From today's THE TIMES
(cut and pasted as free-viewing is only for a few days, etc)
May 12, 2004
Shotgun owners may face tougher rules
By Tom Baldwin
OWNERS of Britainâs 600,000 licensed shotguns face new
restrictions under measures
being outlined today in a government consultation paper on firearms.
The document will also canvas further restrictions on lookalike
weapons after
mounting police alarm that they are the firearm most favoured by criminals.
It will also look at whether airguns should be registered.
A more far-reaching suggestion will be whether there should be an
age limit of 18
on the possession and use of any gun and whether anyone using a firearm must possess a
firearms
certificate.
At present a person may use a shotgun or rifle without possessing a
firearms
certificate, but only under the close supervision of a certificate holder.
Caroline Flint, a junior Home Office minister, will publish a Home
Office
consultation paper as the launch of a full debate over firearms laws and whether it
can or should be
tightened.
Although she will emphasise that the Government has not decided on
firm proposals
for action, the paper published today will pose a series of potential changes to the
law.
A key issue to be addressed is the growing concern over replica
weapons, which may
be bought without a certificate but are being converted by criminals to fire live
ammunition. The
consultation paper will seek views on whether a total ban should be imposed on the
sale, importation
and manufacture of lookalike or imitation weapons.
The Government has already made it an offence to have an replica
weapon in a
public place without a reasonable excuse but has stopped short of an outright ban.
Ministers have
been warned that there could be serious difficulties over defining in law what
constituted a replica
gun.
Todayâs consultation paper will be published alongside a thematic
review by Her
Majestyâs Inspectorate of Constabulary entitled Guns, Community and the Police. The
report by Tim
Hollis, assistant inspector of constabulary, will look at the response of the police
and community
to gun crime and make nine, largely technical, recommendations for change.
The Home Office has been conducting a review of all gun laws since
the public
outcry over the fatal shooting of two teenage girls in Birmingham last year.
The last significant reform of firearms legislation was in 1997 when
the
Government introduced a ban on all handguns after the massacre of 16 schoolchildren by
Thomas
Hamilton, whose weapons were licensed.
Initially this resulted in a fall in the number of crimes involving
handguns from
3,347 in 1996 to 2,636. But by 2002 the figure had risen to 5,871 and the shooting
community has
complained that it has been made the scapegoat for the gun culture of inner-city gangs.
The laws governing posession of shotguns has remained relatively
liberal, not
least because of their extensive use by farmers in pest control.
But ministers will be wary of picking another fight with rural
communities at a
time when the Government is preparing to make a fresh attempt to ban foxhunting before
the next
election. Mike Eveleigh, senior firearms officer for the British Association for
Shooting and
Conservation, said: âCurrent laws have been put together piecemeal and are not
effectively dealing
with the criminal use of guns, nor is the legitimate shooter best served by the
existing complex
system.
âWe can see some merits in streamlining the shotguns and firearms
licensing
procedures. The shotgun licensing system is by far the most effective of the two, but
we will need
to discuss this to ensure we have a fair and workable system.â
Police say that the greatest increase in such crime is linked to a
rise in the use
of imitation weapons and converted airguns. In London at least 70 per cent of weapons
seized by
officers are converted replicas.
Last November, the All- Party Parliamentary Group on Gun Crime
published a report
calling for a complete ban on the import, sale and manufacture of replica firearms.
Last month new anti-social behaviour laws came into effect which
included a new
imprisonable offence of carrying a replica gun in public.
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