Steve

The guidance to sellers is mostly to do with face to face interaction:

https://www.gov.uk/g...Final_print.pdf

There is next to zero guidance regarding distance selling.

As a seller, there is nothing suspicious about quantity alone, unless you're ordering something like 500kg and delivery is to '2A Basement Flat, etc'.

10 years ago this may have worked, but the world has changed a lot since then. There are too many 'eBay chemical suppliers' who will get hold of anything through their business and sell indiscriminately, it would be too easy to buy from one of the dodgy sellers.

Besides, it's a very unusual thing to license the buyers, think of most restricted goods, alcohol, drugs etc, it's the sellers that are licensed, and this would be a lot easier to regulate and administrate. The sellers would then have duty of care built more strongly into the licensing requirements.

You've got to ask what you're hoping to achieve with this? Are you trying to stop terrorist getting hold of dangerous chemicals? Because they'll find a way. Are you trying to reduce the number of accidents from novice experimenters? Because they'll just get eBay chemicals. It just strikes me that this would make more trouble and expense for the only people that don't deserve it. The amount of public funding required to enforce this to a level where it would actual be of national benefit would be prohibitive.

 

Sorry to be so negative :/ it's just my opinion.

Cheer up lads, I'd like to think the pyrotechnic community is a bit smarter than the terrorist community. Constraint inspires innovation. The list is very short, there could be possibilites in strontium nitrate black powder, and some stranger / exotic oxidisers being used for coloured stars.

And just to add my 2p worth to the negative side. The only terrorist attack I've ever heard using low order explosives, was the guy that blew up the gay clubs in London using powder he extracted from shop fireworks. Is this a subtle way of banning fireworks in Europe?