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Baronet’s rifle PR stunt backfires as armed police swoop

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By John Glenday, Reporter

August 8, 2013 | 2 min read

A baronet who posed with an antique rifle outside his country home as part of a PR stunt designed to attract more visitors has received a visit of an unwelcome kind, an armed response unit.

Sir Benjamin dipped into his armoury of 150 firearms ostensibly as a precaution after purported sightings of a ‘Big Cat’ in his grounds, gambling that the move would draw Big Game hunters to his estate.

Posing for a candid snap with the weapon the Baronet thought nothing more of it, until a wedding in his grounds was later disrupted by armed officers demanding to see his weapons stash; which includes muskets, a tommy gun, blunderbusses, a 12 bore shotgun and an AK47 assault rifle.

The raid was initiated after the media got wind of the stunt, reproducing the photograph and prompting a member of the public to complain of feeling threatened. This saw officers arrange

It was the fourth time his property had been raided by Avon & Somerset Police over concerns surrounding his horde, despite previously proving that they were all deactivated.

Commenting on the episode Sir Benjamin said: “The guests had been warned before. I said, 'I’m warning you, they may come in helicopters, there may be roadblocks, they may be fully armed, they may start shooting so keep your head down.’  We tried to keep the police out the way. You’ve got to really, it makes people nervous, they might stop drinking.

“They [the police] wanted to check every gun in the bar and the house … there are guns on the wall everywhere. They would have been all crawling around the bar and the house, pulling things off the wall, which is not very helpful.”

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