March 1996…. The worst shooting massacre in the Uk.
Although Thomas Hamilton killed the same number of victims as Michael Ryan had 9 years earlier, the Dunblane massacre hit the country much harder as his victims were 5 and 6 year old children, and one of their teachers.
Following the massacre there was the usual media outcry about how people could legally own these “weapons of mass destruction” and despite some high profile people trying to voice reason, they were shouted down. A campaign (the “Snowdrop campaign”) started to get all guns banned, led by a woman who everyone assumed was a mother of one of the children… in fact she was a local lawyer who jumped on the bandwagon… their campaign motto was “if it saves one child”…
Again, the media were influencing the minds of the sheeple, and the politicians realised this. The problem was, this was an election year, so both political parties realised that the party that was seen to do the most “to protect the children” would get most votes.
The party in power at the moment was the Conservative party under John Major, and they proposed to make it more difficult to get firearms, and possibly to ban centre fire pistols, but keep .22’s, as they were used in the Olympic shooting events. They started the process of the Firearms Amendment Act 1996.
The Labour party, led by Tony Blair announced that they would not make the massacre a political issue… but then invited the head of the Snowdrop campaign to speak at the Labour party conference…!!
Eventually Labour won the election, and Tony Blair passed the act that also banned .22 pistols.
(Actually pistols were not “banned”, but Section 5 was changed to include firearms with less than 12’’ barrels and 24’’ overall…. So all normal pistols became Section 5… I hope you paid attention to my earlier post..
)
By this time I was fully into shooting, and had a collection of 7 pistols (Glocks 17 and 21, S&W 686 and M19, Walther PPk, Pardini Fiocci and an .22 Erma Colt Commander copy, which I intended to teach my kids to shoot with.)
Again, the Police had a complete list of everyone’s pistols, so they contacted everyone and told us our options. We could hand them in and get compensation, or we could export them out of the mainland. Some people did take the export option, I knew of a couple of top IPSC shooters who actually emigrated and took their guns with them, and some of the Olympic shooters joined foreign clubs and exported their guns to them so they could go shoot them abroad.
The rest of us took the compensation. To be honest, the amount of compensation wasn’t bad for the value of the guns…. They published a list of guns available in the Uk with their new price, and gave us a percentage of that. (I can’t remember the actual figure.) If, like me, all your guns were second-hand, you could get more than the gun was worth.
You also had an option of a flat £150 for any firearm, or you could take a 3rd option if you had a pistol that wasn’t on their list, or had specific extra value… either historic, or highly customised. These would be individually assessed for value.
Also, accessories and reloading kit qualified for compensation and ammo….again with pretty good prices.
I, and most other people were finding every last bit of scrap brass to throw a bullet and primer in to hand in for the extra cash….
I kept my .38/.357 loading setup as I planned to get a Marlin underlever.
I ended up with £4500 in compensation which was paid pretty quickly as I’d gone for the list price option. It seems that those that had special value pistols had to wait years for their valuations and payments.
I felt very aggrieved losing my pistols, but in defiance I went straight out and spend my compensation on rifles… those bas$%^&ds are not going to stop me shooting…!!
A quick Bio:
I'm 57, married for 31 years, 2 grown up kids, (One still at home, one left the nest) and a mad Springer Spaniel..!
I've worked for the same company for 40 years in various departments and I'm currently in IT.
I started shooting air rifles when they were longer than I was tall…!! Continued into my teens, then joined the local Air Cadets (think ROTC) where I shot .22 and .303 rifle.
Left the Air Cadets at 17, took up Archery for a few years, then gave that up when work and girls took over my interests
In 1987 I joined the Royal Auxillary Air Force, (the Reserve Forces) where I qualified in every small arm the RAF could provide (Browning pistol, Stirling SMG, L1A1, Bren, GPMG), and also qualified as a range safety supervisor and military instructor.
I also joined the RAF Pistol club, and started my love ( and collection) of pistols.
In 1994 they disbanded my R.Aux.A.F unit, so I used the extra time to concentrate on competitive pistol shooting, covering everything from UIT slow fire to IPSC.
Qualified as a NRA Range Officer.
After losing my pistols in 1997, I bought a Marlin 1894CS underlever and Ruger 10/22, and we started shooting the old pistol competitions with pistol calibre rifles… these became known as Gallery Rifle events.
I still shoot these events now whenever I can, and also now I’m back up to 7 firearms… Marlin, 10/22, Cz .22, WASR, MVP LC, and 2 “long barrelled” pistols… (12.5’’ barrel, 24.5’’ overall
) a .38 Taurus 66 and a TSC 1911 copy in .22.
I hope my extremely long waffle hasn’t bored you, and you’ve learned something… if you have any questions that I haven’t covered, let me know…
Regards,
Daryll.