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Sir Ivan Lawrence (Burton): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Mullin: I shall give way briefly, because I have only a short time.
Sir Ivan Lawrence: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I hope that he is not suggesting that the Home Secretary had any input into the majority report of the Home Affairs Select Committee. It was completely independent. I should like the hon. Gentleman's confirmation that he accepts that.
Mr. Mullin: The thought never passed through my mind. However, I am afraid that the Home Secretary has not done enough. The distinction that he seeks to make in the Bill between weapons over .22 calibre and those under is, as others have pointed out, hopelessly impractical. As the hon. Member for Harrow, West said a moment ago, it will merely create a surge in demand for lower-calibre weapons. Many shooters will use their compensation to buy other weapons. Indeed, I received a letter this week from someone who promised to spend every last penny of his compensation on new weapons. As others have argued, a .22 weapon in the wrong hands can also inflict considerable damage.
I could have been convinced--[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Sir J. Wiggin) wants to say that out loud, I shall gladly give way to him.
I could have been convinced that the use of handguns for sporting purposes should continue to be permitted if they could be safely stored at a central location rather than at home. However, the shooting lobby--as others have said, what an inept lot they are--argued forcefully that that was not possible. No doubt they were hoping to convince us that there was no alternative to home storage, but they succeeded in convincing me that a total ban on handguns was the only practical solution.
As I have said, the Bill does not go far enough. A reduction in the total number of guns of all types in circulation is a desirable objective. In its evidence to the Select Committee, the British Shooting Sports Council talked approvingly of the vast explosion in recent years in the number of weapons for sporting purposes. I believe that the time has come to turn the tide and that the Bill ought to be the opportunity to do so.
I want a total ban on handguns. No doubt an amendment will be tabled to that effect and I shall vote for it. I want a large reduction in the number of shotguns
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A few months ago, a Sunderland councillor had a shotgun placed against his living room window and fired at him. In September, a 14-year-old boy in Houghton-le-Spring, near Sunderland, was accused by two workmen of stealing tools. The boy ran off, returning a few minutes later with a shotgun belonging to his grandfather--another legally held weapon--to threaten the workmen with it.
Most incredible of all was the case in Scotland, not long after the Dunblane tragedy, when a 12-year-old boy prised open his father's gun case, took out the shotgun, sawed off both barrels, took the cartridges, wrote on them the names of the children at school whom he was going to kill and set off to school with the sawn-off shotgun, where, thank goodness, he was overpowered before he could do any damage. That is yet another example of a legally held weapon falling into the wrong hands.
There are said to be some 2 million legally owned shotguns in circulation. Once again, those of us who favour drastic action are indebted to the shooting lobby for making our case for us. Mr. Yardley, one of the gun lobby's most vociferous spokesmen, said the other day that there was no point in doing anything about handguns unless we also did something about shotguns. I agree.
Everyone understands that farmers need shotguns to deal with pests. It is more difficult to understand why someone living on a housing estate in the middle of Sunderland needs a shotgun in his home. I favour a big reduction in the number of shotgun licences, starting with those in urban areas.
Mr. Robert Banks:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Mullin:
As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am limited for time.
The age at which someone may use a shotgun should be raised to 18.
I also want a reduction in the number of air weapons, many of which are in the hands of children. Lord Cullen drew attention to the problem in paragraph 9.119 of his report. I am sorry that the Government are taking no notice of him on that. As most of my hon. Friends can testify, air weapons in urban areas are the source of a great deal of low-level mayhem. As my hon. Friend the Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith) made clear, they can inflict some pretty terrible, and sometimes fatal, injuries.
A little while ago, a neighbour of mine came within a fraction of an inch of being paralysed for life by a pellet from an air rifle that lodged close to his spine. A woman who used to work for me had her windows shot out by youths who were driving down her street shooting out windows at random. A man stopped me in the street the other day and said that his neighbour's son had already slaughtered most of the wildlife in his garden and was now firing randomly across a road used by traffic and pedestrians. I want air weapons to be brought within the licensing system. No one under 18 should be given a licence and there should be a presumption against granting licences to those who live in urban areas.
