FECKING WNNNNKERS

[stealthy1 3,964]

Also strange that the shrapnel is not lodged in the soft tissue, and only seems to be imbedded  in bone. 

[walshie 2,804]

35 minutes ago, stealthy1 said:

Also strange that the shrapnel is not lodged in the soft tissue, and only seems to be imbedded  in bone. 

Looks almost setup, you mean? Exactly what I thought.

[stealthy1 3,964]

56 minutes ago, walshie said:

Looks almost setup, you mean? Exactly what I thought.

 

Glad it's not just me then. 

[Ron Weasley 83]

I've been out of the UK for a few years, so I'm not fully aware of the current issues surrounding the legality of airguns, but it doesn't take an expert to see that the link between the images of those swans and airguns is tenuous at best.  It could be a BB gun, I suppose, and as others have said it is unlikely to be a shotgun due to the shot pattern.

Whilst this case clearly isn't directly an airgun incident, the sad facts are that airguns are used maliciously and illegally by the kind of people that we certainly don't consider to be a part of our tribe.

For this reason, I am not opposed to tighter regulations on airguns.  In Australia you have to have the same license for an airgun as for a centrefire rifle.  To get that, you have to attend a firearms safety course, prove your identity, have a criminal record check, have your storage facility inspected, wait 28 days for your license to be issued and then apply for a permit to acquire the gun.  That might all seem to be a bit much for an airgun, but I don't object to it at all.

I'm not suggesting that I think the UK should go down the same path, but some kind of tighter regulation would be a good idea.  Presently, the barriers to entry are too low, and they allow scum bags to get their hands on guns too cheaply and too easily.  

I didn't come from a shooting family, but I did come from a responsible family that understood the nature of our sport.  I received my first air rifle, a Gamo Cadet, as a gift from my parents on my 9th birthday.  Looking back, I suppose technically they owned an air rifle that they bought coincidentally around the time of my 9th birthday and they kindly allowed me to use it.  I was only allowed to use it under supervision for a number of years until I had demonstrated that I could handle the gun safely and wouldn't do anything stupid.  This was my introduction to my hobby that has been a part of my life ever since.

Around the same time, some other kids in my school (and I went to a school on the rural border of Suffolk and Essex in a village where everyone knew everyone and everyone was nice) also owned airguns.  Their parents - although nice people - obviously didn't have quite the same attitude, and it wasn't long until local cats were being shot and injured.  I'm pretty confident that these kids are no longer into airguns.
When I moved to Norfolk, maybe three years later, I became friends with a couple of brothers at my school.  I've since learnt that they weren't the nicest of people - but as a youngster you can be a bit naive of that stuff.  Their father bought them each a B2 rifle and encouraged them to ride around the village on their bikes shooting at ducks on the riverbank, road signs or whatever they wanted to do.

That's a long anecdote to say that being of a particular age doesn't make you responsible - and irresponsibility breeds irresponsibility.

So if the barriers to entry were higher, it would weed out some of these kinds of people and help to protect our sport for us.  Of course, this doesn't take the how-ever-many-thousands of airguns that are already owned by morons away, but it would be a step in the right direction and it would perhaps give the police the powers to remove them when they become aware of them.

As a community, I believe that it's on us to be united in condemning these kind of incidents whilst demonstrating that we are responsible and that we conduct our shooting within the law, without slinging mud and resorting to profanity (as tempting as it is!).

[Deker 3,478]

Who knows what went on here but those pellets have nothing to do with an airgun, who the hell wrote that article?

[Baldcoot 2,352]

A friend of the rspca /rspb wrote this rubbing his hands ,,revisiting the photo,s it looks like a headshot then all the others are a string of faked .Only the shooter or not will know the truth but the publicity is out there and enough non shooters will Believe and we will pay the piper regardless fake or real images.

Coffin nails for shooting are easy to find this is a stake through the heart job and even if proved to be a total fabrication the damage is done imho 

[bigmac 97kt 13,786]

9 hours ago, Ron Weasley said:

I've been out of the UK for a few years, so I'm not fully aware of the current issues surrounding the legality of airguns, but it doesn't take an expert to see that the link between the images of those swans and airguns is tenuous at best.  It could be a BB gun, I suppose, and as others have said it is unlikely to be a shotgun due to the shot pattern.

Whilst this case clearly isn't directly an airgun incident, the sad facts are that airguns are used maliciously and illegally by the kind of people that we certainly don't consider to be a part of our tribe.

