Shooting & Fishing: Some don't know their arsenal from their elbow

You probably noticed this; the number of legally held guns in Scotland has risen. Please note, legally held. Should we care? Not one whit. I would be far more interested to know how many illegally held guns there are out there.

As no one is going to put their hand up to owning a bunker full of AK47s, we shall just have to hope they don't work very well. Which they probably don't.

Only the other day Adam Busby, son of one of the founders of the Scottish National Liberation Army (SNLA), was jailed for threatening the First Minister by sending him two shotgun cartridges.

But Mr Busby doesn't actually seem to have possessed a gun. Even if he had it is doubtful he would have known how to use it, even if it worked.

I once had to sit through the trial of another member of the SNLA who had unsuccessfully attempted to mortar bomb a hospital but couldn't read the instructions. They found a few old smouldering rags and a tin of paraffin in a scaffolding tube. He did, however, have a collection of derelict guns – what is always known as an arsenal – found when they raided his house.

One of them was an AK47 which was very impressive, although it did not work and the prosecution was very contemptuous, not least because it was a Nigerian copy of a Chinese copy and hence rather low on the wow factor scale.

It was actually pathetic. And he almost got away with it because the judge, the late Lord "Tiger" Morison, managed to misdirect himself on some point of law that no one had noticed and came back into court to tell us. (Presumably he also gave himself one of his famous wiggings).

Anyway, gun crime in Scotland has actually gone down. This means either, as suspected, most people with illegal guns are posturing ninnies and can't/dare not work them or, your run-of-the-mill ned simply prefers a knife.

The drop in gun crime has, however, allowed the First Minister to link low levels of crime with increasing numbers of police. But this drop in crime for whatever reason doesn't really help our old ministerial friend Kenny MacAskill who is determined that Scotland must have its own gun law.

Quite apart from driving a deliberate wedge between legislation north and south of the Border, stricter regulations – as stricter they would be, otherwise what's the point? – will brass off expensive foreigners, let alone friends, relations and paying guests from the south who come to shoot and spend money and generally spread a little joy.

There now seems to be less and less justification for new legislation, particularly with Mr Salmond saying things are getting better.

Neither are the police being very helpful on the subject. John Corrigan of the Association of Police Chiefs says firearms are used in a tiny fraction of all offences and we must all try and keep things in proportion.

If crime is going down and the number of guns is going up perhaps the "Don't play with guns" campaign being run by police and field sports organisations is having some effect.

Sadly it is only a matter of time before another junkie with an airgun takes a pot shot at a child and we will all be back where we started with Mr MacAskill demanding Scotland's own firearms equivalent of the unworkable Dangerous Dogs Act.