From: "Derek Bernard", [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"JSP 403 is only concerned with the building of ranges
to the correct spec, to give the best possible degree of
safety to both the shooters and members of the public.
The Technical Advisory Section (TAS), School of Infantry,
Warminster, are the people who ultimately control range
construction and use in this country. They are there to
help civilian shooting, they encourage civilian shooting..."
But beware!
In the 1980s the Army's "advice" regarding the 600 yard
range in Jersey led to a perfectly satisfactory and safe
range that had been in existence for over 50 years being
destroyed and a new one having to be built at a total
cost of about L400,000. The risk of injury to the
construction workers would have been many thousands of
times higher than any concievable improvement in safety to
range users or the public.
A few years later, in 1990, an Army re-inspection of
the new 50 metre pistol range which had been built only 2
years earlier and approved by a different Army TAS team
as "an outstandingly good range", led to the range being
immediately shut down. The reason: the TAS officers
regarded "pop-overs" in a similar light to stray bullets.
Indeed they did not appear to know any better. Pop-overs
are spent bullets which have been flicked out of the sand
by fresh incoming bullets and which land outside the range.
They have the same safety significance as a pebble tossed
up in the air. In the words of the world's leading expert
on bullet trauma, Dr Martin Fackler, "such projectiles
represent no threat to any living creature larger than an
insect".
Through ignorance and fear, journalists and politicians
might be expected to treat pop-overs as though they were
strays, but for "the experts" to do so was frightening.
It is, of course, useful to have a detailed reference
book, such as Pamphlet 22 or the NRA(USA) Range Manual,
as an advisory guide when designing a new range; it is
very inefficient to keep re-inventing the wheel! But
there is absolutely no justification for treating it as
a tablet of stone. All target shooting is extremely safe,
even when there is no range approval process of any sort.
The range approval process in the UK is one of the many
mechanisms being used to crush shooting. To suggest
otherwise is flying in the face of the evidence.
Derek Bernard
--
Do the MoD have juristiction over ranges on Jersey? That's
a bit odd. And presumably you can't get lottery funding
there either. On the Isle of Man the police do range
approvals.
Steve.
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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