Sunday 23 August 2009

"It's possible. The point is getting away with it. And speaking as a professional, that's a very important consideration."

Never mind speeders or road hogs, now there is a new peril facing British motorists – signpost snipers.

The RAC Foundation has warned of the growing phenomenon of gunmen firing at road signs at locations across Britain.
And not with paintball guns either...
Philip Gomm, from the RAC Foundation, warned that it was only a matter of time before a motorist or pedestrian was killed.

"This isn't a motoring misdemeanour," he said. "This is serious criminality that endangers life and it has to be treated as such.

"The evidence is very disturbing. To learn that an irresponsible minority of drivers and their passengers, armed with guns, are touring around and shooting up signs is alarming and what is particularly worrying is the increasing use of high-velocity weapons.
Why would someone do this? Well, boredom and 'because they can' don't make for very readable scare stories in the meejah, so the RAC needed to pump it up a bit.

Matt Seiber, who compiled the report for the RAC, has read a bit too much Freddie Forsyth:
"What is worse is the fact that they are virtually untouchable and they know it. Whatever they are testing or rehearsing for goes unseen and totally unreported and that is fundamentally wrong as well as being sinister and downright dangerous."
Hmmmm. Better look for a man buying watermelons...

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Yes, the meejah do love a good scare story, don't they doh. Facts are lost on them.

Dr Evil said...

Crazy story. The only legal pistols these days are single shot 0.22 and they are pretty much useless. Rifles are legal if you have a licence but they are very unwieldy in a confined space.

Are these numpties referring to high powered air pistols or gas pistols? The police class some models as firearms even though there is no percussion involved.

Pity they don't take out a few cameras as well.

Anonymous said...

I loved the media comment about a 23mm "Rifle bullet" it's a Russian Cannon calibre and in the unlikely event that it is true the Cannon is over 4.5 metres long and weighs almost a ton! Even our local plod could detect that (eventually)! As to the 9mm pistols being used, didn't St Tony of Dosh get all of these banned so they don't exist do they... Of course it could be (dah dah) CRIMINALS and how could the plods catch them? I know whip up a scare story in the media and the Brown Bottler can make guns extra special double illegal that will stop things. After all it worked so well banning guns last time didn't it? Oh, no it just left a lot of very well armed criminals who know they are untouchable.

North Northwester said...

But ordinary members of the public shouldn't possess firearms in the first place - they'd only act irresponsibly and possibly kill and armed inner-city youth in a fit of road-rage racism or something.

Much better leave gunfire to the professionals, ie, those who need weapons to make a living.

Angry Exile said...

Anon, glad I'm not the only one who picked up on the 23mm rifle bullet, though I saw it in The Telegraph. I suspect it was .223 and somewhere along the line some tit thought it must be a typo of a metric measurement and "corrected" it instead of looking into it, and everybody else simply printed the incorrect correction. Another example of journalists who not only know jackshit about what they're writing but are too fucking lazy to do much more than wholesale copying and pasting from press releases, as well as too fucking thick to think 'hang on a mo, that can't be right, that's a bullet nearly a fucking inch thick' and doing a bit of basic fact checking.

JuliaM said...

"Are these numpties referring to high powered air pistols or gas pistols?"

It wouldn't surprise me - and gangstas needing to practice before taking out a rival gangleader would hardly practice shooting at a target as high in the air as a road sign, would they?

Their target is far more likely to be walking along the pavemet.

"...the Cannon is over 4.5 metres long and weighs almost a ton! Even our local plod could detect that (eventually)! "

And it's unlike to fall into the hands of the Southwark Krew for the purposes of eliminating rivals!

"...I suspect it was .223 and somewhere along the line some tit thought it must be a typo of a metric measurement and "corrected" it instead of looking into it..."

You expect journalism from the MSM? Even it it would only mean getting on the internet?

Stan said...

This reminds me of a story told to me by a South African colleague. After living in the UK for a decade or so, he decided to return to SA for the first time about five years after the end of apartheid.

While touring around Jo'burg (I think it was) in his rental car he found himself in a slightly downmarket part of the town. He pulled up at a red light - even though there was no traffic - nervously looking around at the pedestrians when suddenly the traffic light exploded showering glass and debris all over the place. He looked behind him to see a man leaning out of a pick up truck behind him with the still smoking barrel of a pump action shotgun pointing at him.

"You can go now!" the shotgun wielding driver shouted and my colleague rapidly pulled away!

And the police here think they have problems!

Incidentally, my colleague has never been back to SA since.