unlikely

Still don't see why they should be in your homes. If people want to shoot guns then fine - go to a controlled environment and access the hardware under supervision.

pantyfire

I wouldn't be too bothered if i was made to store mine at the club, there are a couple of members that the police have insisted do store them there.

davyK

I always thought the post Hungerford and it's ilk knee jerk calls for banning would have been simply dealt with by keeping guns at the club.

Guns are still a touchy subject in N.Ireland. Quite a few people here have gov.approved firearms for personal protection still but I know a few guys with licenced firearms for sporting purposes who will get involved in deer culling etc.

pantyfire

Not all people shoot at clubs. Rich folk have their own land to shoot on, normal folk also get permission to shoot on farmers land (a mutually beneficial situation). Therefore keeping guns at clubs is not always viable.

My shooting circumstances and justifications are only typical of a percentage of the shooters in the country.

The next argument is... Well anyone who shoots at a club should keep them there, well, there'd have to be inevitable exceptions to that rule as well, it would get messy and I'm not going to beat about the bush, the folks with more influence in the corridors of power than you or i would fight it.

davyK

You wouldn't have to shoot at the club. The fact that they are kept in a secure fashion and would take some time to get hold of would be a mechanism against a rage fuelled incident.

Though admittedly that may not be a defence against a determined person who has lost the plot and wants to go an a spree. Would also make clubs targets for theft.

A farmer may need to access a gun quickly too - rogue dog, fox etc.

Moto70

Webbins wrote:

Iron sights just didn't seem to lead towards a decent shot.

I got on fine with an iron sight, control your breathing and learn the pull on the trigger. I was shooting stood and hitting targets that people normally shot prone but I didn't enjoy it, it just felt a bit boring.

pantyfire wrote:

Not all people shoot at clubs. Rich folk have their own land to shoot on, normal folk also get permission to shoot on farmers land (a mutually beneficial situation). Therefore keeping guns at clubs is not always viable.

We have a couple of clubs we shoot at and I also shoot with an ex-firearms officer on his own land (up until now I have been using his guns, it was his semi-auto that has made me think of getting one) so having our guns restricted to just one place wouldn't really be viable even though that is what I have to do at present. Luckily I have use of other guns when I visit other places though I would prefer to use my own gun.

pantyfire

We've had two spree killings that i can remember. Keeping guns at a club would not have stopped either.
Both were quite calculated acts, and didn't appear to be spare of the moment, red mist events.
The perpetrators of both would've just gone to the club first.

It really depends on why you want the guns at a club in the first place.
To stop accidents?
To stop spree killings?
To stop robberies?

Accidents - an accident is an accident, a guy shoots his wife by accident cleaning his gun at home. The same could happen at the club, he just shoots another shooter.

Spree killings - addressed above, they would just go and pick up their guns at the club before driving off and shooting people.

Robberies - the odds of a burglar stumbling across a house with a gun and the odds that the burglar would happen to have the cutting tools on him to open the safe are extremely low IMO.
But on the other hand you could guarantee that there was a large amount of guns at that club just down the road and if you took the right tools...

pantyfire

There's also the fact that certain clubs are cleared by the home office to shoot certain calibres. My club goes up to .45. But you can own military sized calibres. I know you can shoot those down at Bisley, which for me is 35 miles away. It's a bit impractical if i needed to modify, repair, maintain my gun if i had to drive 35 miles to do it.

And again, whatever anyone might think, Lord Tristran Smythe is not going to be happy driving 35 miles to pick his gun up and bring it back to fell a deer on his estate and will have a word in his Masonic elk leaders shell-like.

davyK

I spent my childhood looking down the barrel of a gun as soldiers sighted me and anyone else up from the back of an army vehicle. Most disconcerting when you are in a car behind them - so it's probably fair to say I don't have an unbiased view on guns in general.

davyK

..in fact I'm probably ever so slightly fucked up due to the fact that I grew up in 70s-80s Belfast. Nothing really bad happened to me but the general atmosphere was fraught and I only really noticed how much so when I went to England for a year in my early 20s.

I would like to have a go at firing a gun though. Firing an automatic must be good craic I'd imagine.

Webbins

Moto, I was referring specifically to the iron sights on the AK, which is not exactly known for its accuracy. There is a knack to that weapon though. We were shooting these on the longest part of the range which was roughly two lengths of a bowling lane. The irons on the hand guns and the pump were a lot easier to aim with albeit at closer targets.

Talking of AKs and Davy's NI experiences, I once visited Sri Lanka when they were still at it with the Tamil Tigers. Driving out of Colombo through multiple checkpoints frequently manned with AK toting boy soldiers was a surreal experience.

pantyfire

I find rifle iron sights aren't the best. The US gun uses a round rear sight with a post on the end of the barrel. It's very awkward to use accurately. You have to centre the post vertical then centre the top of the post, while you are holding it steady and trying to bring it on onto target. It's very difficult.
But then these military pattern guns aren't going to be used by expert marksman, with pin point accuracy.

The AK gets a bad rep for its accuracy but i know a guy who owns one and he reloads his own ammunition and he says once you do it is very accurate. The ammo manufactured for it is cheap bulk Soviet block stuff, the army isn't interested in every shot counts, more lead down range is more useful to them, so the quality control is more relaxed.

pantyfire

davyK wrote:

I spent my childhood looking down the barrel of a gun as soldiers sighted me and anyone else up from the back of an army vehicle. Most disconcerting when you are in a car behind them - so it's probably fair to say I don't have an unbiased view on guns in general.

