AHPP wrote:Dictionary doesn't matter. 300mm/600mm does matter.
I say I'd win. No defeatism please.
Why does 300mm/600mm matter? Nobody is saying LBPs or LBRs are section 5 - obviously they
do pass the size limits laid down in 199/7. But the legislation governing the possession of firearms by those who do not hold those firearms on their FAC, under the gun club exemption, specifies only that they may possess rifles and muzzle loading pistols (you can
read it here). So for this exemption to apply they must not only be legal, but also 'rifles' (or muzzle loading pistols). Nowhere in law (or a dictionary) is a rifle defined as any gun, or even any gun with a rifled bore, that meets the 300mm/600m test.
If a term is not defined in law, we and the courts must look to dictionaries and common usage. Every dictionary, or at least the great majority of them, will define a rifle as a firearm with a rifled bore
designed to be fired from the shoulder. This is also the meaning in common usage. If someone has a handgun with no buttstock and a rifle with a buttstock and I ask them to hand me the rifle, we all know exactly which one I am referring to. If I said to someone "Look at this rifle," and then presented them with a handgun, they would look confused and say "But that's not a rifle." Indeed the proof of this is internal to the law: If LBPs and LBRs are legally 'rifles' then lawmakers would have had no need to specify rifles
and muzzle loading pistols, since the latter would have been covered by the former.
And then there's original intent - what was the intention of lawmakers in writing that law the way they did? If they simply wanted to apply the exemption to all legal firearms, they could have done so by just saying 'firearms' or 'firearms to which section 1 of this act applies'. But they did not, they specified only rifles and muzzle loading pistols, even though other types of firearm like canons, shotguns, muskets, long-barreled handguns etc were and are legal. That suggests a clear intent to exclude these other varieties of firearm from the exemption and counts against any linguistic gymnastics hoping to define a handgun as a rifle.