News

Tries hard, could do better - professor's verdict on new firearms report

Published 5 January 2011

Professor Peter Squires, professor of criminology and public policy, has given "six out of 10" to the recently-published Home Affairs Select Committee Report on Firearms Control.

Peter, who gave evidence to the committee, said: "They have gone some way to recommend a combination of tightening, whilst streamlining and simplifying, the law.

"The headline which has accompanied the report, ordered in the wake of the shootings in Cumbria and the Raoul Moat manhunt in Northumberland, was that firearms controls in the UK are in a mess. There is little of anything original or controversial in this claim but it is important to reflect upon why our gun laws (currently contained in 34 separate pieces of legislation) are in a mess.

"Two principle reasons stand out. This first is that, since 1968 when the Firearms Act – the principal legislation in this area - was passed, almost every subsequent change to our gun laws has been incident-led and incremental. Even the 1968 Act itself was passed in response to the murder of three police officers.

"To make matters worse, almost every change to the UK firearms laws has been fought tooth and nail by Britain's gun lobbies (for example, the Gun Trade Association; various shooting organisations). Advocates of shooting have also invariably complained that proposals to reform gun laws in the interests of improving public safety are knee-jerk reactions, which is a complacent little knee jerk reaction of their own, and that nothing further can be done to enhance safety and so nothing should be done. The result is that our gun laws have always been political compromises.

"A second reason our gun laws are a mess has to do with the substantial changes in the UK illegal gun supply and the problems this causes, with which the gun laws since 1968 have scarcely kept pace. For example in 1968 we had not yet encountered today's problems with realistic imitation firearms, with convertible weapons, gas cartridge weapons, CS gas weapons, reactivated weapons, and air-powered and BB weapons modelled upon authentic firearms. Today, such weapons account for around 50 per cent of our gun crime statistics and as many as 20 per cent of the crime guns submitted for analysis to the National Forensic Science are conversions.

"These are new problems, as is the pattern of use of these weapons, which are sometimes referred to as 'entry-level' weapons, and the law has simply not kept up. Provision was made in the 2006 Violent Crime Reduction Act (section 39) for the government to take a more pro-active approach to prohibiting convertible and imitation weapons, but regulations to achieve this were not brought forwards. The select committee has recommended that this anomaly be addressed, and that, in the future, de-activated weapons should only be sold through registered firearm dealers.

"Overall it seems reasonable to award the committee a mark of six or even seven out of 10. They have gone some way to recommend a combination of tightening, whilst streamlining and simplifying, the law. The committee made some general comments about the need "to tackle the drivers of gun crime, … and long-term measures to reduce domestic violence, measures to tackle the social factors which foster extreme violence and measures to clamp down on illegal drug markets and other forms of serious and organised crime" (p.57), but little very specific was referred to here. One suspects that while the committee members might share these aspirations, they would be unlikely to secure much agreement on how to proceed, even if they did have ideas about how such crime reduction could be achieved.

"With regard to licensing arrangements, the committee recommended that both shotguns and rifles be subject to the same licensing requirement. Hitherto shotguns have been subject to a less strict test of necessity and good reason and now that will be tightened up. The committee also recommended that anomalies in the law concerning the age at which people can apply for a shotgun licence (currently as young as 10) and take part in shooting events be reconsidered.

"Finally, some tightening of the law relating to firearm licence applications and renewals is recommended, including liaison and information exchange arrangements between the police and medical authorities, clearer firearm prohibitions relating to persons with criminal records (and where police criminal intelligence exists on behaviour falling short of conviction – such as domestic violence allegations).

"The committee also recommended that police forces take a more proactive line on revoking firearm certificates when evidence of worrying behaviour by licence-holders came to light, and the Home Office give further consideration to arrangements adopted in Canada in which the present and former partners of firearm licence applicants are required to counter-sign gun applications.

"In making such moderate suggestions, the Committee were effectively following the advice of the police, specifically the Association of Chief Police Officers, HM Inspectorate of Constabularies and the report by Assistant Chief Constable Whiting into the Cumbria shootings which rather cautiously recommended that adjustments be made to the administration of the licensing system rather than further fundamental changes.

"The committee did not go so far as to suggest that persons wishing to retain firearms at home should be barred from keeping ammunition at home even though this would be to remove firearms and ammunition from where, as Lord Cullen argued in 1996, they are most at risk of misuse or theft. The drawback with the committee's proposals is that they remain essentially retrospective, based upon information that was good only at the point of application, whereas a firearm licence lasts for five years before requiring renewal.

"The proposals the committee did reach are likely to increase the time and effort required to scrutinise firearm licence applications and, at a time when police resources are under pressure, the committee felt it appropriate to recommend that the licence fee be increased to reflect the cost of the administrative arrangements for processing an application.

"The committee acknowledged the limitations of gun crime data recording but did not propose changes. Home Office data will, presumably, continue to record only 'gun-enabled crime' and the many illegal possession charges and prosecutions (punishable by up to five years imprisonment) will go unrecorded, thereby misrepresenting the scale of gun crime. Nor was there any suggestion that the Home Office consistently report on the legal status of weapons misused. Evidence from gun control representatives regarding the extent of licensed firearm misuse in domestic settings (often as part of a continuing sequence of domestic violence) caused the committee some concern, but not enough to prompt them to suggest a more searching package of domestic gun safety arrangements than those referred to earlier.

"As indicated earlier, the new types of illegal weapons being used on British streets have now been acknowledged by the police and the committee expressed the hope that the new police National Ballistics Intelligence Service will go some way to identifying early and proactively tackling the newer kinds of crime guns entering the UK. Perhaps in recognition of the fact that it was academic research which first began to pinpoint the problems represented by these new weapon types, the committee encouraged the police to collaborate more closely with academics and researchers in this area, the better to pool knowledge and experience in these issues.

"Finally, although recognising that air weapons were responsible for the largest proportion of recorded firearm offences and most firearm injuries (although a falling trend), the committee declined to propose anything new in relation to these weapons. There is new guidance to the police concerning action against anti-social behaviour (air weapon misuse) while section 46 of the new Crime and Security Act 2010 entails new restrictions on under 18s using air weapons so it was thought appropriate to give these measures time to be effective before considering any further action here.

"Those then are the major themes in the committee's recommendations. How the government will respond, whether it will give time to the proposals and whether it will take all of the proposals on board or merely pick and choose from amongst them, remains to be seen.

"Whether any of the changes make it to the statute book and, if they get there, whether they make any difference to our contemporary gun crime problems, remains a whole other question."