This is a copy of a letter sent by a minister to a guy called Matt:
From what I can read between the lines, all we have to do is set up a club..Get membership cards printed, then we can buy legally anything we want ? Otherwise we could join the To-ken society (£10 to begin with then £5 annually) and get the same privileges?
In practice, the public liability insurance will be held by the re-enactment society with the aim of the defence being that the insurance covers any liabilities that the society has to participants if they are injured during a re-enactment. The insurance does not have to cover situations where one participant is injured by another for which the society has no liability. The definition of “third parties†is the same as that used in the context of realistic imitation firearms in the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 therefore we are following this precedent of what is a working defence.
We envisage that a shop keeper would need to satisy themselves that any person wishing to buy a sword with a curved blade of over 50 centimetres in length after 6 April 2008 meets the criteria of one of the defences in the Order covering collectors, martial artists and historical re-enactors. For martial artists and re-enactors, this could be a membership card of a genuine club or organisation plus/or a copy of that club or organisation’s public liability insurance. The onus would be on the shopkeeper as it would be them committing the offence if sell to wrong person and not the buyer.
Regards,
Jonathan Batt
Public Order and Offensives Weapons section
Public Order Unit
