chainsaws licensing

[Forest2Furniture]

Before anyone gets on their high horse about this subject, I'm NOT talking about CS tickets/licences

I'm talking about actually licensing the ownership of chainsaws in the same way as shotguns.

 

Last year I had 3 large stihl chainsaws stolen from locked premises and just a few days ago I've

had another 2 stolen from different locked premises, that's £5K worth of chainsaws in 16 months.

My insurance premium will go through the roof next year because some thieving git has had it

away to a car boot or internet sale site with my gear.

 

So I was thinking, as you do when this sort of thing happens, how do we slow down the volume of

chainsaw thefts?

If we had to license our chainsaws in the same way as shotguns are licensed, because lets face it

they're no less dangerous and the likes of ebay & facebook were stopped form advertising them for sale

the attraction of stealing them would surely be reduced.

 

It's illegal in this country to sell a knife to anyone under the age of 18 but not illegal to sell them

a chainsaw.

5 years ago the thought of someone driving a vehicle into a crowd of people as an act of terrorism

had never been heard of, now with the introduction of battery chainsaws it won't be long before some

radical fruitloop walks into a crowded street with ones of those tucked under his coat.

 

Think about it, do we want to have legislation thought out by knee jerk reactionary politicians thrust

upon us or, as a responsible industry are we going to talk about it now.

 

 

[gdh]

Voluntary registration on a database like arbsafe is a good thing to prevent theft but licences are just going too far.

 

Everything's dangerous but you can't restrict everything, in the end people should make their own decisions otherwise we'll live in a world where you can't use a drill without filling out forms and having to record every move.

[Paul in the woods]

With firearms the owners need to keep them secure. This normally means keeping them in a strong metal cabinet at home, bolted to a solid wall. If everyone kept their chainsaws like that I expect there's be less thefts. You also need to keep them secure whilst out and about, I expect if someone stole a firearm laying near your work you'd lose your licence - you don't want that with chainsaws.

 

 

[gary112]

I think licensing it might just make it more of an attraction to scumbags to nick em after all it don't stop em taking guns, the local farm to me had 7 guns and the cabinet taken last wk along with a john deere tractor in broad daylight