There is a witch hunt on at the moment in the media regarding the licensing of airguns within England. A young person was shot recently by an illegally held air rifle and the person unfortunately died. There is now a campaign to try to licence all air guns within England. I guess ultimately if this is passed and becomes a new law, like the banning of firearms, it will only succeed in removing air guns from decent law abiding people keeping them in the hands of criminals who have no intention of giving them up. Like firearms and hand guns, these are still out there being owned by people who will never give them up and use them for criminal activities.

The law dictates that an air pistol with a power rating of over 6ft/lb is a banned weapon. An air rifle is allowed to be up to twice the power of a pistol, the limit being 12ft/lb. The rifle in question was above 12ft/lb and covered by an FAC that the owner did not posses. So here we clearly see that licensing does not work as the gun was owned illegally.

Another difficult situation for the Home Office but of course air weapons have already been licensed under Scottish law so why would it not work ?

People who have no intention of giving up their hobbies and their liberties will be made into criminals for no reason whatsoever as the gun in question was already illegally owned.

I am pleased I am not tasked with sorting this one out.

Oh yes, a seriously good air rifle could easily cost well in excess of £1.5k, are the government seriously considering compensation ?