British gun laws under spotlight in wake of Cumbria shootings

The police disclosure that Derrick Bird held a gun licence for the past 20 years raises questions about whether the complicated but not necessarily rigorously enforced system of firearms certificates needs to be tightened. For example, it is possible in some forces, including Cumbria, for a shotgun or firearm certificate which lasts for five years to be renewed by post, raising the possibility that 10 years could pass without any home visit by the police or any other direct personal contact with the gun owner. Official Home Office policy is that an applicant should normally be visited at home to check, among other things, that the weapons are securely stored. But advice to renewal applicants on the Cumbria police website appears to acknowledge that it is possible to go 10 years without a visit: "Common sense dictates that those certificate holders who have not been visited by the police on their previous renewal should be visited now," it says. The move to postal renewals in some forces was made in 1995 when the period for renewals moved from every three to five years to give police firearms licensing officers a chance to manage their workload. At the time the Commons home affairs select committee and the Police Federation deplored the practice of postal renewals in some forces. The issue is an example of how Britain's gun laws appear on paper to be among the toughest in the world and yet in practice means that there are still 1.3m legally held shotguns and 435,000 rifles, high powered airguns and other weapons in the country. In Cumbria there are 9,868 licensed shotgun owners covering more than 22,400 weapons. The tiny force, which has only 1,200 officers in total, dealt with 370 new applications last year of which only two were refused. There is a dual system of firearm licensing in Britain, which has been progressively tightened in the wake of the Hungerford and Dunblane massacres. The two-tier system stems from the fact that rifles and pistols and other weapons "likely to be used by terrorists and revolutionaries" have been controlled since 1920 while the "majority of firearms in civilian hands" – the shotgun – have only been licensed since 1967. The different systems means that there is a "lighter touch" regime for shotguns which are most likely to be used in farming and game shooting and a much more rigorous system of firearm certificates for the kind of weapons most likely to be used in inner city gun crime. Anyone who buys a shotgun must inform the police and apply for a £50 shotgun licence. This allows the owner to have any number of shotguns, including pump action and self-loading weapons with a magazine that cannot hold more than two cartridges. The police will consider whether the applicant is likely to pose a threat to public safety or peace, and whether there is sufficient evidence to refuse it. Every applicant must be interviewed and home visits normally carried out to check the gun is held in a secure locker. Applicants must give police permission to check their medical backgrounds. Anyone who has served more than three years in prison is banned from owning a gun for life. The process of applying for a firearm certificate is more stringent. While the police have to have a good reason to refuse a shotgun licence, it is up to the applicant to prove to the police they have a good reason to own a rifle or a pistol, that they are fit to be entrusted with one, and that they can use it safely without endangering the public. Two independent referees are also required. This dual system has been criticised in the past by the police and gun control organisations as a recipe for confusion. MPs on the Commons home affairs select committee have complained that the shotgun application process means that the police have to prove in effect that the applicant has no good reason to own one and leaves them with little discretion. It is likely that criticism of the current gun laws will focus on this area as well as an examination of exactly how many officers hard-pressed forces can spare for the onerous task of dealing with gun license applications and renewals.