The British Shooter Pays A Bitter Price BY KEITH G. N. NICHOLSON (American Rifleman, March 1993, page 21) My deactivated 7.62 mm FN SLR [self-loading rifle, or semi-auto in USA] is next to me, its barrel drilled through and a steel peg welded into the hole to prevent a round being inserted in the breech. The extractor on the slide has been ground-off, and the slide itself ground back at 45 degrees. The gas rod has been welded up. Why? Because the British government banned self-loading rifles, and I had to have my cherished SLR deactivated. Although, of course, I still love my time on the shooting range, somehow it is now all tainted, tainted by dirty politicians and bureaucrats who interfered in my life for no good reason and took my gun away. The same could happen to you. *Hungerford*. It is a word that still rings in the ears of the British shooter. Hungerford is an old English village in southern England where on a fateful day in 1988 Michael Ryan went mad and shot 14 people. Our politicians were waiting for an incident such as Hungerford, and they gave us a new Firearms Act. They made self-loaders, amongst other things, illegal. A week after that fateful day in 1988, I was shooting with my club, and we talked about Hungerford. The other members called me a "Jonah." I was saying that self-loading rifles were going to be banned. They countered me with such things as, "They'd never get away with it," "The shooting lobby is too powerful." SLRs were banned. My particular FN [L1A1] was made in the 1950s, and it was a rare one. It was originally made to fire fully automatically, although this facility had to be blanked off because of a 1968 law. The date was set by the government on which SLRs would become illegal. What were my alternatives? For a fraction of its real worth, I could sell my gun to a dealer having a special category of authorization to hold guns not allowed to be owned by private citizens (the dealers would export them). I could myself export the gun to Belgium, keep it there and go over to shoot it with a club (each trip to Belgium would cost at least $150 with fares, food, accommodations, etc.). I could have the gun deactivated. I have not mentioned that the government did offer a very complicated "buy-in" scheme that paid $300 for a gun that might have cost $2,500 new. Here my emotions ruled over money - which the government hoped for - and I did not apply (it would have been like chatting to one's own executioner). For financial reasons I had no choice but to opt for deactivation. The day came to send my gun to the company that would deactivate it. I made a wooden box to put the gun in to send it through the mail, partly so it would not be damaged and partly as a last rite. I could detail my feelings of anger, frustration and loathing of politicians at that time, but to you, fellow shooters, I don't need to. What should, or could, I have done? Should I have hidden my SLR and then gone to prison for an indefinite term? I say "indefinite" because I would likely be held until I told them where it was. For anyone to take any stand against the power of authority is a big decision and the penalties for a man or woman and his or her family are horrendous - which is why I always admire those that do. I did not stand up to be counted. How did the British react to the politician's "work?" The following tells you. One man had many SLR rifles and had them all deactivated. He also had a very early Sharps [very rare, similar to "Quigly Down Under's" gun] in excellent condition, and he asked for it to be deactivated as well. To cut a long story short, the company doing the work told him that the gun was not covered by the new laws but he still said he wanted the Sharps done. The company pleaded with him and finally offered to pay retail price for it, all to no avail. The man finally said why. He had gotten fed up with shooting (and, if his feelings were anything like mine, not being trusted by his own government) and wanted "out." The Sharps was butchered/deactivated. Our government achieved exactly what it intended in this and many more cases. As I was writing this article, I spoke to senior people of two companies that did a lot of the deactivation work at the time. Before relating that, I will go back to 1989. A representative of one of the companies said, in effect, that then "strong men wept" because men who had been trained as gunsmiths were having to destroy the objects of their craft, and they were angry, depressed, etc. Back to now: in very long conversations with senior men at those companies, there was little anger, little bitterness and one just put everything down to "just one of those things." I was amazed by this: my own anger had *not* diminished nor my memory dimmed. Now adding to those conversations, I think of the talk within my clubs, and very little of it, well, hardly any in fact, is about the "big picture" of shooting. This does not bode well for shooting's future, does it? When those *within* take so little interest, why should others take any? In Britain the pressure is on to disarm us one little step at a time. SLRs are banned, the charity status of clubs removed, pump-action and semi-auto shotguns physically limited to two rounds, etc. And, after each little step, when the government reckons the fuss has died down, it takes another little step. I doubt that happenings in Britain make your national media a great deal, but I would recommend that all good men and true in America take an interest in what is happening to shooting here. It will happen to you unless each of you takes action, not only over each "little step" but plans for a 30- or 40-year war of attrition against you. Politicians really only care about one thing - votes or, better said, numbers of votes. Each person who is not willing to harass his political representatives, his newspaper editors and any others who attack his gun rights is one day nearer to sitting next to his deactivated gun, like me. As individuals in Britain we did nothing. We left it to others, but remember, "others" cannot vote for us.