No8 replacement: Details of the cadet forces’ new .22 rifle emerge

Details have emerged* of the replacement .22 rifle for the UK’s cadet forces – and it won’t be much different from the existing Rifle No.8.

From the original tender issued last year, we learn:

Rifles. Number 8 Rifle Repalcement (N8RR), the UK MOD has a requirement to replace the current in-service Number 8 Rifle due to obsolescence. The rifle must meet but are not limited to the following Key System Requirements (KSRs):

The system shall be able to fire the following current, in-service .22in Long Rifle (.22LR) rimfire cartridges: ‘Round .22 inch ball’ L5A2 (ADAC – 10501-02) and ‘Round .22 inch ball Tenex Ultimate’ L9A1 (ADAC – 10502-02)

The system shall not be able to accept a magazine of any type.

The system shall be based around a manually fed, bolt action rifle that is designed to be fired from the right shoulder.

The system shall have a manual safety catch that is separate from the bolt and trigger action.

The system shall be suitable for firing from the following positions: Prone

The system shall have a discrete, civilian appearance.

The weapon system shall have a modular iron sight sub-system that offers ‘Basic’ and ‘Advanced’ capability.

The system’s peak instantaneous (C weighted) noise level at the firer’s ear shall not exceed 135dBC during firing.

The system shall not be adversely affected when dropped from height in accordance with DEFSTAN 07-85, Part 4, Issue 1, Para 8.14, Para 10.4 (Drop Test).

The system shall pass a DOSG Design Safety Assessment.

This throws up a number of interesting points. First and foremost, who knew that Eley Tenex, ammunition of Olympic champions, could be ordered through the MoD supply system?

In addition, it looks like the MoD aren’t going to repeat the 7.62mm L81A2 Cadet Target Rifle debacle, where an ambidextrous stock (“equally bad for both”) was provided in an attempt to cater for left-handed firers. You’re either right-handed or you’re not shooting, in the brave new MoD cadet shooting world.

The requirement for a safety catch is also very odd, particularly as the L81 weapon rifle handling test does not include the use of the safety catch. Indeed, the training manual for the L81 explicitly warns against trying to insert the bolt with the safety catch on. This seems like a pointless requirement added to satisfy some obscure paperwork demand.

All in all, it looks like cadet shooting will continue with a prone-only single shot rifle. It’s a successful formula, so why change? The rumour mill has it that trials of rifles competing for the £6m, 10,000-unit contract will be taking place in April.

*I read it on Facebook and it’s several months old. Hey, this is a one-man blog, bite me.

** The drop test requirement amuses your correspondent. Years ago, while I was an air cadet, I read Steve Raw’s masterful history of the SA80 A1, The Last Enfield. This mentioned that Heckler und Koch discovered that the L85A1 rifle would fire if you dropped a cocked weapon from head height. Being an enterprising sort, I tried this out with an empty-but-cocked L98A1. The rifle didn’t fire when dropped; instead the foresight snapped off. Much sucking of teeth, pulling of moustaches and sprinting around the parade square ensued.

Gun licence fee hike: Annual increases on the way

The Home Office announced earlier this week that firearm and shotgun certificate fees are to be increased, as the shooting world widely expected – yet within 12 months we could be facing another large fee hike.

Along with all the publicity about new raised firearms fees coming into force from 6th April, hidden in the detail of the government response to last year’s public consultation was this line:

The Government is clear that alongside the increase processes must be put in place to ensure there is a regular review of the firearms licensing fees.

This was followed by a more alarming suggestion:

The majority of respondents suggested that future reviews should be in line with inflation. However the Government guidance on setting fees is clear that fees should be set to recover the full cost associated with providing the service to ensure that the government neither profits at the expense of consumers nor makes a loss for taxpayers to subsidise. Simply increasing fees by inflation is unlikely to achieve this…

The document’s authors do note that costs could, in theory, decrease, pointing out that contractual changes could be one reason for costs to decrease. But it gets worse:

We will then consider conducting a more comprehensive review after five years . This will look at the processes and wider framework and a decision will be taken whether the proposals from this review should go out for public consultation.

