8:00am Saturday 4th July 2009
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.
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