Be thankful for what we have

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Noreaster

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Sitting in a seminar about conservation the speaker told us about his life in England. Specifically he mentioned the right to own a firearms (long arm.) You must belong to a club, (which is very upper class only,) or have enough land to hunt on. Basically unless you are a royal or major land owner you can't own a rifle or shotgun. He talked about coming to America and finding work and being able to hunt and fish, (believe it or not fishing was hard to do over there,) and own firearms.

When I think of oppression the UK doesn't come to mind, but look at how they are and then consider our own rights as Americans. What a great Country we live in.
 
our ancestor's noticed that problem back in the 1700's. they dealt with the problem of the crown and we owe it to them to see we never relinquish the rights they won for us.

i've known several brits who appreciate the freedoms we have in personal rights and sporting privledges, they show no animosity to our heirs.;)
 
Basically unless you are a royal or major land owner you can't own a rifle or shotgun.
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Not quite - there are plenty of folks who are not a Royal who own guns for sporting purposes - whether that is sport shooting or hunting or both. While a shotgun certificate is necessary to own the guns, once attained, that is it. Handguns are very restricted. Rifles are about the same as shotguns
 
Personally, I think it is difficult to go hunting in the U.S. I've known several enthusiastic hunters, yet none of them were particularly anxious to have more hunters out there. And really, if you've never been hunting, you sort of need someone to help you to learn. Not everyone grows up with parents or relatives who hunt.

Public access to beaches, trails, and waterways is a touchy issue and in Great Britain, considerable success was achieved by laws allowing access to certain hiking trails, very similiar to the way a few long distance trails were established in this country. I don't know the situation in other countries. Access to beaches in the United States is a particularly sensitive problems and well-to-do folks who happen to own beach-front property never want the unwashed enjoying the ocean in front of their cottages. It is sort of the same thing the way people who own property next to parks, common property and such places (and city sidewalks) tend to push their boundaries as far out as possible, though I'm sure no one here would do such a thing, other than to clear lanes of fire.

British gun magazines are full of advertisements for shooting leases, so shooting (as they define it) is still alive in the U.K., but it helps to have a lot of disposable income.
 
Basically unless you are a royal or major land owner you can't own a rifle or shotgun.
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BULL!!!

My FIL and BIL both own multiple rifles and shotguns. Yes my FIL has some property, 3 acres, but my BIL lives in London. Sorry, your wrong.
 
Hey Noreaster,

As a couple of people have already pointed out you are a little wide of the mark on this one I am afraid. I am a British shooter (who first shot in Tennessee), living in the UK, so I have first hand experience of shooting culture in this country and how it differs to shooting culture in the United States.

To say that you must be upper class to shoot is just not true, nor must you own land. I can certainly see where these misconceptions come from, the only sections of society with a shooting heritage are rural folks (poor, rich and everything in between) who shoot practically and for sport and the upper classes who shoot mostly for sport, however neither are required, there are solid historical reasons why shooting is more popular amongst those groups. It is open to everybody who wishes to get involved.

Despite this, the UK shooting community is very aware of its place in society, the fact that it is decidedly not mainstream and struggles to appeal to a broad audience. As a result the UK shooting fraternity is exceptionally friendly and welcoming to those with a genuine interest in shooting sports. (We have a different cultural relationship with firearms here, people own guns for specific sporting purposes, no others). The community also makes vigorous and successful efforts to get young people involved, so shooting sports are in act flourishing these days. I myself have experienced this in the last few years being in my early 20's and despite living and growing up in a city and having no family connections to shooting sports, I have been able to get involved. (This may sound a little ridiculous to some Americans, I can see why, but things are just different over here when it comes to shooting).

Whoever mentioned that you need a good bit of disposable income is 100% correct, it ain't cheap. This means, as a recent graduate who now works in a car factory to make ends meet . . . its tough, but it can be done, I can still shoot every week if I want.

As for fishing, I am afraid, again, you have got the wrong end of the stick from your British contact. Fishing is popular over here, I grew up fishing with my Dad and cousins, plenty of other people did too. About three miles away from where I am sitting right now there is a large fishing match on the river near enough every weekend which attracts dozens of entrants from all over the country . . . and I live in the middle of a major city. We may not have very liberal firearms laws in the UK, but what we certainly do have is protected public access to land/water beyond commercial and immediate (around the home) private property. Land, waterways etc are at a premium here that they are not in your beautiful, continent-sized nation. We are a island about the size of Florida packed tight with 60million people. It has taken a long time, but these days anybody can roam freely across the countryside and fishing is an easily accessible sport.

