WEDNESDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2002

DR MICK NORTH AND MRS GILL MARSHALL-ANDREWS

  260. In so far as you have a concern and you have looked at other countries, I just wondered whether you had extended that to try to discover something of the Northern Ireland situation.
  (Mrs Marshall-Andrews) Northern Ireland has tighter controls over air guns than this country, so it may be that it is not a problem in Northern Ireland. In any event, as you have probably gleaned, our hope is that where the gun controls are tighter, they should be adopted by both sides. If, as with air guns, the controls are tighter in Northern Ireland, we are hoping that England and Wales will adopt the same measures. Harmonisation should lead to tighter controls rather than a relaxation.

  261. I appreciate that part of your argument in your submission is that the tighter controls existing in Northern Ireland should not be reduced. May I therefore ask, since the draft Firearms Order exempts from regulation those air weapons with a muzzle energy of less than one joule, do you think this is a reasonable compromise?

  (Mrs Marshall-Andrews) The essence is whether the airgun is lethal. The Firearms Consultative Committee has come up with a figure of one joule per square millimetre muzzle energy and if that is an agreed measure of lethality, then it is reasonable to suggest that anything which is lethal should be registered. On a more general principle, if you think about gun control, if you relax gun controls you let the genii out of the bottle and it is really hard to put it back again. Where you have good strong gun controls, it would be just irresponsible, really extraordinary, to relax gun controls in a community which is unstable, where there is a propensity to violence, where young men are drawn to weapons, drawn to guns to make it easier for anybody to get hold of a gun of any kind would be madness.

  262. I appreciate the point you are making but do you see 18 as an absolute minimum age limit for ownership, possession and use of firearms? I ask that question for several reasons. As a 13-year-old in the army cadets I was actually taught to use a weapon; that did not seem to be illegal. I have not actually developed a massive love for weapons and I do not normally shoot.
  (Mrs Marshall-Andrews) I am very pleased to hear it.

  263. Gun control means that the law must state there must be a minimum age and you believe that 18 is an acceptable age for somebody to hold a licence. It has been put to us in other evidence that there are some instances where somebody over the age of 16 and under the age of 18 may need access to firearms for use in a legal context, either for target shooting or for agricultural use. As somebody can be employed within the agricultural industry at 16, do you feel that in line with Article 7 of the draft Order we should provide the ability for those aged between 16 and 18 to use airguns of more than one joule, shotguns and 0.22 rifles in connection with their trade and/or in connection with their employment? It is a question I cannot answer. I just wondered what your view was considering the 18 limit you set.
  (Mrs Marshall-Andrews) It amounts to a relaxation of the law and in that context we are opposed to it. Any relaxation of gun controls in the current climate worldwide is really a very odd thing to be doing.

  264. I want to raise the difficult question of handguns. Handguns were banned in Great Britain following the terrible events at Dunblane but they were not banned in Northern Ireland, largely on the grounds that many individuals there need to carry handguns for personal protection. In the Gun Control Network submission, you say there is a need for special measures for the protection of vulnerable individuals, but you call for the banning of handguns as in Great Britain. How do you square this circle?
  (Dr North) As I understand it, in Great Britain it is still possible for the Home Secretary to allow a Section 5 firearm for individual use in special circumstances. It seems to me that banning handguns for other purposes is not going to affect such powers that the Chief Constable might have in Northern Ireland.

  265. It is often claimed that the big problem which exists in Northern Ireland as far as handguns or any guns are concerned is in connection with illegal activities, that there is no particular evidence of problems which exist with handguns and maybe other guns where practice and other forms of shooting are involved.
  (Dr North) We know from every other country that the major firearm problems result from the easy availability of handguns and just because there is no problem now does not mean there would be no problem in the future. It is something which does have to be looked at. It has surprised us that the legislation was not extended to Northern Ireland.
  (Mrs Marshall-Andrews) There is another point I should like to make about that. If you legislate for a ban on handguns you are making a statement about the kind of society you want to live in. You are saying you do not want people to have handguns, you do not want anybody to have a handgun except perhaps the police or security services. We want to move towards a situation in which people feel secure and safe. A piece of legislation like that is making a big statement about what sort of civil society you want to live in and that is why we campaigned so hard for it after Dunblane. It was a very significant piece of legislation here and has made a huge difference to the way people think about guns in this country. If you think about after Dunblane, it was claimed by shooters that pistol shooting was the fastest growing sport in the country in 1996. It was clear at that point that we were headed down the American road, we were going where they had been. I really believe that legislation in 1997 which banned handguns turned us away from that. We made a statement about what sort of society we wanted and it was really a very important piece of legislation and it would be extremely important in Northern Ireland to introduce similar legislation, to ban a handgun, with exceptions which can be allowed by the Chief Constable.

  266. Might Northern Ireland not be rather perfect for a pilot scheme in which something else was attempted? The Cullen report recommended that handguns should be split so that part of the mechanism was held at a gun club and the other bit was held individually by people, so you were not going to be able to use the gun until it was assembled and people could then engage in target practice. Presumably if you followed that line in Northern Ireland you might have some evidence in time of the distinctions which exist between that type of practice and the practice which exists of an overall ban within Great Britain?
  (Dr North) As I understand it, the biggest opposition to that came from the gun lobby itself. They did not want the situation. They said they needed to be able to practice with their guns at home.

