THE Home Office consultation Controls on Firearms threatened to seriously damage shooting sports, according to the British Association for Shooting and Conservation.

Christopher Graffius, BASC director of communications, said: "While acknowledging that Britain has some of the toughest gun controls in the world, the Home Secretary states his intention to tackle gun crime through increasing the legal restrictions on law-abiding shooting."

He stressed: "Legally held guns do not contribute to the gun crime in this country, which is largely the product of an urban drug culture where the weapon of choice is the handgun, banned from Britain since 1997."