The UK’s Shotgun Clampdown Is Indicative of Much More

In their latest search to find some part of British life on which they haven’t yet rained down misery, Labour is seeking to discourage shotgun ownership. From the time of the 1689 Bill of Rights, it has been the law of the land that Englishmen may bear arms. Since 1870, modest laws have incrementally come in to qualify this old liberty, but the latest decision of Labour is in keeping with their obsessive desire to crush all remaining liberties in these isles. 

‘I’m leaving the UK’ has become a genre on YouTube. An astonishing number of short videos, usually made on smartphones, show people standing in a field or sitting in the car, explaining to their viewers why they are leaving the United Kingdom. These videos have appeared in the last six months, and the reasons given for leaving the UK are invariably that the country’s infrastructure is collapsing, the National Health Service isn’t working and no one will reform it, the streets are unsafe, the police do not address crime, taxation is too high, houses are too difficult to obtain, quality of life is getting ever worse, cost of living is too expensive, the government interferes with every aspect of private life … the list goes on. People are miserable—that much is clear.

One of the few redeeming aspects of life in the UK is the old-fashioned pub. But with over 400 pubs every year closing across these isles, these are oases of everyday culture that are fast drying up. When I go and sit quietly in the corner of my local pub and eavesdrop on the townsmen and countryfolk, there is a common theme to all the conversations I overhear: this country is going to hell in a handbasket.

Certainly, part of the problem is that the current government has combined extreme centralisation with acute incompetence, which, if you think about it, is probably the worst possible combination of any given government. Senior front benchers in parliament have been found to lie about their former careers, the cabinet cannot put together a workable budget, Ed Miliband wants to cover what’s left of England’s internationally admired countryside in solar panels and wind farms, and the government is coming after the poor, the retired, and the farming community with a wrath of which no one can make sense. As words like ‘remigration,’ ‘repatriation,’ and ‘deportation’ are fast mainstreaming across Britain’s public square, Labour continually fails to address the country’s serious immigration problem, and meanwhile, Prime Minister Starmer has publicly dismissed rising concerns about the rape of British children and vulnerable young people by Pakistani gangs as a “far-right bandwagon.”

Astonishingly, despite their manifest incompetence, the government continues to look around for anything left in the UK that they haven’t either crippled via badly drafted legislation or destroyed altogether. Hence, they’re coming after home educators, as the number of children moving from school- to home education has doubled recently in most regions of the UK, more than tripled in the Northeast, and risen by 85% in the East of England. They’re coming after the churches, axing funds for their upkeep. They’re coming after rural folk, not only by forcing small farms to fold due to the new inheritance tax imposition, but by persecuting the fieldsporting community with plans to outlaw trail-hunting—the very sport Labour told hunters to switch to when they persecuted houndsports two decades ago.

It is as if our powerholders lie awake at night, terrified that there might be some remaining part of British life that they have not regulated or destroyed. The latest in their attack on the countryside is that of interfering with shotgun certificates. This is a remarkably stupid thing to do, given that rural tourism in the British countryside is largely lucrative on account of the country’s famous shooting heritage. With wild fowl like duck, snipe, and woodcock, and reared game like pheasant, French ‘red-legged’ partridge, and the slowly re-emerging English ‘grey’ partridge, Britain is a much-coveted shooting destination for fieldsports enthusiasts all over the world. A typical day of shooting red grouse—a bird unique to these isles—on the Yorkshire moors costs around £15,000, with an addition of around £200 per brace, and wealthy Saudis like to come and put eye-watering amounts of money into the local economy at such shoots. Hence, on inspection, it is no surprise that game shooting annually contributes £3.3 billion to the economy and supports tens of thousands of rural jobs. And yet, in its pathological appetite for destruction, Labour is coming after it.

The government’s plan is to introduce restrictions by “aligning the control on shotguns with other firearms,” it announced. The proposed policy would license shotguns in the same way as rifles. In turn, an applicant would need to provide good reason for owning a shotgun, with each gun having to be licensed separately. The purchase and holding of ammunition would also be limited and there may be additional restrictions around the storage of shotguns. There is even talk of each region having a centralised firearms storage centre to prevent people from keeping their guns on their properties. The government already announced late last year that it would more than double the cost of firearms applications, and now with this new policy of more tightly regulating the ownership of shotguns, firearm ownership in the UK looks to be challenging to the point of near-impossible.

There are over 610,000 legitimate gun owners in the UK, nearly all of whom hold firearms because they either shoot gamebirds or clays. The government is coming after them and their way of life whilst police routinely fail to deal with the issue of illegitimate gun possession by those who unlawfully retain arms for bad reasons. Rather than frustrating the lives of illegally gun-possessing miscreants, the government’s focus is on tweed-clad fieldsportsmen who readily declare all their guns. 

So, again, the Labour government of the United Kingdom has found an aspect of life in these isles which it has not yet rendered miserable, and has predictably moved in. Little wonder that Brits are fleeing this ancient kingdom in shocking numbers. According to one estimation, almost a quarter of UK adults are looking to leave the country in the next five years. Hopefully, when Reform UK gets into power four years from now, as it most probably will, there will be enough of the country left following Labour’s scorched earth strategy for Brits to consider returning. For now, I don’t blame anyone who’s buying a one-way ticket out of here.