From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>I am getting highly peed off with the MoD and the police and the HO
waffling on about cost recovery. It is a total red herring. ..........
Who wanted the Firearms (Amendment) Acts 1997? Not shooters, that's for damn
certain. All you ever hear is waffle from these self-appointed guardians of
public safety about how it was the public who wanted it over our objections -
fine, then the PUBLIC should pay for it.
This is not a service to shooters, it is a control over our activities that
we derive no benefit from at all. The supposed benefit is to the public,
therefore it is not unreasonable to suggest they should bear some of the
costs. Steve. <<
I made just this argument back in 1994 when there were rumours of a massive
increase in fees. Here is an extract from the my correspondence.
Me to MP (forwarded to Home Office)
"The firearms legislation exists at the demand of the electorate to provide a
system which tries to prevent unsuitable people from acquiring firearms. The
preservation of public safety is therefore the sole reason for the
legislation. The law-abiding, sane people who are accepted as having a
legitimate reason for holding firearms should not have to pay any more for
the administration of this system than any other member of the public. They
derive no more benefit from the system than any other member of the public.
..... "
Lord Ferrers (Home Office Minister) to my MP
"I can understand Mr Squires' argument that, since the firearms licensing
system has been set up in the interests of public safety, its costs should be
met by the public purse rather than by certificate fees. But participation
in shooting is voluntary. The Government cannot accept that the costs which
necessarily arise from it should fall upon every taxpayer."
And my reply:
" ..... I must take issue with Lord Ferrers' refutation of my argument about
fees.
Lord Ferrers says ... that the costs of the firearms licensing "necessarily
arise from" participation in shooting. _They do not_. The system is there
to prevent the acquisition of firearms by criminals and other unsuitable
people. The fees for the certificates, however, are necessarily paid by
people other than these people. For example, if an unsuitable person was to
apply for a licence and have his application refused it would cost him
nothing. Lord Ferrers is arguing that the next person to apply who is
accepted should pay the costs of investigating and refusing to issue the
certificate to the unsuitable person as well as the cost of his on
certificate. Perhaps the government class this as the market rate for the
"service". "
I didn't receive an answer to this one!!
Cheers
David
--
Exactly, it's like the Government saying that your life is a service
provided by Government, therefore you should have to pay taxes in order
to maintain it.
The Government has intervened with shooting, it's not shooters who have
intervened with Government, therefore the burden falls upon the Government,
or more accurately the public on whose behalf they are intervening.
Clearly it is also impossible for the system ever to have full cost
recovery, because when fees are raised, more people give up shooting,
so fees have to be raised because fee revenue falls, so more people
give up shooting, etc.
The other thing that I don't understand is why it is that in the Isle
of Man for example, which has the lowest population density in Europe,
where a licensing officer probably has to drive further on average than
in about 70-80% of UK counties to visit a license applicant, their fees
are half what ours are. Nowhere that has a licensing system based on
our own has licensing fees anywhere near what we have.
Steve.
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