From: "Cyril Fox", [EMAIL PROTECTED] It appears that your conclusion that if the FAC were for the public safety then it would be under a centralised administration is about to come true. In the Sunday Telegraph 19th November we have the first warning that the government is to set up a compulsory national register of all gun owners and introduce stringent security arrangements before owners can keep firearms in their houses. This is of course to keep guns out of criminal hands! So when more than one journalist has shown how easy it is to bring guns into the UK from Europe and those guns can include fully automatic weaponry why does a Home Office Minister called Charles Clarke imagine that the UK criminals are so stupid that they will take the time and trouble to determine who has got a useful firearm and then arrange to steal it. Well I guess that some may be sufficiently low on cash that they cannot afford the deposit on an illegal firearm. It is also intriguing that when a hacker can get into Microsoft's systems that the government thinks that a UK wide database offers more public protection that the currently dispersed databases. Of course they know better than we do! Yes I know that government should be Government but I do not believe that they deserve that sort of recognition. It would seem that once again we are to bear the brunt of more oppressive unnecessary measures in the interest of public safety which in the long term will just make the number of people at risk to armed criminals continue to increase. So Steve, in the absence of one body for all shooting disciplines, you had better start digging the about to be compulsory tank trap and saving up for the CCTV linked to the police station to be able to keep your firearms at home. The tank trap is just in case someone decides to ram you from door with a heavy vehicle and the CCTV is so that the police may watch it all happen and record it as an incident leading to the need for moats and drawbridges. This was intended to be a serious mailing but the crass stupidity made me too angry as I put it down. Apologies. Regards, Cyril Fox -- The 1997 Act contains a section that requires a central register of anyone who holds a certificate. Since then it has grown into a monster that requires a register of anyone who holds one, has held one, or has ever applied for one, and now the HAC wants it to include a detail of every gun held on certificate! Not surprisingly it is still not up and running, and even when it is, it will still depend on 50 police forces seperately inputting information, or at least 50 police forces supplying their info to someone who inputs it. If we must have a national register, then it should be one agency that also runs the licensing system, and it should also be independent of the police otherwise we will see civil rights abuses on a scale that will make the fiasco in Strathclyde (where one of their licensing team gave out confidential info) pale by comparison. My personal view is that it is probably illegal under the ECHR for the police to maintain a database of people who have committed no offence, so we will see what transpires. Steve. Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________________________________________ T O P I C A http://www.topica.com/t/17 Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics
