Annex A
THE REMOVAL FROM CIRCULATION OF PISTOLS (1997)
69. Firearm certificate holders are very
rarely involved in firearms crime (Maybanks 1992).[107]
Licensed firearms are seldom involved in firearms crime: over
the period 1992-94 no legally held firearms were used in homicides
arising from organised crime or drugs; moreover, about 61 per
cent of those homicides which were carried out with legally held
firearms were not (in the narrow sense) criminal but `domestic'and
70 per cent of domestic incidents involved shotguns. The same
study found only a single example of a firearm which had been
at one time legally held having been used for robbery (CSE&W
1997, 3.28). In 1996, the Home Affairs Committee noted that a
study into the provenance of guns used in robbery in London and
subsequently recovered had found that in 3.6 per cent of cases
the gun had been previously licensed (HAC 1996, 34, citing Maybanks
1992). But the frequency with which licensed firearms are used
for criminal purposes in general is unknown.
70. Pistols, used in 2,648 of firearms offences
in 1997, are the preferred weapon (54 per cent) of the criminal
(CSE&W 1997, 3.4). The proportion of these pistols which will
have been legally held is unknown. But, applying the 3.6 per cent
to this figure, it may be expected that currently about 95 pistols
which had at one time or another been legally held are used for
unlawful purposes in any one yearor about one in three
of those `misappropriated'[108]but
these 95 pistols are garnered from the entire unregistered pool,
which is believed to be much larger than 162,353, the number of
pistols surrendered following the 1997 Acts.
71. Estimates of the size of the entire
unregistered pool vary from over 1 million to more than 4 million:
for the purpose of this exercise, let us assume 2 million and
that one-quarter of these are pistols. Thus in any one year, the
number of pistols used in firearms offences which had been legally
owned (95) as a percentage of the pistols within the entire unregistered
pool (500,000) is 0.019 per cent. There were 162,353 pistols surrendered
following the 1997 Acts. Had they not been surrendered, then in
1998 the number of registered pistols at risk of being used in
crime would have been 31 (0.019 per cent of 162,353).
72. To determine the effect over time of
bringing about the surrender of 162,353 pistols at a stroke, one
needs to consider the likely longevity of pistols. Although firearms
are durable there is a limit to their serviceability, determined
by the availability of ammunition and replacement parts. Given
the pace of technological change, it would seem likely that for
the majority of those pistols their serviceability would have
diminished to vanishing point within 100 years. Thus, assuming
that 31 registered pistols are taken directly from the legal pool
for criminal use every year for 100 years, the 1997 Acts compelled
criminals to find an alternative source for 31 x 100 = 3,100 pistols.
107 He found `No part of [his] empirical research
[to have] disclosed any evidence to link a licensed firearm holder
in [sic] crime' (154). Back
108
In 1997, 305 pistols were misappropriated, ie `stolen, obtained
by fraud or forgery etc, or handled dishonestly' (CSE&W 1997,
3.24). Back
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