Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320
- 331)
TUESDAY 14 DECEMBER 1999
MRS GILL
MARSHALL-ANDREWS,
DR MICK
NORTH AND
PROFESSOR IAN
TAYLOR
320. I apologise, Dr North. I should have realised
that. As someone who lost—if I remember—a daughter—
(Dr North) That is correct.
321. I apologise for not immediately recognising
that you were a parent, as I should have done because your name
was in the media at the time. Do you think that other parents
like yourself who suffered the terrible tragedy of losing a child
at Dunblane would take this light-hearted attitude we have heard
in the last five or ten minutes about guns?
(Dr North) Not at all. I know many of them express
concern when they see children with toy guns, even toy guns which
are quite clearly toy guns, in the street, they worry about parents
who buy them, they worry they are in local shops. It is a big
concern that children at a young age are in some way or another
given the idea that playing with guns is acceptable, that threatening
people at a distance, which is what they will often do, is an
acceptable thing to do. It may only be a minority who go on to
feel that the real thing can be treated in the same way, but a
minority represents real people as well.
Mr Howarth
322. Chairman, can I make it quite clear that
I am not treating it, as Mr Winnick has clearly implied, in a
light-hearted way. I am trying to get some perspective here in
deference to Dr North and I quite understand his own personal
tragedy and share it. In my view what happened there was a failure
of a system which otherwise has proved to work but, on the other
hand, I do understand his position. Our position as legislators
is that we do, though, have to look at the whole thing in the
round.
(Dr North) I do understand that.
Mr Winnick: Dr North and his colleagues will
make their own judgment. I was trying to get a sensible balance.
Chairman: Can we move on then. The clock, as
ever, is our worst enemy. Mr Linton?
Mr Linton
323. I fully accept the general point you are
making about guns but I have a few more detailed practical questions
about airguns. Firstly, at what level do you think airguns should
be licensed? I do not want to get technical but there are of course
three different levels at the moment. Are you saying that all
airguns over 1 ft/lb, which is the normal standard for what can
be lethal, should be licensed?
(Mrs Marshall-Andrews) Yes, our view is that airguns
should be licensed full-stop.
324. But there are airguns which are so soft
they could not hurt anybody.
(Mrs Marshall-Andrews) If they look like guns then
they should be licensed.
325. The second point was about age. You were
recommending that 18 should be the age not only for sale and ownership
of guns but also for the use of guns. The evidence which you may
have heard from the National Small-bore Rifle Association, if
I have their name right, is that they include members who use
air rifles for Olympic sports, shooting, and that if young people
are not allowed to have even used airguns under supervision then
there is no chance of building up the level of competence in the
use of weapons at all. I am fully with you about ownership and
unsupervised use, but do you think no use at all is really a practical
proposition?
(Mrs Marshall-Andrews) I think the problem about relying
upon supervision is that it is unenforceable. As is perfectly
clear, the law as it stands says that children are supposed to
be supervised if they use airguns but it does not happen. We know,
we have heard your testimony from the RSPCA and from anecdotal
evidence all over the country, supervision does not happen. Therefore,
if it does not happen, it is our view you should build a legislative
system which makes it unnecessary. The only legislation that would
make it unnecessary is to make the age an age at which you did
not require supervision, so an age like 18. We are saying you
can have an airgun if you are 18, the same as you can have a shotgun
or a rifle, and supervision is not an issue then.
326. I am not making this point, I am putting
the point to you to test your view on this. One of the points
made by many organisations is that you need coaching and training
in the use of weapons. Indeed the witness from the RSPCA made
a very important point about the competence of people using guns.
How can people develop competence in the use of guns if they are
not even allowed to use them until the age of 18?
(Mrs Marshall-Andrews) They start developing their
competence at 18.
327. That is fair enough. I am just trying to
explore what your view would be on all of these questions. On
the question of licensing, I think you make a very powerful argument
on this, just to go through the practicalities of this, with 4
million, or maybe more, air weapons in existence the view of the
NFU, I think, was that any system of licensing, such as the present
system, would fail due to administrative overload. In other words,
the system could not cope with the licensing of that many weapons.
What is your response to that?
(Professor Taylor) One of the things I did in 1997
was to pay a visit to the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms & Tobacco
in Washington DC and the chief executive of that organisation
was saying to me that we had a beautiful situation in the United
Kingdom, an absolutely pristine situation, with the small number
of firearms still circulating in civil society we had an ideal
situation for the new technology to operate very effectively indeed.
He was very envious of the fact that we had a situation where
we have the possibilities that we have here. I am pleased this
Committee is taking seriously the delay that has occurred in the
implementation of that system.
(Mrs Marshall-Andrews) Can I say something about the
4 million? What you are talking about, presumably, is police resources
and whether the resources will be well used in embarking upon
a system of certifying airguns. I think it is our view that there
is a social cost that is incalculable to gun violence, death,
injury, suicide and accidents. Whatever the cost of any of these
recommendations, it must be weighed against the social and economic
cost of violence in society.
328. In general terms, which do you think is
the most effective way of dealing with the problems of firearms,
is it by enforcing the existing law—because, as we said,
you know, in many cases the firearm offences that are carried
out at the moment are a failure to enforce existing law—or
is it by changing the law, in other words raising the age or increasing
the extent of licences or is it simply by reducing the proliferation
of the firearms in society generally?
(Mrs Marshall-Andrews) I think the latter point is
the important one. You do that by the former too. You reduce the
proliferation by enforcing your legislation better and by new
legislation.
Chairman
329. You called for the Firearms Consultative
Committee to have its throat cut, you do not think it has any
useful purpose in life, is that it?
(Mrs Marshall-Andrews) I hope the paper says it either
needs to be abolished or radically reconstituted.
330. Say a bit more about the reconstitution,
please?
(Mrs Marshall-Andrews) Yes. We propose a system in
which the constitution should reflect a better balance of the
police or of the statutory agencies' shooters and the wider public
who have a view and an interest. What we suggested was that it
should be a third, a third, a third. A third of the Committee
should be from the shooting fraternity, a third should be from
police/customs/magistrates and a third should be from organisations
like us, from public health, from victim groups, community groups
and other people who have an interest in violence in society.
331. Can you clarify this for me, please? Can
it speak when it wants to or can it only speak when it is asked
to? It is a very important point. Some of these consultative committees
can only speak when the Home Secretary says: "What do you
think about this?" Do you know whether the Consultative Committee
has a voice of its own?
(Mrs Marshall-Andrews) I am afraid I do not, I am
very new to it. I am the only person who sits on it who is neither
from the shooting fraternity or the police.
(Professor Taylor) I wanted to make an observation
about the inevitable cross-Atlantic comparison. We have a lot
to learn from the way individual state and federal governments
in both the provincial United States and Canada have responded
to the gun problems there. If you look at all of the representative
committees in those two countries one of the things that is very
noticeable is the presence of public health interests, organised
bodies and spokespeople representing the hospital systems, the
psychiatric services and so on. They have a lot to say about the
social, individual and psychic consequences, and let me say, also
the economic consequences of gun violence in North America. We
do not have that situation at the moment, and hopefully we never
will have it. It would be very, very useful if we had a national
body that spoke in the round with respect to that issue as well,
remembering that many of the victims of gun violence become, indeed,
the clients themselves of health bodies, psychiatric services,
and so on, who have to deal with the consequences of individual
incidents and accidents.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed for your
evidence. Like all of the other witnesses you add to our problems
in the sense that we have more to think about. That is the purpose
of it. Thank you.
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