  267. Did you say practice at home?
  (Dr North) They want the whole gun to do something they call "dry shooting". They were certainly opposed to it, so it would be interesting to hear what they had to say now about such a pilot scheme.
  (Mrs Marshall-Andrews) It is a very complicated and unnecessary thing. We have a perfectly good ban on civilian ownership and use of handguns in England and Wales and the prospect of extending it to Northern Ireland just seems to be such a good idea for every conceivable reason.

  Mr Clarke: May I just push the point Mr Barnes made about this two-part gun? There are only two parts to a gun: the gun and the bullet.

  Chairman: There is the mechanism.

  268. It is the same argument. Do you feel that even if you did have split guns, even if you did have tighter control on the parts, all you would do if you tried to keep part of the gun in a different place would be to create a black market for those replacement parts outside legal premises.
  (Mrs Marshall-Andrews) It is a recipe for complication and confusion and it is just a loss of an opportunity to make a statement.

  269. What threat do you think is posed to the public safety by replica weapons?
  (Mrs Marshall-Andrews) That is a very topical question. There has been a lot about this lately. There are several things. Imitation weapons can be used to intimidate and frighten even if they do not fire anything at all. If they look exactly like a real gun you can go into a garage or into a shop and rob somebody or you can rape somebody under threat with a weapon. They think it is a real weapon and they react as though it is. The second thing is that the police also will react as though it is a real weapon and if it is brandished about their armed response vehicles will be alerted, as was a case a little while ago with a 13-year-old boy who was brandishing a BB gun. He was very lucky not to be shot; very lucky. The policeman kicked it out of his hand but he could easily have been shot. The other point is that some of these imitation weapons are convertible and they can be converted to fire real bullets. So you go down and buy one of these things in a toy shop or a camping shop, you take it down to the local machine engineering workshop and they convert it for you and you have a gun which fires real bullets. That is a big problem and it is a growing problem.

  270. The draft Order deals with the weapons you talked about, those which can be converted. Do you think it should go further and take in the weapons you talked about which are realistic looking but in fact cannot be readily converted.
  (Mrs Marshall-Andrews) Yes, so they are never going to fire anything. It is really important and it is very topical here right now. We have just launched a poster campaign today against imitation weapons and it seems like an idea whose time has come. A huge amount of armed crime is committed with imitation weapons. You never know, you cannot accurately assess it, but the estimates range from 50 to 80 per cent of all armed crime being committed with an imitation weapon. We just need to do something about this. We need to stop them being sold in this way so kids from Peckham cannot go down to the local newsagent and buy something which looks exactly like a real gun.

  271. Do you see this as a serious loophole really? I was struck at the Labour Party conference this year that right by the cordon a shop was selling replica weapons. The irony was that there was all this security, all these checks, yet imitations were readily available and very realistic looking.
  (Dr North) It is a key point that these are replica weapons. Some of them are being made under licence from the original handgun manufacturers. The external specifications are identical. It would take an expert, and would probably take an expert quite a long time, to distinguish between the two. To someone who is serving in a garage or a shop, absolutely no chance of being able to tell the difference.

  272. Keeping party politics strictly out of this, none were on sale at the Conservative conference. Perhaps that was just as well. The question of an imitation firearm and its definition would give us great administrative difficulty, would it not?
  (Mrs Marshall-Andrews) I do not think it would at all. It is defined in the 1968 Firearms Act as any thing which has the appearance of a lethal firearm, whether or not it is capable of discharging any missile. It is already defined and the courts and juries are perfectly well able to determine whether it conforms to that definition.

  273. Is there case law about it?
  (Mrs Marshall-Andrews) Yes. We have proposed some new legislation, very simple legislation, to ban the sale, import and manufacture of imitations and their possession in a public place. We put that forward to the Home Office who have indicated that they are not very impressed with it.

  274. Have they said why?
  (Mrs Marshall-Andrews) They say that there is a difficulty about chair legs in sacks which might be thought to be an imitation weapon, they think there may be a difficulty about the European definition of a toy. I think there is a lack of will to do something about imitations. It is perfectly possible to do it, other countries do it and if they wanted to do it they could do it.

  275. Which other countries have laws making imitation weapons illegal?
  (Mrs Marshall-Andrews) A lot of other countries.

  276. Production and sale?
  (Mrs Marshall-Andrews) I do not know about that but certainly the possession of them. We could never achieve that; I am not suggesting you can ban the possession of them except in a public place because there are just too many out there. There are BB guns in toy boxes up and down the country. We would be hard pressed to get those out of circulation. It is a damage limitation exercise. What you can do is say we are not going to allow it to get any worse, because it is getting worse. We commissioned some research in 1999 from Durham University which showed very clearly that the market in imitation weapons was growing exponentially and you see it all around you. You can just see that people are just able to go into these shops and buy them for £5, £10 for a better one, £50 for a really good one with Colt written on it.

  Chairman: Mrs Marshall-Andrews, Dr North, thank you very much indeed. Feel free to stay and hear what the Chief Constable has to say if you would like to do so.