Handguns in the UK

I'd intended to post about this when the story first broke here but forgot. Here it is, better late than never.

As you are aware London has been chosen to host the 2012 Olympic Games. To do so the law has "been relaxed" by the Home Secretary to allow for the handgun events to take place. All handguns- save for blackpowder- are totally bannned in England. Of course this is an event of international prestige so the laws are being "bent" to permit guns.

The British Olympic shooting team has also asked for the laws to be changed- as it stands the British handgunners have to practice elsewhere-

Team members currently spend about 20 to 30 days a year training in Switzerland, and receive no funding because their events are illegal in the UK.

Japan, which has similarly draconian gun laws, permits its elite shooters a special exemption. Britaion however, will not.

A Home Office spokesperson said the laws had been voted in by an "overwhelming majority" of MPs.

"The banning of handguns wasn't a matter of eroding personal freedoms, it was a matter of ensuring that what had been shown to be a terrible, if statistically small, risk was removed," she said.

So Britain will allow handgun shooting in the UK when it suits them (i.e. when foreign nationals are present) but it will NOT allow its own citizens the same rights. In the world of the Home Office spokesperson a law has never been overturned and laws cannot be "relaxed" for the sake of the sport in the UK. Not for British citizens anyway.