The official government announcement of the fee hike had this quote from Lynne Featherstone, the Lib Dem minister in charge of policing and firearms licensing matters:

The Government will work with police to introduce an online licensing system which will be reviewed in twelve months to assess whether costs are being fully recovered, with a view to increasing fees further if they are not.

So, in summary:

• The government is increasing fees for all types of certificate from 6th April
• It is actively trying to find a way of imposing an annual above-inflation fee increase on top of that
• There will be a “review” in a year’s time from now aimed at jacking fees up even further from the 6th April level
• In five years’ time there will be a “comprehensive review” of fees with, presumably, the intent of raising them further again

The two major membership-led shooting organisations, BASC and the Countryside Alliance, both welcomed the latest fee increase. Neither seems to have publicly addressed the massive hidden hikes which the government wants to impose on us.

This week’s settlement on firearm and shotgun fees is not a true victory. While few would disagree that a rise in the cost of a certificate to cover the reasonable cost of administering the system is probably overdue after 13 years without a rise, we are now set for five years of escalating fees – and that’s not something to celebrate.

How – and why – lawful shooters are going to get shafted

Most worryingly, telegraphing the punch in this way gives ample warning to police forces looking to use firearms licensing as a cash cow to help stave off the impact of budget cuts. We have already seen this rent-seeking behaviour from the police in the recent past.

When ACPO, the private company which police chiefs use as a talking shop to decide what laws they will enforce, first decided it wanted to increase firearms fees two years ago, its representatives quietly went to the then policing minister, Conservative MP Damian Green, and asked him to bring it in. He rejected their overtures and told them the debate would be had in public through the approved channels. This was a major setback.

ACPO then falsely declared that FACs cost £196 each to issue and started attacking the shooting public, claiming that firearms licensing “cost” everyone £17m a year in “subsidy”. When the public reaction was to ask how on earth policemen had arrived at that figure when forces such as South Wales were able to issue a certificate for £68, ACPO went conspicuously quiet for a few months. They were losing the argument and it looked as if fees wouldn’t become a profitable revenue stream for police forces. Worst of all for the police, a Home Office Fees Working Group had been established which was going to audit their shonky maths (which we subsequently learned had no basis in reality) and destroy any hope of milking the cash cow.

Around this time (mid-2014) the Labour party began latching onto ACPO’s rhetoric about the “subsidy” for firearms licensing. The similarity in language and stated intent from two supposedly separate bodies was remarkable.

What the police needed was a means of breaking the fees impasse. Then ACPO hit upon a great idea – random spot checks. In conjunction with friendly civil servants at the Home Office, ACPO had the manual of gun licensing administration – the Home Office Guidance on Firearms Law – amended to permit unannounced visits to firearm certificate holders’ homes to “check their security”. This took everyone in the licensed firearms community by surprise. At the time it was thought that the new guidance tied into frantic anti-terror activity taking place nationwide. What nobody considered was that the extra visits would naturally incur extra costs.

With extra costs to take into account, a higher baseline for licensing fees could then be set. Whether or not the police spent the revenue generated by licensing on licensing was immaterial; all money generated from licensing fees goes into the police force’s general budget. By keeping costs high through a number of labour-intensive short term initiatives, an artificial price rise could be justified to generate a profit.

Fast forward to today. Damian Green has been replaced as firearms licensing minister by Lynne Featherstone, a Lib Dem, for the last few months until Man’s general election. Her party has been making political overtures to Labour, who have been openly anti-shooting in their pre-election rhetoric. Her department – with or without her direct knowledge – has now laid the ground for a series of short-notice rises in certificate fees. Labour has repeatedly stated that it wants to jack fees up to £200 for an FAC, and if the Conservatives lose the election, the groundwork is now in place for them to do that. Police lobbyists, colluding with the Home Office, have prepared the ground for what they hope are their future Labour paymasters – see the remarkable similarity in rhetoric from ACPO and Labour earlier.