For this reason, I am not opposed to tighter regulations on airguns.  In Australia you have to have the same license for an airgun as for a centrefire rifle.  To get that, you have to attend a firearms safety course, prove your identity, have a criminal record check, have your storage facility inspected, wait 28 days for your license to be issued and then apply for a permit to acquire the gun.  That might all seem to be a bit much for an airgun, but I don't object to it at all.

I'm not suggesting that I think the UK should go down the same path, but some kind of tighter regulation would be a good idea.  Presently, the barriers to entry are too low, and they allow scum bags to get their hands on guns too cheaply and too easily.  

I didn't come from a shooting family, but I did come from a responsible family that understood the nature of our sport.  I received my first air rifle, a Gamo Cadet, as a gift from my parents on my 9th birthday.  Looking back, I suppose technically they owned an air rifle that they bought coincidentally around the time of my 9th birthday and they kindly allowed me to use it.  I was only allowed to use it under supervision for a number of years until I had demonstrated that I could handle the gun safely and wouldn't do anything stupid.  This was my introduction to my hobby that has been a part of my life ever since.

Around the same time, some other kids in my school (and I went to a school on the rural border of Suffolk and Essex in a village where everyone knew everyone and everyone was nice) also owned airguns.  Their parents - although nice people - obviously didn't have quite the same attitude, and it wasn't long until local cats were being shot and injured.  I'm pretty confident that these kids are no longer into airguns.
When I moved to Norfolk, maybe three years later, I became friends with a couple of brothers at my school.  I've since learnt that they weren't the nicest of people - but as a youngster you can be a bit naive of that stuff.  Their father bought them each a B2 rifle and encouraged them to ride around the village on their bikes shooting at ducks on the riverbank, road signs or whatever they wanted to do.

That's a long anecdote to say that being of a particular age doesn't make you responsible - and irresponsibility breeds irresponsibility.

So if the barriers to entry were higher, it would weed out some of these kinds of people and help to protect our sport for us.  Of course, this doesn't take the how-ever-many-thousands of airguns that are already owned by morons away, but it would be a step in the right direction and it would perhaps give the police the powers to remove them when they become aware of them.

As a community, I believe that it's on us to be united in condemning these kind of incidents whilst demonstrating that we are responsible and that we conduct our shooting within the law, without slinging mud and resorting to profanity (as tempting as it is!).

The thing is there are millions of air rifles out there

and even if they do put some sort of license in place 

1..they will never police them all

2 ,,the police dont have the resources to put this into place

3 ..and not enough officers to control it all or the time to do so

and a lot of rifles will go under ground

this kind of shit will still go on

do you think for one min that all air rifles in Scotland are under license

not a chance .

atvbjimmy

[walshie 2,804]

There's definitely one airgun pellet in the head. It's anyone's guess what the other stuff is. It all looks too conveniently spaced out for it to be "pot luck" shooting.

Also you have to consider how many of those "shot" it would take to kill the poor swan. Not as many as there are in the x-ray, that's for sure, so was someone shooting or planting shot after it's death?

[Deker 3,478]

11 hours ago, Ron Weasley said:

I've been out of the UK for a few years, so I'm not fully aware of the current issues surrounding the legality of airguns, but it doesn't take an expert to see that the link between the images of those swans and airguns is tenuous at best.  It could be a BB gun, I suppose, and as others have said it is unlikely to be a shotgun due to the shot pattern.

……………………...

There is nothing wrong with the spread and that pattern for a shotgun, it is distinctly possible/probable, BB is much more unlikely due to the number and position of shots.

I cannot deny there is what could be a single air gun pellet at the back of the head which could have been a dispatch shot, perhaps the shotgun didn't do the job 100%.

Edited December 4, 2018 by Deker

[walshie 2,804]

9 minutes ago, Deker said:

There is nothing wrong with the spread and that pattern for a shotgun, it is distinctly possible/probable, BB is much more unlikely due to the number and position of shots.

I cannot deny there is what could be a single air gun pellet at the back of the head which could have been a dispatch shot, perhaps the shotgun didn't do the job 100%.

I thought that to begin with, but there are well over 100 shot evenly spread. Unless the shot was taken from directly under a low flying bird, I would expect the shot to be on one side. I would also expect the bird to be dead before it hit the ground.  

Apart from that, do you know any shotgunners who carry an airgun for despatch? If you do, I bet they aren't the sort of people to kill a family of swans. 

There's something very fishy about it all.

