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Olympic Free Pistol to return? |
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Written by Mark Dennehy
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Saturday, 10 July 2004 |
 A well-known target shooter, Frank Brophy, has won his High Court case regarding getting a licence for a Toz-35M olympic free pistol.
Okay, so the basic story is that Frank applied for a firearms licence for a Toz-35 pistol. The Toz-35, for those who don't know, is a Russian-made single-shot .22 calibre pistol, specifically designed to compete in the Olympic 50m Free Pistol event. It's about 44cm long, 16cm tall and 12cm wide, and weighs about 1.2 kilos. It's been enormously successful since its release - you walk along the firing line at this year's Olympic Games in Athens and up to half of the firing line will be using Toz-35s of one flavour or another. At the recent Athens World Cup, 26 out of 62 competitors used the Toz for 50m Free Pistol, and the only reason that there wasn't more is that the Toz isn't manufactured any more and they're becoming difficult to get. Here's what they look like:
The licence was initially refused, as per usual, but Frank appealed the decision (which meant going straight to the High Court, as there's no other appeals process for licencing, since your local superintendent is the sole authority for licencing according to the Firearms Acts).
The refusal was quashed, with the consent of both parties, and the Superintendent will now reconsider the application with this case in mind. It looks very likely that Frank will be granted the licence this time around, and this would mean that .22 free pistols were now permitted once again. Since free pistol is shot on a standard 50m range, we could be up and having competitions before the end of the year, all else being equal. This does, of course, rest on the decision of the superintendent, and as soon as we know the decision, we'll report it here.
However, this does look like the best piece of news on the legal front this year!
Unfortunately, someone always gets the story wrong...
This does seem like Mr. Burke just got given the wrong facts. There hasn't been a wholesale change in the licencing laws or policies. The NTSA is drafting a letter to the editor detailing what's actually happened in response to this, and we'll put it up here once it's published, which we're told will be in tomorrow's Tribune.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 26 September 2007 )
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