April’s rise in fees is the first rise in a long line. There is now no way for the shooting public to stop them unless politicians can be convinced otherwise. Individual shooters and the major shooting bodies need to start lobbying politicians now and fighting for inflation-only fee increases. Even that will be a desperate rearguard action.

Fee hike: You’ve got 4 weeks to get your grants – but NOT variations – in

Today the Government published the order which will increase firearms fees, as widely expected. The levels have not changed from those mooted in the past.

The table below, drawn directly from Statutory Instrument 2015/611, sets out the fee increases for various types of certificate. Click to enlarge.

The instrument was laid before Parliament today and, assuming it is not rejected by the Commons, will come into force from 6th April.

Variations are going down from £26 to £20. If you were thinking about sending in a variation, don’t do it until then!

Update

Commentary from UKSN about this increase in fees is available here. I think this has come about from the police desire to drive up backroom costs to set a high benchmark for future firearm fees negotiations.

‘Give them both barrels!’ SNP MP backs Labour gun licence fee hike

Conservative MPs last week tore into the Labour party over its proposal to quadruple firearm and shotgun licence fees during a debate in the House of Commons.

In the middle of a financial debate David Gauke MP, the Conservative Financial Secretary to the Treasury, raised Labour’s declared policy of quadrupling firearm certificate fees:

This is the key to deficit reduction and the policy that will restore public finances to health: a future Labour Government will put up fees for gun licences. How much will that raise? A whopping £17 million—except, to be fair, the shadow Home Secretary has already pledged to spend that money elsewhere.

Gauke was briefly interrupted by Labour MP Chris Leslie rising to his feet to make a point of his own, which was immediately followed by SNP MP Angus MacNeil saying “Give him both barrels” to Leslie.

Gauke shot back: “I will give way to the man who believes that the answer to our public finances is to raise fees for gun licences.

Lightly dismissing MacNeil’s joke, Leslie went on to say: “The Minister raises an important point about gun licences. It is a small amount of money but it is still worth doing. Is he saying that we should not raise gun licence fees? Is he ruling that out because he thinks it is the wrong idea?”

“It was an attempt to show how ridiculous the Labour party’s economic policy is when the only example it puts forward, apart from the 50p rate, which is likely to cost money, is increasing gun licences,” Gauke replied. “I did not really expect the shadow Chief Secretary to take it seriously that that was the big policy.”

He added:

There was a time in debating these matters when the big argument from Labour Members, their big macro-economic analysis, was that we were going too far, too fast. Now it has come down to this. What have they got a few days away from a general election? They have a policy on gun licences—that is it. What has the great Labour party come to? Gun licences!

David Rutley, Conservative MP for Macclesfield, twisted the knife when Labour did not respond on the gun licence point: “One of the reasons the Opposition are focusing on the gun licence is that they have got it wrong on just about everything else. Will my hon. Friend remind us who said it was not possible to cut spending and create jobs?”

Regular UKSN readers will know that Labour has pledged to quadruple the price of a firearm certificate despite police agreeing that such a raise would push the cost far beyond the “full cost recovery” level Labour stated it wants to meet. It should come as no surprise that the SNP support such muddle-headed thinking.

Labour MP introduces pointless firearms licensing bill

A Labour MP introduced a parliamentary bill aimed at stopping people convicted of domestic violence from getting a firearm or shotgun certificate – even though current laws already make that impossible.

Thomas Docherty, Labour MP for the Dunfermline and West Fife seat in Scotland, introduced the Firearm and Shotgun Licensing (Domestic Violence) Bill last July. With the prorogation (closure) of Parliament for the general election by the end of this month, it is entirely likely the Bill will fail.

Its full text reads as follows:

1 Prohibition of grant of firearm and shotgun certificates: domestic violence

(1) The Firearms Act 1968 is amended as follows.

(2) In section 27 (special provisions about firearm certificates), after subsection (1)
there is inserted—

“(1A) 5A firearm certificate shall not be granted to a person who has been
convicted of an offence of domestic violence.”

