Scots airgunners changing to big bore rifles

We understand that around 30 percent of Scottish airgunners have taken out a firearms license since Air rifle licensing was brought in and we decided to ask why?

The answer was surprisingly simple. The air weapons license costs £72 and the firearms license is £88 and that’s not really a big difference. But is that a reason to switch to big bore rifles? No it’s not. So why are they switching? We decided to dive in a bit deeper to find out. It wasn’t rocket science, we just asked the shooters.

James Walker (Stirling)

When the licensing first came out I had good reason to get the license. I do a lot of pest control and have three shooting permissions. I mostly shot rabbits so an air rifle was perfect. I stayed with the air rifle license for two years and although I had some fox problems on my permissions my love for air rifles meant I was happy with what I had. Police Scotland however have been changing the way they are doing checks and at my renewal time they asked for doctors’ certificates and mental health checks and to my surprise they asked me to get a gun cabinet and mentioned alarms. Up till then my air rifles only had to be kept out of sight of casual visitors and a trigger lock was good enough. My take on it was that if I had to get cabinets and doctors certificates and referees for an air rifle why not spend the extra £16 quid and get the full firearms certificate and at the same time spend another couple of quid and a shotgun or two. This is exactly what I did.

I did invest in an alarm but what it means now is that if I get broken into by the bad guys instead of stealing my HW100 sub 12 air rifle they can possibly get away with that along with two shotguns and my .243 rifle. It’s madness. I am lucky that I do have good reason to own these and wasn’t surprised to learn that 30 percent of air rifle owners have done the same thing. I think if air gunners had the permissions for bigger bore rifles and a reason to have them the figure would be nearer to 75 percent.

I am a member of an air rifle club and loads of people in the club have done the same thing. If Police Scotland didn’t keep changing the goalposts they wouldn’t have bothered. The criteria for owning an air rifle has changed with doctors’ letters and extra security stealthily creeping in.

Our shooters name has been changed and we have had pretty much the same reply from every shooter we asked. Feel free to tell us what you think in the comments