 

[Deker 3,478]

13 minutes ago, walshie said:

I thought that to begin with, but there are well over 100 shot evenly spread. Unless the shot was taken from directly under a low flying bird, I would expect the shot to be on one side. I would also expect the bird to be dead before it hit the ground.  

Apart from that, do you know any shotgunners who carry an airgun for despatch? If you do, I bet they aren't the sort of people to kill a family of swans. 

There's something very fishy about it all.

 

It could just have been swimming, or walking/sitting on land for that sort of a pattern, could easily have been shot full body from behind, perhaps there was more than one person and someone else had some sort of airgun!

Whatever, I don't personally see anything particularly suspicious about the shooting itself. 

What remains is the apparent senseless shooting and then dumping of a family of swans!

Edited December 4, 2018 by Deker

[Mark_mjs93 164]

On 02/12/2018 at 20:41, bigmac 97kt said:

They all ways say air guns

dont they know the dif between air gun pellets and shot gun shot

any thing to bring an end to our sport .

still dose not take away that a family of swans have payed the price at the hands of scum

wannkers they dont want there guns taken off them they want them wrapped round there necks

this is all the antis need more ammo to get to us

atvbjimmy

As they dont know their arseholes from the elbows Jimmy Its no surprise they haven't a monkeys on guns. This is no different to the trophy hunting debate that's ongoing. The media are running in their direction with it and making us honest, responsible shooters look like idiots. Absolute Nightmare but the heat will die down in 6 months as usual. Long and short is the RSPCA are pushing their agenda on this rather than acknowledging that this is some utter prat who is no friend to the majority of the shooting community. Personally I love swans... Have a proper lairy one at my local club lake, thing will storm into your swim like he owns the place, turn over buckets and s**t in your bivvy then storm off to do it to someone else, but he's part of the club now and we wouldn't do without him. Surprised he's not mentioned by name in the club book yet. 

[bigmac 97kt 13,786]

26 minutes ago, Mark_mjs93 said:

As they dont know their arseholes from the elbows Jimmy Its no surprise they haven't a monkeys on guns. This is no different to the trophy hunting debate that's ongoing. The media are running in their direction with it and making us honest, responsible shooters look like idiots. Absolute Nightmare but the heat will die down in 6 months as usual. Long and short is the RSPCA are pushing their agenda on this rather than acknowledging that this is some utter prat who is no friend to the majority of the shooting community. Personally I love swans... Have a proper lairy one at my local club lake, thing will storm into your swim like he owns the place, turn over buckets and s**t in your bivvy then storm off to do it to someone else, but he's part of the club now and we wouldn't do without him. Surprised he's not mentioned by name in the club book yet. 

I love the swans and all song birds 

why the hell do they do it

simple things please simple minds who ever did this dose not have a mind

and simple is to good for them

just wish i could get my hands on them not for the air gun world but for my own satisfaction

and beat the shit out of them and then some .

And its just as bad for the shot gun lads as well who in there right mind would turn a shot gun on a family of swans

if it was a shot gun

risk loosing every thing and spend time in side its not just air rifles

that will go under ground looks to me shot guns are all ready there

as i cant see any one that has a sgc doing this .

In a hole i think this could  have the potential  feck all of shooting sports

and all because some senseless c**t that dose not have the brains to know right from wrong

atvbjimmy

By the way Mark that swan sounds like a right character lol

[Mark_mjs93 164]

Seconded Jimmy. Yeah he's a proper character haha the lads all have an unspoken rule to leave a swim be if he's in it. Mostly cause if you don't he's likely to grief you all night haha 

[Ron Weasley 83]

11 hours ago, bigmac 97kt said:

The thing is there are millions of air rifles out there

and even if they do put some sort of license in place 

1..they will never police them all

2 ,,the police dont have the resources to put this into place

3 ..and not enough officers to control it all or the time to do so

and a lot of rifles will go under ground

this kind of shit will still go on

do you think for one min that all air rifles in Scotland are under license

not a chance .

atvbjimmy

You may well be right Jimmy, but I fall into the camp that thinks it is better try than just accept that this is a part of life.  Even something simple like providing ID and requiring gun shops to keep a register of what had been sold to who would be a help.  Granted, that doesn't account for the guns that are already out there, but it might help in preventing any escalation of the problem.  And if we, the responsible airgunners and the airgun industry implemented something like that voluntarily then it would show some willing that might release some of the pressure.

Am I a dreamer?  Probably!