?
In reference to my use of 'you? In the previous post?
It was a figurative 'you' i.e. People in general.

GooberTheHat

Ak 47 is fine when you know how to fire it. Not a patch on the SA80 a2 though.

pantyfire

Aren't there perversely complaints that the version that fills the LMG role is actually too accurate!

GooberTheHat

Yeah, there is talk of designating it a sharp shooter rather than a section support weapon.

davyK

pantyfire wrote:

davyK wrote:

I spent my childhood looking down the barrel of a gun as soldiers sighted me and anyone else up from the back of an army vehicle. Most disconcerting when you are in a car behind them - so it's probably fair to say I don't have an unbiased view on guns in general.

? In reference to my use of 'you? In the previous post? It was a figurative 'you' i.e. People in general.

Nah. Just a general point. It was something that happened quite a lot as a kid I had forgot about but was reminded of in this thread. The soldiers would probably have been admonished for that behaviour but the reality was they did it all the time and nothing was ever done about it.

GooberTheHat

Aiming your weapon at someone now without a valid reason is classed as assault.

davyK

They'd be screwed over now if they tried it. Too many smartphones to gather evidence.

tin_robot

pantyfire wrote:

Aye, for a Firearms Cert they check your medical records for anything alarming and you get a visit/interview from the police. I'm with the Met and they tend to use civilian staff for the interviews. I've had two over 5 years and both have been very nice people, you end up basically having a general chat, which i think is more to see if you are a bit odd. Cue the nutjob jokes... It's a long winded process, it takes about 6 months in total but the cert application took me about 10 days! The rest was joining the club, becoming a member etc...

I really hate filling in medicals for shot gun certificates. (Partly as it's a tedious job, partly because you never really know what someone's going to do, and partly because I'm afraid I'm one of those people who feels uneasy about the notion of anyone having a gun in their home.) Unfortunately, one of my colleagues (who is a keen shooter) knows that I'm largely averse to doing them, and ensures as many come my way as possible. I'd send them back, but we've been friends for years, and he finds it so hilarious every single time, that I just go along with it. The bastard.

davyK

tin_robot wrote:

pantyfire wrote:

Aye, for a Firearms Cert they check your medical records for anything alarming and you get a visit/interview from the police. I'm with the Met and they tend to use civilian staff for the interviews. I've had two over 5 years and both have been very nice people, you end up basically having a general chat, which i think is more to see if you are a bit odd. Cue the nutjob jokes... It's a long winded process, it takes about 6 months in total but the cert application took me about 10 days! The rest was joining the club, becoming a member etc...

I really hate filling in medicals for shot gun certificates. (Partly as it's a tedious job, partly because you never really know what someone's going to do, and partly because I'm afraid I'm one of those people who feels uneasy about the notion of anyone having a gun in their home.) Unfortunately, one of my colleagues (who is a keen shooter) knows that I'm largely averse to doing them, and ensures as many come my way as possible. I'd send them back, but we've been friends for years, and he finds it so hilarious every single time, that I just go along with it. The bastard.

Aye. Slowly arming the militia for the glorious revolution.....

Moto70

Those of you that shoot clays which tend to give you grief?

I used to dislike driven clays because when I first started I tended to shoot with a maintained lead rather than swinging through but I've found that since I started shooting more traditionally I don't find driven too challenging any more.

My most hated are still mini or midi loopers purely because of their size, speed and distance. At one of the grounds I shoot at I reckon we are nearing the limit with what is an acceptable distance but they often run minis and midis in it and the clay really is just a dot in the distance. Couple this with the fact it is a looper and judging it is virtually impossible for me.

I am gutted this bad weather is here as I would have loved to have got out this weekend.

pantyfire

Those McDonald arch, looper ones. The ones were you have to draw a line under the the arc to predict where it's going to drop down and be. They are often shot out on their edges.

Moto70

Here's a little snippet of my daughter on her first go at clays, she did OK for a first go (18/25 on teals and driven).

I was going to look at getting her a 20g (like the Beretta she is shooting with here) but I have been advised to give it some consideration before taking the plunge, a woman who shot with us on Saturday said she got more kick from a 20g and now only shoots 12g.

I'll look into it more if I get my SGC.

Bollockoff

How secure are gun clubs? Only asking as the idea in my mind of securing everyone's firearms in one location that isn't a popo armoury makes them a target for smash raids by gangs I'd have thought.

pantyfire

I think ours uses a cargo container as a store. Around the side of the main building. I know at least one shotgun dealer who uses the same to store his ammo. So i think it's a fairly standard 'thing'.
With the right cutting tools it wouldn't take long to get in i think. The place is alarmed etc...
A officer once told me the home safes are meant to withstand at least 20 mins of attack. Your average burglary is about that and it's usually some random smackhead trying to steal some easy money. So a vault with laser tripwires is overkill.
I guess the club's security is something similar but higher grade.

The truth of the matter is if someone knows what you have and really wants it they will get it. Oceans 11 style.

davyK

Maybe ammo storage is a better solution? Maybe you should only be allowed to have so many rounds at any one time?

Maybe there is a rule for that already?

Wouldn't mind giving clay shooting a go actually.

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