Are you a Lion King fan? Rifiki, the wise old baboon tended to announce, all through the movie with great pomp, that “IT IS TIIIME!” And sadly for slingshots in the UK, it is time for us, to address the elephant in our room. And that is the threat of legislative change in catapult ownership and use, because of bad people doing horrible things with catapults.
Yes, it could be worse… we could be crossbows ( I live a mile from where the crossbow murders took place, in Bushey) or even shotguns, which have a long history of abuse by criminals. Even to the point of comedy. Do you recall how Del Boy Trotter was horribly proficient with ‘Iggy ‘Iggins’ shotgun, at the posh clay shoot in the countryside? The joke was that every east-ender was a villain and thus brilliant with a shotgun.
But the wave of evil and violence and then the bragging about evil and violence as a consequence of social media, that happens afterwards has become a growing horror for the public and for the good and legitamate users of catapults, alike.
Lately, we have seen more and more press about these people harming water birds in country parks and along waterways and even people shooting each other in the face has become a thing that certain maxillofacial surgeons are becoming increasingly experienced in fixing. There have been all sorts of grotesque nastinesses and the perps need a spank.
There have been waves around the trade lately, with the BBC documentary makers covering the issue and making some efforts to cover the positive side as well as their main news thrust. Then, more recently, I became aware of a campaign by The League Against Cruel Sports.
The League have a campaign called Animal Crimewatch and purchased a WASP from their website, themselves, especially to include it in the publicity photo, which was a bit snide after what they said when the chaps were good enough to give them meeting time.
However, that is merely a charity, (no. 1095234 in England & Wales) but the really big news is the Round Table Meeting with the Home Office, presided over by the Minster of State for Policing & Crime.
I got an email inviting me to go in person to the ’roundtable on misuse of catapults’. It was from the office of Sarah Jones MP, who is the Cabinet Minister for Policing & Crime.
From the researcher’s point of view and experience, if you really want to know who is who in a scene, you grill the editor of the relevant closest outlet. After all, knowing everybody is just job number one for any journalist. And it’s one I did pretty well. I do know more people in the slingshot world, globally, than anyone. Including the Barnett people on both sides of the pond, and the Saunders folks, SimpleShot and a few Chinese players as well as all the UK major cogs.
They seemed keen to have me attend in person and also, (and here’s the scary bit) without putting it as such, I had my OWN meeting this morning, with three Home Office staffers. Their question was what did I think should be done? I think that was about getting a starting point for them. A little scary if you think about it in terms of the level of responsibility I was handed, to make some sense. The opportunity to be of some real use here, is a thing.
I spoke to a few key people beforehand, and found absolutely parallel aligning views from them, with no prompting from me.
Nobody believes a catapult ban could ever work:
1) Fred In The Shed. There are for too many many talented makers to stop them.
2) Postal imports – impossible to open every cunningly packaged box.
3) Historic working class social poacher issues and traveller traditions that run too deep to crush.
4) British levels of Civil Disobedience, not as vehement as the French, but worse than Germans’, preclude restriction. (Brits just won’t do as they are told.)
5) You can’t ban trees and leather and rubber bands. Physiotherapy and phlebotomy depend upon elastic.
I also spoke to Terry Doe who helped introduce issue one. He is a champion air gunner, lifer catapultist and editor of two airgun magazines for years. He told me about the legislative changes to airgunnery in 2007 and in the years since, that he helped shape. He reckons something WILL have to be seen to be enacted. Thus, I went into this morning’s little grill-the-editor meeting, armed with opinions.
First I threw in a small reference to target sports, 300,000 Chinese and the mental health benefits of the pastime and the hobby around the parts and how cheap and accessible it all was. And also dismissed all catapult toys and angling products as instantly easy to identify and that those aught be simply exempt from any regulation.
Then, I suggested that for one, we already had the laws in the shape of The Prevention of Crime Act (1953), Animal Welfare Act (2006), Wildlife & Countryside Act (1981) and the Wild Mammals (Protection) Act (1996) but that the lack of full judicial application of the penalties available has been part of the lack of deterrence up to now.
I suggested that the pre-2007 airgun laws about age of use and ownership could be applied to catapults and that the DEFRA instructions for what are appropriate ‘Humane Dispatch’ methods for game and vermin on licence, should be updated to specifically include catapults as well. Much as they are mentioned in the laws of the 32 states in the USA that do allow slingshot hunting. At the moment, the catapult sits in a legislative void, despite the warning on the box of a Goliath about gun smiths and not being a toy.
So, despite being fixed and postponed thrice, with this being the fourth date, the meeting is fixed for the 9th of June with a nice parking space to be saved for me at the Home Office.
I am not sure what they will do but I suspect that in the way airgun crime was equated to firearm crime, that catapults can no longer be legislatively described as ‘Toys’.
The meeting is an MS Teams one and in my email invitation, was a list of the other participants’ email addresses. So these are the folks that I have been placed ahead of:
National Farmers’ Union
RSPB
RSPCA
Angling Trust
Carp Society
Martin Salter, Angling Spokesman MP
More MPs and Senior police
DEFRA
UK Wildlife crime police
West Kent Catapult Club – Lee Harrison
UK Slingshot Association – Daran Grinbergs
Catty Shack
Jonas Osher, Maxillofacial surgeon
Like Rifiki says… The only problem is, June 9th is MeJulie’s 60th Birthday.