This is a point upon which British and American people easily miss each other, despite having similar instincts on many things in many ways. Most people in Britain most certainly do not consider themselves oppressed by the firearms laws. For the overwhelming majority of the people it is simply a non-issue, doesn't matter, doesn't come up, doesn't touch their lives. This is the lack of firearms culture compared to the United States, and it works for Britain. The laws are made by a representative, democratic system which generally (and definitely in this case) reflect the wishes of most people in the country. It ain't perfect, we have our own major problems over here with all sorts of things; because of our culture, firearms legislation just is not one of them.

I personally have my own issues with the gun laws in this country and as a result I might well end up living somewhere else for at least a portion of my life, however regardless of my own taste in sports I recognise that it works for the country.

Regards,

Scouse
 
I guess I stand corrected. The person delivering the seminar was very specific about how hard it was to own a firearm and hunt in his own country. The closet he came to hunting in his home land was a pellet rifle and pigeons. He has been here in the US about twenty years now and lives in the North Woods of New England makes a living in forestry and conservation.
 
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There were some good replies here from the U.K. about shooting and public freedoms generally. I was the one who said you might need a lot of disposable income to be a shooter in the U.K., but then, you need a lot here, too, currently more than I happen to have.

An obvious difference, already mentioned, is how we have so much more elbow room in the U.S. In places here where it's more crowded, laws tend to be more strict and not just about firearms and they have been for a long time. Laws regard driving are generally more strict in most of Europe, for instance, although I'm not sure you would describe them as more "conservative." And while Great Britain is considerably more crowded than the United States, on the average, it really isn't that much more crowded than the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast part of the U.S. In fact, if you travel across the northern part of England, say, from Newcastle westward to Carlisle, you would see a lot of empty, rolling countryside with more sheep than people. It was bleak in August and I can only imagine what it's like in winter. And to think the Romans garrisoned forts in that region for two hundred years.

I am afraid however that in spite of our similiarities, we barely speak the same language.
 
BlueTrain: Not sure if I am reading this right (apologies if not) but I meant ''liberal'' in the classical sense of most free, not in opposition to ''conservative'' and not analogous to the political left.

That stretch of country you mention is stunningly beautiful and probably does have more sheep than people, but at the same time we don't have great stretches of unincorporated land. I suppose it is interesting that shooting etc is most popular outside of the big population centres of the USA that you liken to the UK in terms of population density (if that is not the case as far as you are concerned please do tell me, its only an impression I have from my experiences of the USA, which didn't last much more than a month).

I suppose both countries are very diverse and different sections of each are better able to relate to each other than others. In my experience our peoples tend to get on pretty well.

(Sounds like you might have visited Hadrian's Wall at some point, I hope you enjoyed it, awesome part of the world apart from the consistently rough weather!)
 
I did in fact visit Hadrian's Wall but it wasn't the high point of the trip.

Typically, in the United States, conservative means being against anything new and is not always exactly the opposite of liberal and hardly the same as reactionary but that's just the way I see it. In the U.K., when we arrived, the recent riots were all over the news. Most of the commentary from politicans has a decidedly conservative slant, I thought, in that many rioters had previous records and were just out for the looting. A few days later, the news was about other things, like inflation and later still, the fighting in Libya.

You are probably aware that fuel (gas & diesel) prices in the U.K. are two to three times what they are in the U.S. (at the current exchange rate) but even with driving about 900 miles, it was the single lowest cost of the trip, even less than the total admissions we paid.
 
After seeing the firearms regulations of different states and different countries, I can't complain about living in Washington State... we are able to easily utilize firearms for various tasks - personal defense, sport shooting, hunting, even collecting, etc. I must say that I do see the principle behind the Brady Bill, & I have no problem with a waiting period on any firearm purchase.

However... when purchasing the following firearms, you have to wonder about the logic of the laws. Please consider the following:

1) "Thank you, sir, here is your rifle, have a nice day" (after purchasing an FNH PS90 - 26 inch overall length carbine - with a 50 round magazine, considering that a variant of the 5.7x28 cartridge is capable of piercing body armor)

2) "Thank you sir, you are going to have to wait 5 business days before taking home your handgun" (after purchasing a Browning Buckmark .22lr with a 10 round magazine)

Is it just me?
 
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