(3) In section 28 (special provisions about shot gun certificates), after subsection
(1) there is inserted—

“(1A) A shotgun certificate shall not be granted to a person who has been
10convicted of an offence of domestic violence.”

Current firearms laws prohibit people with a recent criminal conviction from having any access to firearms for a period of at least 5 years from the date of conviction, let alone holding a certificate.

Labour has previously announced it will ignore police advice on firearms certificate fees and jack them up regardless.

Leominster R&PC member keeps FAC after affray sentence

A long-standing member of Leominster Rifle and Pistol Club has walked free from court despite being found guilty of affray – and has kept his firearm certificate.

Clive Fletcher, 57, of Marcle Orchard, Brimfield, Ludlow was given an eight month prison sentence suspended for 18 months at Hereford Crown Court on 20th February after pleading guilty to affray, reports the Hereford Times.

According to the newspaper, two members of the club complained to the police about Fletcher after a funding request he had worked on was turned down by the club’s committee. The complainants said Fletcher, a member of the club for 22 years and its treasurer for 10, had been threatening and abusive to them after his funding request was rejected.

Two PCs visited Fletcher’s home in July 2013 and found him in his workshop, apparently working on his rifles. He was said to have become aggressive when the constables asked about the dispute, standing “12 inches” from one, who pushed Fletcher away. Both constables then drew their batons and CS sprays.

This prompted Fletcher to say he would “kill them if they used the spray or hit him”. The two constables sprayed CS gas at Fletcher and PC David Hamilton hit him on the back with his baton. A third constable arrived and arrested Fletcher.

Upon his arrest Fletcher was remanded in custody for six weeks – the equivalent of a three month prison sentence, as the Hereford Times notes. His eventual court-imposed sentence included 150 hours of community service.

Although the Crown Prosecution Service applied for Fletcher’s FAC to be revoked, the judge refused to do so.

Editor’s comment

It’s surprising that Fletcher kept his FAC despite now having a recent conviction for an offence of violence. Indeed, it’s also surprising that Fletcher’s sentence was suspended, meaning he walked free from court. Perhaps the judge sympathised with a man who was attacked in his workshop by uniformed people carrying weapons who then threw him into jail for a month and a half to await trial.

Even that sympathy is surprising, given that Fletcher has a previous conviction (from the 1980s) for assault occasioning actual bodily harm (ABH) on policemen who stopped him for a traffic offence – though Fletcher’s witnesses did state this latest offence was completely out of character for him.

Update

What’s even more surprising is that the court didn’t automatically revoke Fletcher’s FAC, as required by section 110 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. This states:

Where—

(a)a person has been sentenced to imprisonment for a term of three months or more, and

(b)the sentence is suspended under section 189 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003,

the person shall not have a firearm or ammunition in his possession at any time during the period of five years beginning with the second day after the date on which the sentence is passed.”

That’s pretty unequivocal.

‘I was being Mr Cautious’ says NRA’s Mercer over UKPSA insurance warning

Andrew Mercer has defended the NRA’s warning that UKPSA members may have been shooting while uninsured – and thereby committing criminal offences – by saying he was just being cautious and looking out for shooters.

In an interview with UK Shooting News, Mercer said the NRA became concerned about the insurance status of UKPSA members when he reviewed their NRA affiliation paperwork.

“When we looked at UKPSA they made no capitation declarations,” Mercer told us. “What I’ve been trying to get is clarity about their members’ insurance. Their constitution says they will arrange insurance for members, but if they don’t pay any capitation then their members aren’t covered by NRA insurance.”

Clubs that affiliate to the NRA declare the number of NRA members on their books along with how many non-NRA members they have. Non-NRA members attract a premium on the club’s subscription, known as capitation, payment of which includes those members within the NRA insurance scheme.

The UKPSA have previously stated that they are arranging their own insurance outside of the NRA’s scheme.

We also asked Mercer about rumours that the UKPSA had been blocked from re-affiliating to the NRA.

