WEDNESDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2002

MR DAVID PENN

  320. "Allowed" or "required"?
  (Mr Penn) "Allowed".

  321. This "requires".
  (Mr Penn) The feeling within Great Britain is that there is no demonstrable requirement, particularly for target shooters, because the system of target shooting in Great Britain requires a probationary membership of an approved club, during which time it is an obligation on the club to train the neophyte shooter. The system of normal sporting shooting in this country also tends to be satisfactorily self-regulating. We know it is so because there are so few firearms accidents and it is so cheap to get insurance for shooting. Therefore there cannot be a major problem among licensed shooters. May I say one thing further on that? The difficulty, to which I have already alluded, is with air weapons. The big problem with unsafe handling is with air weapons because you can acquire them so easily; you are not required to belong to a club, you will not usually be shooting in formal circumstances like a driven game shoot. Anything which can be done to provide good information to air weapons purchasers has to be beneficial and the FCC has reiterated on occasion the need to get sensible literature to accompany air weapons when they are sold.

  322. You probably heard that there are arguments for and against the introduction of young people to guns at particular ages, but generally there are greater restrictions in Northern Ireland than apply in Great Britain. Do you think the provisions which exist in Northern Ireland with specific respect to young people are reasonable at the present time?
  (Mr Penn) All the indications in Great Britain are that young persons can be introduced to shooting quite safely at a relatively early age. I can see no reason within the context of the legal use of firearms why this should not be so in Northern Ireland. Firearms are very simple machines. It is quite easy to teach competency to any normally intelligent person, even normally intelligent young people. The received wisdom in GB is that if you get people at a young age—I am talking about pre-teen here—they are much more receptive than when they are a little older. The comment has already been made about the cadet forces which routinely teach children as young as 13 to shoot rifles. In this country we have an association of rifle clubs for prep schools and air weapon shooting is quite popular. There is no reason why young people cannot gradually be introduced to the more dangerous equipment we have around in our everyday lives. It is my experience—and I have been shooting seriously since I was eleven and owned an air weapon when I was eleven and a shotgun at 12—that relatively young people can be taught to use firearms very safely indeed. I should be much happier for my son to have a rifle than a motor cycle or a rifle than a sports car.

  323. Based on your belief, would you want to see the age in Northern Ireland lowered?
  (Mr Penn) Yes, I should. I should like to see an identical system in both GB and Northern Ireland. As you may have seen in the FCC's report, we are still working on what a sensible suggestion for age limits would be. I should very much hope that your Order would encourage the adoption of the same age limits in Northern Ireland as in GB when they have been settled upon and agreed by all parties.

  Chairman: I should perhaps point out that it is not our Order it is the government's Order.

  324. I still have concerns over the possibility, in fact more than a possibility because we know it can happen, of an individual who holds a firearms certificate, whose competency has not been checked—and we are not necessarily talking here about somebody who is a member of a gun club, we are talking about somebody who may hold a shotgun and use it rarely, if at all within a two- or three-year period—who would be able to give instruction and tuition to a child without their competency being checked or known. That is possible, it could happen. Do you not feel we should use this opportunity in terms of trying to pin down this competency rule to make sure that cannot happen?
  (Mr Penn) It is a concern in GB as well to the extent that in our last report we recommended that in circumstances of supervision this should only be permissible where the firearms certificate holder is aged 21 or over and has three years' experience with the class of firearm concerned. That would give a more reasonable base line than is the case today when there is no requirement.

  325. May I just check that out? Over 21 with three years' experience. Does that mean that somebody could obtain a firearms licence at 21, be not competent in its use, not use it for three years but still come under the ruling you have just described as being able then to offer tuition and supervision of children?
  (Mr Penn) The hope is that someone would be using their firearm during the three years.

  326. But hope is different to reality.
  (Mr Penn) Accepted, but it would still overall raise the level of competence. It would not be a perfect solution obviously.

  327. We have you here as it were as an expert witness. Are there any other points you would like to raise with us?
  (Mr Penn) Yes, may I raise three. One is that I should very much hope that it would be found possible to establish a firearms consultative committee for Northern Ireland. Given that the legislation is unlikely to end up absolutely identical in the Province, I suspect that it would be useful for there to be such a committee and it would I hope be useful for there to be joint meetings occasionally with the GB FCC.

