Thomas Docherty – the Labour MP for Dunfermline and West Fife – is proposing a Bill in the House of Commons that will set a minimum age for owning a shotgun certificate at 14. It is a piece of legislation proposed because Mr Docherty believes “our society is not comfortable with the principle of young children handling lethal weapons.”
Now, I don’t want to get into the semantics of what and what isn’t a lethal weapon – although it ought to be noted that in the hands of young children quite a few objects have the potential to be made lethal – but I would like to suggest that society is also uncomfortable with MP's creating laws based on their own, heavily subjective, principles. In fact, I would like to go further and say that I think it very poor that Docherty has chosen to target young people who enjoy shooting, for a bill that is without any evidential or factual basis.
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