Letters: Cynical ploy of the gun lobby

Sir: The perverse logic of the Shooters' Rights Association and its London PR lobbyists defies belief.

In declaring an intention to proceed against a Scottish police force for alleged negligence over the Dunblane killings (report, 13 August) it is, in effect, seeking financial redress from the force. It follows that since Central Scotland police force is funded from Scottish public revenues, any costs arising either from the legal process or, God forbid, from the imposition of an award, will have to be extracted from all of us living or working in Scotland, including the parents of the children killed and wounded at Dunblane.

I could begin to understand the sense of proceeding against individual senior police officers who ignored advice from those in the lower ranks who felt that Thomas Hamilton was not a fit person to hold a firearms certificate; there might have been some sort of honour in that course, though it would certainly have been a less lucrative option for Guy Savage and his associates. However I would hope our judicial system, Scottish or English, will see this cynical ploy for what it is.

We are told that there is a pounds 600m firearms industry employing 50,000 people. How much of this relates to non-imported combat handguns, rather than perfectly legitimate guns used for game sports and vermin control? Since a large quantity of handguns are presumably sold to police and military users, and will continue to be sold even if a ban were imposed, it seems unlikely that we are looking at the wholesale destruction of an industry.

DAVID J BLACK

Roxburghshire