by Deborah Hadfield and Charlie Jacoby
Paul Cox is a respected member of his community, a deerstalker and captain of the local shoot. Devon & Cornwall Constabulary are treating him like a criminal, sending armed officers to his house in darkness to grab back his guns, revoke his certificate and not give him a reason why.
The reason, however, is clear. The Home Office is about to blame Devon & Cornwall for failures that led to the mass shooting in Plymouth in August.
The police action against lawful shooters – and Paul Cox is not the only one – is a petty attempt by Devon & Cornwall to make it appear they are a functioning licensing authority. To shooters, it doesn’t look like that.
Even the letter of revocation the police sent Paul (below) includes repeated paragraphs over its two pages. It’s as if someone at police headquarters dropped a pile of revocation letters, put them back together in the wrong order without checking them and handed them to armed police to take to certificate holders’ homes.
Paul’s case is going to appeal. He has launched a GoFundMe page and, thanks to the generosity of his friends and Fieldsports Channel viewers, he has raised £850 towards the cost of his appeal.
More of our Devon & Cornwall police gun grab coverage:
Update – Kent gun grab saga drags on
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Professional pest controller Daniel Maddock has lost the tools of his trade and denied, for the moment at least, permission to own another. After applying for a firearms certificate in January 2024, because his boss wanted him to start taking on deer management jobs, he had a home visit by two officers from Police Scotland. He thought they were there to assess his security. Instead, they had come to charge him for ‘lying’ on his medical records.
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Lewis Dedman returned home after an argument with his wife to find a police car in his driveway. Kent police had come for his guns.
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Firearms licensing: the police view – FieldsportsChannel Podcast, episode 78
Three firearms licensing officers came to the stage of the Carter Jonas Game Fair Theatre in July 2023 to make the case to Charlie Jacoby
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youtu.be/c-VlnQpCK0Q With police firearms licensing across Devon, Cornwall and Dorset in meltdown, local country and gun shops are having to diversify. Martin and Chris Lamb
Firearms licensing crisis warning
youtu.be/EjbfeeA0utk With the firearms licensing system in crisis, barrister Nick Doherty fears there’s an increased risk of a tragic incident. Nick, who wrote The Firearms
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youtu.be/GCi5JQRX0Sc by Deborah Hadfield It’s time to scrap the existing gun certificate system across England and Wales and replace it with another. That’s the conclusion
The Metropolitan Police’s head of firearms licensing – FieldsportsChannel Podcast, episode 62
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