UK Competitive Shooters Can't Train at Home
The UK doesn't have a monopoly on this kind of stuff, of course, young shooters from California train in Nevada and Arizona.

London (CNSNews.com) - Lawmakers here want to change gun-control laws - some of the strictest in Europe - that force Britain's competitive shooters, including those hoping to compete in the 2008 Olympics, to train abroad.

Nearly all private ownership of handguns is outlawed, and shooters say they must travel to other countries when they want to practice, a time-consuming and expensive exercise.

Labor Party lawmaker Kate Hoey, who has been campaigning for a relaxation of the law, said she expected to hear within weeks whether the government would consider lifting the ban for sport shooters.

Britain traditionally has had stringent gun-control laws, but the handgun prohibition was put in place after a deranged former scout leader shot 16 school children and their teacher to death in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996.

[snip]

John Leighton-Dyson, a coach with the national shooting team, said around 100 athletes were affected by the ban, in addition to the next generation of up-and-coming competitors.

Each year, shooters spend thousands of dollars to travel to Zurich, where their cartridge-shooting pistols are stored and where they may legally train.

For the rest of the year, team members train using air guns, which he said was having a detrimental effect on their skills.

"It's nowhere near sufficient," he said. "We're not last in the competitions but we're not first either."

And maybe, just maybe, they'll get a clue. (But probably not.)

The snipped part:

Hoey said the ban was understandable given the circumstances but argued that it had done little since then to curb the trade in black market firearms.

"The pistol ban was one of those knee-jerk things," she said. "I think people realize now that the pistol ban hasn't done anything to reduce gun crime."

And then there's the downright retarded:

When the English city of Manchester hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2002, the government temporarily relaxed the ban. Even so, competing shooters were constantly watched by armed police marksmen, even during practice.

and:

The current push to relax the ban comes as the government is preparing to further tighten controls, by banning possession of imitation guns.

Oh, b-rother.