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Like many hon. Members, I have received hundreds of letters from irate shooters. Most, but not all of them, are courteously worded and advance a number of reasons--several of which we have heard this evening--for leaving things as they are. They argue that most crime is carried out with illegally held weapons and that the Bill will not stop criminals getting their hands on guns. That is not entirely true. Many weapons that fall into the wrong hands initially have licensed owners and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) said, it is an irrefutable fact that no amount of bluster can get around that the massacres in Dunblane, Hungerford and Tasmania were carried out with legally held weapons.
As I mentioned in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, Tony Hall, the father of one of those killed at Hungerford, has compiled a list of 178 people who have been shot dead with legally held weapons since 1988. In some cases, whole families have been wiped out when one member--not necessarily the one with the gun licence--has gone berserk with a licensed weapon.
Although a ban on handguns will not prevent further tragedies, it will at least reduce the likelihood of them happening. It is argued that the overwhelming majority of shooters pose no threat to society and that an entire sport should not be jeopardised by the actions of one madman. I agree that, thank goodness, there are not many Thomas Hamiltons about and most shooters are upright citizens. However, unstable personalities are attracted to guns. Let me draw the attention of the House to an article--
Madam Deputy Speaker:
Order. Time is up.
Dame Jill Knight (Birmingham, Edgbaston):
Let there be no doubt whatsoever of the universal horror and condemnation felt in every part of the House for the depth of wickedness shown by Thomas Hamilton at Dunblane last March. Those of us who oppose the banning of a long-established sport are not blood-thirsty savages: we too have wept for the innocent children and their teacher who died.
I have never owned a pistol, let alone shot one. I am not a member of the so-called gun lobby and I came to the matter with a totally open mind. If anything, I was rather inclined to support the idea of banning guns. However, I am a member of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. After Dunblane, we spent many weeks studying evidence and listening to witnesses, and I became increasingly convinced that the way forward is to impose stringent new licensing procedures and to take a number of other measures to stop guns falling into the wrong hands.
The hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) quoted members of the gun lobby saying that the Bill would not stop people killing. Nothing will stop madmen going on the rampage. If they do not have guns, they will use something else, so we cannot pretend that we can magically end danger to all people in the country.
The six Conservative Members on the Select Committee expressed that opinion, and in so doing ran headlong into a campaign of hate and vilification such as I have never seen. The Sun newspaper and a rag called
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As a result, I received a number of death threats. I was sent photographs of myself with a bullet hole through the centre of my forehead. I received parcels of excreta and, worst of all, threats that people intended to wait outside the schools that my grandchildren attend and shoot them.
I received about 40 letters of condemnation, only five of which were calm and sensible and inquired why I voted as I did. Since then, I have received nearly 1,000 letters from those who support the sport. Two themes run through them. First, there was a great sadness and sympathy about the horror of Dunblane and, secondly, there was a disbelieving outrage among the writers of those letters that they would have to pay for Hamilton's crime. They are not criminals; they are among the most responsible, disciplined and law-abiding people in the land.
A number of women shoot as a sport, and there are disabled shooters. Women and disabled people can participate in the sport without being disadvantaged by size or disability. I must confess that I never thought that I would see the day when a Conservative Government would rush to deprive such people of the opportunity to pursue their chosen sport--and rushing they are. There has been no chance for a proper debate in the country or for proper consultation. To my mind, there has never been a clearer example of hard cases making bad laws.
Why did the Government set up the Cullen inquiry and then fail to accept its recommendations? Why did they ignore the deliberations of the Home Affairs Committee? However much shock and horror we feel, it is wrong to make judgments on the basis of emotion, even though those emotions are fully justified and understandable.
At first I thought that the Bill would permit the sport to continue, but now I have no doubt that it will bring an end to the legal sport of target shooting. If we are not careful, the Bill will impose great injustice in failing to pay proper compensation, not only for guns, but for property. I do not believe that the Government have counted accurately the cost of compensation, which could well be as much as £1 billion--certainly more than half a billion pounds. I would prefer that money to be spent on hospitals, housing or schools.
The Bill will turn any remaining gun clubs into fortresses. They will certainly be desirable targets for criminals who wish to acquire guns. It would be far more sensible to pursue the idea of dismantling guns, with one part being kept at the home of the shooter and the other at the gun club. I agree with the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), and would add to what he said. It would much safer if one part of the gun were in one place and the rest were in another because any criminal who attacked the gun club would not know where the rest of the gun was kept.
7.21 pm
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