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Annoyed at sentence for gun-firing farmer

8:00am Saturday 4th July 2009 in


Sir – As I read the article about ‘Farmer fired hunting gun to warn runners’ I thought ‘he’s going to get three months for this, but no, two years conditional discharge.

Well, I thought, he’s bound to get a hefty fine, no again – £60. The same as for not wearing your seat belt or parking on a yellow line.

I can’t quite get my head around this. You can threaten people with a gun, fire it twice and get a slap on the wrist. You carry a concealed knife on the other hand, and you can get four years in prison. There seems to be a slight imbalance here. Of course he had a good reason. He was worried that his pregnant mares in a nearby field would be startled by a few joggers plodding by. Obviously the gunfire wouldn’t have bothered any of them.

I’ve spent many years with friends running in the country, frequently rounding up the odd sheep that has strayed onto a road and once even getting a cow out of a ditch. The vast majority of runners and walkers alike don’t go into the country to cause problems. They go because they like the countryside.

I don’t know who I am more annoyed at – the irate farmer or the more than lenient magistrate who has left a gaping hole for a frustrated landowner who is having a bad day to take pot shots at trespassers.

Terry Edwards,
Hallow.

Comments(13)

BarryB says...
10:41am Sat 4 Jul 09

You must realise Terry that imprisonment no longer exists for anyone other than multi murderers, ten times rapists and mass bombers. This was done away with by stealth by this disgracefull Labour Government who told Magistrates and Judges that they were not to use imprisonment as a punishment as the prisons did not have enough cells to hold them.
Those extreme criminals who are unlucky enough to get sent down, now measure their incarceration in days and weeks and if they are lucky, whatever they get is usually halved.
This is just something else to remember this Government for when election day arrives.

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jabbadad says...
4:10pm Sat 4 Jul 09

I agree about this governments many many faults, in fact anything that they have dabbled in. However I also question these folk who wish to don their boots and Lycra and then decide which land, that doesn't belong to them and often doesn't have an outdated right-of-way act on it, apart from the wish by these runners/ramblers, to invade it. How would these people react if I and several friends decide to wander across their gardens at home? And the countryside that has cattle or any animals on has to be out of bounds to these inconsiderate hedge hoppers.


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New Kid on the Block says...
9:41pm Sat 4 Jul 09

Well said jabbadad. The trespassers who refused to leave the farmers land when it was pointed out that they were not on a footpath and there were no footpaths on that land were not exactly innocent themselves.

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jammer says...
11:27am Mon 6 Jul 09

I agree with jabbadad
and new kid on the block. The runners should have been done for trespass.

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Tulstar says...
5:33pm Mon 6 Jul 09

If he's on his own land and he has a gun license then he's entitled to fire it whenever he likes. If the runners were trespassing on his land then they have no right to whinge and moan when he fires his gun INTO THE GROUND to warn them off - they're lucky they didn't get prosecuted for trespassing.

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BarryB says...
7:36pm Mon 6 Jul 09

There is no "offence" of tresspassing unless there is damage done to accompany it and then they would not have been charged with "tresspass".
Yes, the tresspassers were cheeky but the farmer was a criminal idiot. Any sort of firearm in the possession of an angry person can lead to all sorts of things. I only hope that the Police revoke his certificate after this little bit of irresponsibility. We live in England not Dodge City.

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jabbadad says...
11:37pm Mon 6 Jul 09

Dodge City Nice One BarryB

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jammer says...
11:22am Tue 7 Jul 09

BarryB,
Does this mean I can run round anyones front garden so long as I don't damage anything?

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BarryB says...
12:14pm Tue 7 Jul 09

Jammer, it would be to easy to give a straight "YES" answer, there are qualifications. ie, if you damaged anything you would be charged with "criminal damage", not tresspass, if you caused no damage but caused a breach of the peace, on complaint, you could be bound over by a court to keep the peace. Tresspass has to be accompanied by something more specific - albeit, I am getting a bit rusty and there may well be something nowadays more specific to an offence of tresspass, gypsies,illegal raves and so on.
Under the circumstances outlined there was definately no "tresspass" offence.
If they broke fences, damaged crops, picked flora etc that would be different. There is no indication that they did anything except be where they were.

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rgdudley says...
9:31pm Tue 7 Jul 09

A landowner may use reasonable force to move you from his premises if you have committed Civil Trespass i.e. not left when asked.

I would argue that as the runners did not leave even after being repeatedly asked to do so, that letting off a gun into the ground was reasonable force.

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New Kid on the Block says...
10:52pm Tue 7 Jul 09

Perhaps one of the runners would like to enlighten us as to why they did not leave the land when requested to do so. As this seems to be at the centre of the argument.

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Olga says...
9:28am Wed 8 Jul 09

What Terry Edwards failed to point out was that in court and in statements the witnesses failed to give comparable stories about any of it apart from a gun being fired, if I remember it varied from firing in the air to firing in the ground and someone had shot whistling past them. So they managed to agree that at least one shot was fired - so do we now have to go to a Kangaroo Court and convict someone who is being incriminated by different versions of the same event?? If our justice gets to that level I hope I don't ever find myself in court with Mr Edwards on the jury!!

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BarryB says...
12:03pm Wed 8 Jul 09

rgDudley, your first paragraph is entirely correct, your second is entirely wrong.

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