GB Captain Ashley Dagger, at the far end, and members of the GB Team get some practice at the Western Winner prior to the start of the International Season
shooting that my home club has seen is being experienced elsewhere; in our case this has led to the Committee appointing additional Training Officers to develop the new members. I am entirely satisfied at the standard of training the new shooters are getting on what might be termed the traditional GR firearms but I then saw a shooter, recently elevated to full membership, enthusiastically practicing with his recently acquired LBR and it dawned on me that the licensing rules had prohibited him from receiving any live fire experience with such a firearm during his six month probationary period.
The current interpretation of the licensing rules does not permit a shooter to use an LBR unless they have it on their personal certificate. An LBR cannot be held on the club FAC, thus the only experience that new shooters get is theoretical, so much for the ever safety conscious licensing authorities who then issue authorisation to acquire an LBR to a recently qualified new shooter.
The story has a happy ending and the shooter I saw practicing did have the sense to take council from the training officers about the appropriate use of his brand new LBR, but the point is he was not compelled to so do. What then if such a shooter applied from a range safety certificate from the Club Chairman – what would you do? Yes not permitting the use of LBR by new shooters seems to me to be counter intuitive and perhaps the licensing authorities need a re-think.
Then I thought of the LBP and wondered if the same rules applied to them. The LBP has additional complications of safety devices and holster use that is probably best learned under direction in practice conditions rather than in competition. So I thought I would ask my local licensing department what they thought and contrary to expectation they were very receptive to the idea of permitting the acquisition of a Browning Buckmark LBP on the Club FAC for use in training probationer members. The logic being that the parent firearm for the Buckmark is
Target Shooter 95
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