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Question for British firearms owners

salop sniper

New member
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
2
Location
Shropshire, England
Welcome to the forum and greetings from sunny, dry Arizona salop sniper:)!

Just one question: what are the stop-and-search laws there?

Your open to be searched at any time although the officer should have reasonable grounds, am not a police officer so cant quote chapter and verse.
How ever there are so few police in the uk and they are so thinly spread with so much paperwork etc that your unlikely to ever get stopped unless you have done something or drawn attention to yourself.

In some areas in a bid to stop knife crime the police will do random stop and search`s in a bid to get knives off the street (you cant just have a knife or anything that is or could be used as or conceived as a weapon). Personally I have nothing to hide so have no problem with being searched and I would also be suspcious of anyone not wanting to be searched as I would feel they had something to hide.

As a legal & licensed shotgun and firearms holder in the UK I have to tell you that generally it feels like 98% of our population would prefer it if no one other than the military had firearms and enven less of the police than what we have currently, the UK is not a gun/firearm friendly place sadly and it is very much a nanny state am very sad to say.

ATB

Matt
 

DocWalker

Regular Member
Joined
Jul 6, 2008
Messages
1,922
Location
Mountain Home, Idaho, USA
Your open to be searched at any time although the officer should have reasonable grounds, am not a police officer so cant quote chapter and verse.
How ever there are so few police in the uk and they are so thinly spread with so much paperwork etc that your unlikely to ever get stopped unless you have done something or drawn attention to yourself.

In some areas in a bid to stop knife crime the police will do random stop and search`s in a bid to get knives off the street (you cant just have a knife or anything that is or could be used as or conceived as a weapon). Personally I have nothing to hide so have no problem with being searched and I would also be suspcious of anyone not wanting to be searched as I would feel they had something to hide.

As a legal & licensed shotgun and firearms holder in the UK I have to tell you that generally it feels like 98% of our population would prefer it if no one other than the military had firearms and enven less of the police than what we have currently, the UK is not a gun/firearm friendly place sadly and it is very much a nanny state am very sad to say.

ATB

Matt

Can you just see it now, Gordon Ramsey and his set of chef knifes running down the street as he is being chased by a couple of officers trying to arrest him for having sharp things that cut....sad
 

rightwinglibertarian

Regular Member
Joined
Mar 22, 2014
Messages
827
Location
Seattle WA
Personally I have nothing to hide so have no problem with being searched and I would also be suspcious of anyone not wanting to be searched as I would feel they had something to hide.


That idea sets a dangerous president and is the idea of guilty before being proved innocent. If a police officer decides to search me he will either provide probable cause or he won't do it. "I don't know what you have on you" isn't reasonable and also unlawful.

An officer must comply with several guidelines prior to and during a stop and search,

  • the officer must tell the person the grounds for the search
  • the officer must inform them of the object of search (to find drugs, offensive weapon etc)
  • the officer must show the person their warrant card if in plain clothes or requested;
  • the officer must tell the person their identity;
  • the officer must also tell the person to which station they are attached,
  • the officer must tell the person that they are being detained for the purpose of the search

https://www.askthe.police.uk/content/Q487.htm
 

Grapeshot

Legendary Warrior
Joined
May 21, 2006
Messages
35,317
Location
Valhalla
That idea sets a dangerous president and is the idea of guilty before being proved innocent. If a police officer decides to search me he will either provide probable cause or he won't do it. "I don't know what you have on you" isn't reasonable and also unlawful.
Know that you meant a dangerous "precedent."

WE in the USA have a dangerous president.

He would make our laws so stringent that we would wish we enjoyed your RKBA freedoms.
 

marshaul

Campaign Veteran
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
11,188
Location
Fairfax County, Virginia
Personally I have nothing to hide so have no problem with being searched and I would also be suspcious of anyone not wanting to be searched as I would feel they had something to hide.

I've lived in the UK. There, as here, it's virtually impossible to be innocent of all crime. Legislatures have, over the years, passed so many laws they themselves don't even know or understand them all.

Letting law enforcement search you is asking them to look for any possible violation of any law they might discover. It has next to nothing to do with whether one is "doing anything wrong", unless you subscribe to the rather silly notion that the law dictates right and wrong.

Furthermore – and this comes from an American perspective – there was once a strong notion in our country that laws should be minimal, and should exist only to provide recourse for citizens who are violated in some form or other. (This is in marked contrast to the Platonic view that the law should serve primarily as a means for the sovereign or ruling class to arbitrarily engineer society, by punishing people who fail to behave in the prescribed manner of the day.)

This is one of the reasons behind our Fourth Amendment: to discourage arbitrary "law enforcement", and instead depend on prior evidence – which in practice could only be obtained by something like the sworn statement of an aggrieved victim (or perhaps that victim's corpse). This had the effect of making it very difficult – in principle – to enforce laws against most mala prohibita acts. (This makes sense if you remember that many of the folks involved our revolution had illustrious careers as smugglers under British rule.)

In short, the law was supposed to be a tool for victims and a peacekeeping constabulary/sheriff; as such it was ultimately a reactive instrument. Today, our betters (smug in the knowledge that they best know how to determine and achieve optimal outcomes) have perverted the law once again into a tool to serve proactive "law enforcement". The law is no longer a passive instrument waiting to be picked up by the genuinely aggrieved to seek some sort of restitution or justice, but is instead a self-actuating entity whose will demands enforcement, "just because".

The English common law, post-magna carta, operated under a similar principle. Any sort of punitive legal action required the wholly-autonomous approval of (at least) one jury, who settled grievances (nearly always initiated by an aggrieved party) primarily according to their own understanding of custom. For a time, English juries rarely engaged in the practice of "law enforcement".
 
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rightwinglibertarian

Regular Member
Joined
Mar 22, 2014
Messages
827
Location
Seattle WA
Know that you meant a dangerous "precedent."

WE in the USA have a dangerous president.

*groans at the joke* quite right

Letting law enforcement search you is asking them to look for any possible violation of any law they might discover. It has next to nothing to do with whether one is "doing anything wrong", unless you subscribe to the rather silly notion that the law dictates right and wrong.

Exactly. Fight them every step of the way. Britain needs to learn about people power again.
 
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