Liverpudlian shows off gun (courtesy vice.com)

According to vice.com, the British youth in the image above was jailed for possessing a fairly classy-looking shotgun and other (unspecified firearms) after the Old Bill spotted the photo and other similar snaps online. And that’s all we know about that. As the article’s called Everything You Need to Know About Guns and Gangs in the UK, you’d expect a bit more intel. Fat chance, mate. What author Tim Noble does tell us all comes from the mouth of “firearms consultant” David Dyson. There’s not a lot new info to hoover from the Noble’s Q&A, save maybe this . . .

What about antique firearms? There was a story recently about how a load of them had been converted for use by gangs.

Yeah, the bulleted cartridge has been around for well over one hundred years, so things that you could call antiques are actually still capable of being used. There’s an exemption to various provisions of the firearms act that allows somebody to posses an antique firearm without any form of certification, as long as it’s possessed as a curiosity ornament. Criminals have picked up on this and started buying guns, then manufacturing ammunition for them. This is why there are more antique guns being recovered in criminal circumstances than there were previously.

So anyone could buy one of these guns?

In order to sell these guns lawfully as antiques, the ammunition has to be obsolete. That’s fine, but there’s a lot of ammunition that can be modified—you can buy modern cases and shorten them with a pipe cutter, then load them in a .44 Russian caliber revolver. Effectively, you’ve modified ammunition so that it can be used in a revolver that was never intended to use that ammunition. But as soon as you have that “antique gun” together with ammunition for it, it becomes unlawful, and you’re looking at a mandatory five-year minimum sentence just for having it.

Seems like an awful lot of bother to me. And the fact that “there are more antique guns being recovered in criminal circumstances than there were previously” doesn’t tell me a thing, really. Except that you can’t stop the signal, criminals-use-of-gun-wise.

34 COMMENTS

  1. For an Empire that the sun never set, Britain losts it’s prefix. Never to be Great again.

    • Britain hasn’t been great since King Henry VIII. Everything kinda started with him leaving the Vatican.

        • Battle of Britain. British forces on Malta sustained “Battle of Britain” level of operations for nearly 3 years.

          The Brits were alone against the Germans until Hitler screwed the pooch and invaded Russia. Hitler was also nuts enough to declare war on the US when he had an out in his treaty with Japan.

          Our greatest contribution to the situation was to keep both countries fed so that they could survive to fight.

        • At Dunkirk a few things fell into place. Logistics were exhausted for Germans requiring a pause, the French fought a heroic delaying action and British citizens sailed shallow draft boats to get men off the beaches.

          The Battle of Britain showed English planning, planning and technical achievement could maintain brawl with Germans and come out ahead.

        • Like, 75 years ago? Sort of makes the point, huh? Where did they get the guns and ammo, BTW?

    • This kid grew up in a country where guns are outlawed. You can’t expect him to have even a smidge of gun safety knowledge.

    • God, but that whole movie pissed me off; buncha retards retarding around, all over, and into each other. Even the criminal ‘bad asses’ came off as a bunch of emasculated pussies, the guy with a BREN about as macho as the dork taking him on with a BB gun. Made all British just seem like pathetic children, blaming all their problems on weapons (like, literally every plot event in the movie was driven by a weapon; it was stupid). It was like someone in the Office Space world tried to write a gritty gangster comedy based on their white-collar experiences.

      • Thank you! I thought that I was the only person that wondered if I could get that time back.

  2. Well duh,,, I just love the .45acp round. That n 30,06, And before you all start this ” thats all hes got stuff. Nooo, if I cant gitter done with a Garand or 1911,send me back to skool n have a do over

  3. Law abiding citizens found in possession of such “antiques” will be jailed indefinitely, hardened violent criminals in possession will be run from.

  4. The UK, What a bloody Police-State ! Talk about the illusion of being free…CCTV surveillance at every street corner! No wonder Europeans fled the UK/Britain to start the American colonies. If anything the UK/Britain, and the Monarchy know…Is how to extinguish personal freedoms, and Liberty…For centuries…Look at it today…Now see how their Colonial descendants are trying to make American look like the UK-EU/NWO Utopia that is currently Great Britain…Fight the Future….

  5. Criminals with antique guns… Well, at least it would be classy and picturesque, compared to Jiminez JA380s and so on. Kind of like how British architecture is whimsical and frumpy (no really, hammer beams, tiny gardens, etc).

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