“We do not affiliate national governing bodies,” he said, pointing out that bodies such as the NSRA are not affiliated to the NRA. “I think it’s inappropriate for an NGB to affiliate to another. The UKPSA do their own thing so we have little control over them.”

Accordingly, the UKPSA will cease to be affiliated to the NRA from April. It appears to us that this is a new development. Additionally, the UKPSA summary of insurance cover appears to have been password-protected recently, meaning only current members can see what insurance is in place and details of what it covers.

Mercer added: “It’s not that we’re hostile, we all need to be travelling in the same direction. At the end of the day, there are people who think they are covered by insurance who are not. I’ve asked the UKPSA for their help and guidance and had nothing back.”

Dismissing suggestions that this latest spat is motivated by rivalry over the IPSC rights bid, Mercer repeated that his motivation was to help target shooting as a whole.

“It’s got nothing to do with the IPSC bid,” he said. “We are finding dynamic forms of shooting are an area of interest. We are not finding that is as a result of UKPSA activity. There are those who take a different view and they are entitled to that.”

Regular Bisley users will be aware that the NRA has revamped Butt Zero on the camp’s Stickledown Range for target shotgun. Mercer added that Cheylesmore Range is next in line for a target shotgun-friendly overhaul.

Stay tuned to UK Shooting News for more from Andrew Mercer on his plans for Bisley Camp’s Spencer Site (the former caravan Site 4 outside the RAFSAA clubhouse), the cost of refurbishing the camp infrastructure and the NRA’s plans for the rest of the shooting world outside of Bisley.

UKPSA: We have insurance, what’s the NRA on about?

The UK Practical Shooting Association has hit back at claims made by NRA chief executive Andrew Mercer that their members may be shooting without insurance – as it emerges that the NRA have refused to allow them to re-affiliate.

A statement from the UKPSA secretary, issued to members on their forum and passed to UK Shooting News by a UKPSA official, makes it clear that they have insurance in place:

“We received a letter from the NRA saying that they would not offer us affiliation renewal (from 1^st April). After their IPSC bid and their subsequent rebuffing any hand of friendship since we’re not surprised. Accordingly I’ve been organising insurance quotes for 1^st April on – unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a comparison site for this market.

Vanessa [UKPSA Chairman] then had further communications from him where he says our individual members are not insured. After double checking with the brokers they have confirmed that the Association and our individual members are covered.

We were a bit surprised that he went public with this as he was aware of the brokers’ confirmation of our cover.

At this juncture we’re more inclined to put our faith in the insurance experts.”

This casts doubt over Mercer’s statement, made earlier this week, that UKPSA members may have been shooting without insurance – and therefore committing the criminal offence of breach of certificate conditions.

The UKPSA’s latest publicly available accounts, for the year up to 31 March 2014, show that it spent £434 on insurance – a £10 decrease from FY2012-13. UK Shooting News did try comparing this to the current NRA affiliation fee for a UK association but could only make that fee add up to a shade over £400.

Editor’s comment

It’s surprising to hear that the NRA are refusing to allow the UKPSA to re-affiliate to them. There is undoubtedly bad blood between the two organisations over the NRA’s bid for the rights to host IPSC matches  in the UK, which, if it won, would remove a lot of the reasons for the UKPSA to exist.

Cutting the UKPSA off altogether escalates things to a new level. So far there is no suggestion that this extends to individuals – although I’m aware that the current NRA Target Shotgun rep was invited to leave the UKPSA.

In practice, of course, cutting the UKPSA off doesn’t make the blindest bit of difference to anyone: UKPSA matches don’t take place at Bisley, while the NRA’s writ ends at the gates of Bisley Camp.

Who benefits from all this schoolgirlish bitchfighting? Answers on a postcard, please.

On a totally separate note, it’s good to see from the accounts that the UKPSA has established a fighting fund “in order to protect the membership against any legal challenge to the sport”. Last year it stood at £108,000, with the association aiming to raise £1.5m in case the worst happens.