TUESDAY 29 OCTOBER 2002

MR DAVID ROBINSON, MR JOSEPH HUGHES, MR GORDON NEWELL AND MR ROBERT IRVINE

  74. Good afternoon, as you know we are conducting an inquiry and reporting on the Draft Firearms (Northern Ireland) Order 2002 concerning the control of firearms in Northern Ireland. In this evidence session we are taking evidence from those who I think one can fairly say are broadly in support of shooting. We will be taking other evidence from those with a different point of view later on before we make our report. My first question is directed specifically to The Ulster Rifle Association, because they seem to be apart from other witnesses from the shooting community in this matter. Why do you advocate an air weapon users licence, and how do you expect it to differ from the existing firearms certificate for an air weapon?
  (Mr Irvine) We are not opposed to the members of the Gun Trade Association, we are in broad agreement that we do not wish to see air rifles or air pistols deregulated as such, we would still like to see them under some form of control. I was wondering did the members of the Committee receive the draft I had prepared? An amended version was e-mailed on Friday night because when I telephoned on Thursday I was told that it had been received and then I received an e-mail on Friday night to say that it had not been.

  75. If you sent another one on Friday night the answer to that is possibly not.
  (Mr Irvine) I have 14 copies.

  76. If you sent us an additional document on Friday I do not think we would have got it. Obviously members of the Committee, including me and the staff, have not seen this. If you give your answers on that understanding.
  (Mr Irvine) On that basis I will keep it short. We do not believe that air rifles should be deregulated, there are various reasons but they tie in with the fact that we have seen what goes on in Great Britain. We have looked at the statistics for misuse, and so on. What concerns us, and has concerned us greatly, is the disrepute that it has brought shooting into in Great Britain. The majority of offences that are classified as firearms offences in Great Britain are carried out with air weapons of one sort or another. At the moment the shooting record in Northern Ireland is an excellent record, there has not been one single crime committed with any target firearm. When the RUC, the PSNI now, were asked what percentage of firearms, whether air weapons or shotguns or rifles, outside of target firearms were used in crime the answer they gave was it was so small they did not keep any records because it was insignificant. We feel we have an excellent record and we do not wish to see anything tarnish that record or anything introduced which would run the risk of tarnishing that record. Within Northern Ireland people who shoot do so with a firearms certificate. That means that generally speaking you have to be of good character and they are reasonably well-respected throughout the community in that if they have a firearms certificate people know they have been through a certain process of vetting and they are not regarded as anything other than an upstanding, decent member of the community. We, however, on page 4 of our draft said that although we do not support the proposal to deregulate we do think it is ridiculous to treat airguns in the same manner as firearms. It is a complete waste of time to have firearms licensing, spend hours processing applications when the whole system could be simplified. To put it into some sort of perspective, most air rifles sold in Britain generate a 12 pound muzzle energy, a child's bow, a practice long bow pulling a 35 pound draw weight will generate some 40 pounds of muzzle energy. If you take a 55 pound draw weight that would project an arrow that would project an arrow with 60-65 pounds of energy. I do not think anybody is seriously suggesting licensing bows and arrows. In terms of actual power we think it is a bit silly to regard them as firearms. What we would like to see instead would be an extra page inserted into a firearms certificate which would be an authorisation certificate, a section of a firearms certificate, whereby the individual could if they wished to, require an air pistol or air rifle by simply going along to the firearms dealer and saying, here is my firearms certificate, there is the section of it, a page which authorises my application for an air rifle or air pistol and he will then enter on that certificate what it is that has been bought and send a letter off to the PSNI within 48 hours informing them of the transaction. That is a simplified system, it cuts down on the time interval and it cuts down on a lot of the errors that have been made over the years. There have been many, many errors caused as a result of certificates going into the licensing branch for a variation, renewal, et cetera. I believe a lot of that time is spent with air rifles because there is a large percentage accounting for a number of the current certificates in Northern Ireland. We want to see the effort put in by the police in licensing directed towards the person and away from the implement. We would like to see that effort taken away from relatively low powered objects such as air rifles and pistols.

  77. Do you have detailed evidence pointing to the abuse in Great Britain? You talked about the kind of mindless vandalism that has brought shooting into disrepute.
  (Mr Irvine) When I say disrepute what I mean by that is the media who will very often pick up on incidents and sensationalise them and report them out of all proportion.

  78. Have you recorded or tabulated these?
  (Mr Irvine) I have looked at various statistics published by the Home Office, and so on. The last time I did, out of the total number of firearm incidents, which were recorded as something like 75,000, I think 55,000 were recorded as being caused by air weapons, so it is roughly five sevenths of the last group of statistics. When I was coming today I knew I would have one hour to share with the Gun Trade Association so I did not bring any detailed statistics. I will put forward a more detailed submission if you would like me to.

  79. Air weapons which you describe as glorified bicycle pumps—
  (Mr Irvine) Mechanically, yes.