Recommendation 19

One solution could be a two-tier system of licence fees. This could require those who shoot for leisure to pay the full cost of their firearms licences (with no cost to police forces or the taxpayer), while individuals who shoot for work could have their licences fully or partly funded. However, Dr Shedden told us that a two-tier system of fees, differentiating between those who shoot for leisure and for work, would be “fraught with difficulty”.72 Fraser Lamb of the Scottish Association for Country Sports stated that “[a] lot of farmers shoot game recreationally—for want of a better word—so how do you differentiate between the farmer who goes out with his pals and someone who just goes driven shooting, or controls vermin, pest species on behalf of a farmer?”.73