UKIP’s leader Nigel Farage has apparently called for the de-criminalisation of handguns, to allow people to apply for a licence and own them legally. The way they did in the UK until 1996, when the government banned them after the Dunblane massacre. To be fair, they got close to it before, after the Hungerford shootings in 1988. It’s not as if it’s a Party political thing in the UK. Apart from at UKIP, where Farage has called the handgun ban ‘ludicrous.’<\/p>\n

I have to declare an interest. I’m against people making up facts. I’m against gibberish. And I used to shoot. Legally. According to Keith Vaz<\/a>, that means I encouraged the criminal use of firearms.<\/p>\n

This is my true confession. I warn you, it’s pretty….dull.<\/p>\n

From the age of 14 I went every Thursday night to the local Territorial Army centre, a big stone barrack block in the middle of Bythesea Road. Which was odd, as it’s an hour’s drive to the sea from there. There was a six-wheeled armoured personal carrier in a shed around the back of the building, which you could see through a gap in the wooden door that people might think an odd thing in a county town now, but we didn’t at the time, close to the Army training ranges on Salisbury Plain and the School of Infantry at Warminster, eight miles away.<\/p>\n

A man called Lord Roberts probably had a lot to do with me shooting. Back at the time of the Boer War the British Army got severely mauled by rebel farmers in South Africa, who armed with German Mauser rifles had grand sport shooting British soldiers the same way they’d been shooting game on the veldt – accurately, quickly, from a long way off.<\/p>\n

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Lord Roberts had these drill halls built all over England. Judging by the smell of the kapok matts we still had most of the original equipment.<\/p>\n

I used a BSA Martini-action rifle that belonged to the club, paid my subs and bought the single box of .22 bullets that lasted the evening, not to be taken off the premises, and put on my shooting jacket with the padded elbows and shoulders, adjusted the sling on the fore-end of the rifle so it ran tight, cinched around my left wrist and back around my left bicep to steady the weapon, then went onto the range when we were told it was clear, showed clear, opening the breech to prove there was nothing at all in the firing chamber, laid the weapon down and on the command Walk Forward we all trooped up the range to fix our targets to the wooden frames in front of the six feet of sand and railway sleepers that acted as the backstop.<\/p>\n

When we’d done that we walked back to the firing point together and when we were told we could by the Range Officer, only then loaded a bullet into the single-shot rifles, closed the bolt and settled down to get our breathing right.<\/p>\n

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