  328. I ought to know the answer. Does your writ not run to Northern Ireland?
  (Mr Penn) No, our writ does not run to Northern Ireland. The next point I should like to raise is wearing my other hat as Keeper of the Department of Exhibits and Firearms at the Imperial War Museum. Museums in this country run under a different form of licence called a museum firearms licence. When changes to firearms law in Northern Ireland were originally mooted, one of the suggestions was that there should be museum firearms licences for Northern Ireland museums. This appears to have been dropped and I have had a letter from one of my colleagues in one of the museums in Northern Ireland asking whether I could raise this question with you. A museum firearms licence is somewhere between a prohibited weapons authority and a firearms dealer's certificate. It is bespoke to the institution, so it can take account of what a museum does or does not need. It can be limited if necessary to certain classes of firearms, but in this country it can also cover prohibited weapons. It has certain major advantages for the institution. One is that it is not issued to a single person, it is issued to the institution. That means that any member of the staff can have legal possession of the firearm. If a firearm has to be conserved, it can be handled by a conservation officer, if it is being displayed, the design staff can put it on display, if it is being used for educational purposes, an educator can have it in his possession within the museum. They are all covered legally over the question of possession. The licences are available only to those national museums listed on the face of the 1988 Act or to a museum which is wholly or partially funded out of public funds or to a museum which is fully registered by Resource. This is the successor to the Museums and Galleries Commission, and covers libraries and archives as well as Museums. That means it is not possible to issue a museum firearms licence for instance to a private collector or to a small amateur run museum which is not well-founded and professional.

  329. Of those three categories, are there any in Northern Ireland?
  (Mr Penn) Yes.

  330. On the face of that 1988 Act?
  (Mr Penn) No, not on the face of the 1988 Act, but they would meet the criterion of being funded publicly, wholly or partially.

  331. So at present none of those institutions in Northern Ireland would be eligible for this sort of certificate unless it were put into this Act.
  (Mr Penn) No; unless it were put into the Act.

  332. That would only be to bring it into conformity with that which applies to museums in England, Wales and Scotland.
  (Mr Penn) Absolutely. May I also say that I talked briefly to the Home Office about this and they do not have any problems in the UK with museum firearms licences?

  333. The Committee would be very grateful if you would leave that letter with us or let us have a copy of it because this is a problem which has not been raised before. In particular we would need to know which the institutions are and that might be a very helpful point. Thank you.
  (Mr Penn) May I also just return to the subject of training, competency? I heard what Gill Marshall-Andrews had to say and I can only say that where the United States is concerned, which is the usual country which is alluded to as a problem with firearms, in recent years we have seen a great increase in the purchase and possession of pistols from an already high level. We have not seen a concomitant rise in violent crime in America; it has been going down. Two things have happened in America since the 1960s. One is that there has been much greater training for hunters, target shooters, you name it, but particularly training of the young. A number of schemes are in place. The result is that the level of firearms accidents is going down and down, although the level of firearms ownership is going up and up. The other may be relevant to your point regarding personal protection weapons. In a number of states in America—and I think it is now the majority of states—there is a shall issue mandatory licensing system for self-defence weapons. You do not actually have to provide evidence of good reason or need. In these States, however, before you get the licence you have to be proven to be free of any serious conviction, to have no known problems with drugs or alcohol, to be mentally competent and—this is the really critical point in the whole thing—you go through some basic training. There is a great difference in circumstances between someone who is carrying a firearm in society on the streets and the sporting shooter who is normally either on an enclosed range or on rural land with very few other people about. All the evidence is that there is not much of a problem in these States which have these concealed carry laws and the big secret is the competence level. If the person is unfit, he does not get the licence and he has to have training. The training is not prolonged; firearms are simple devices. It is also true to say that firearms are very easy to make; they are not magic technology. I would point out that in my own museum we have numerous examples of weapons made illegally in Northern Ireland. You have a fine heritage of engineering and light engineering in Northern Ireland and it can be turned to unfortunate purposes. You only have to look at the number of firearms taken off the street in the townships in South Africa to see how easy it is to make a firearm. Controls can only go so far. My final point is that the civilian shooter does not see his licence in terms of crime control, he believes himself to be a good person and not potentially a criminal. He sees it as an enabling document to allow him to carry out his sport openly, legally, to acquire his ammunition, change his guns, get his gun repaired. The monitoring system for the legitimate shooter who goes through all the hoops to get a licence should obviously ensure that he is a proper person and that his arms do not leak out into criminal possession or get lost or mislaid. Much further than that, you come into real questions of cost-benefit in social terms. Overall levels of misuse of licensed firearms are very low. It will never be perfect.

  Chairman: Thank you very much indeed, that has been very helpful.