Examination of Witness (Questions 314-327)
PETER NICKLES
16 NOVEMBER 2010 (AFTERNOON)
Q314 Chair: The time
is 2 o'clock in London. Mr Attorney-General, thank you very much
for giving evidence to the Home Affairs Committee of the House
of Commons. We are most grateful. We know you are extremely busy,
but we felt that this was the best method for taking evidence
from you.
The Select Committee members around me—I
will not introduce all of them—are here to see whether you
can help us with our inquiry into firearms. We are conducting
an inquiry looking at the law of firearms so that we can make
recommendations to our Government. What we would like, if possible—we
have a half-hour session—is to ask you about what is happening
in Washington DC and how you think it may be of relevance to the
inquiry that we are conducting here.
Perhaps I can start with a question to you.
What proportion of the population of Washington DC currently own
a gun? What is your estimate?
Peter Nickles: The estimate of
the number of individuals who own a legally registered gun is
less than 5%, but let me provide some qualifiers. In 1976, the
city of Washington DC imposed a ban on firearms. Prior to 1976,
there were in excess of 45,000 firearms that were privately owned.
They were registered, allegedly, for life. Those firearms are
probably out there somewhere. We estimate that maybe 30,000 firearms
are out there. We had a decision by the United States Supreme
Court in June 2008, the very famous Heller case, which held that
there was a Second Amendment right to own firearms for protection
in the home, and that struck down the ban that Washington DC had
imposed.
Starting in summer 2008, the city, working with
the police department and the federal Government, has been developing
a scheme of registration of firearms in various conditions, a
precedent to registering a firearm legally. What makes it so difficult,
and what makes Washington DC so interesting as a laboratory for
the whole issue of what do you do about firearms, is that we sit
between two states, Maryland and Virginia, which have very different
views on firearms.
We have very significant evidence that folks
are buying firearms in Virginia, for example, and bringing or
transferring those firearms into the city of Washington DC, where
they are not registered. The complexities of what is going on
in Washington DC are difficult, but if you are looking at the
legally registered firearms, there would be less than 30,000,
in a population of about 600,000. But my own view is that we have
many, many more firearms that are illegally possessed in Washington
DC.
Chair: Thank you. I'm now going to turn
to a Member of Parliament on our Committee. You will not be able
to see her on the screen, but you will hear her voice.
Q315 Lorraine Fullbrook: What
have the District of Columbia's experiences over the years led
the authorities to understand about the relationship between gun
ownership and the criminal use of firearms?
Peter Nickles:
It is interesting that although politicians generally, as I am
sure you know, agree on very little, here in Washington DC every
politician running either for Mayor or for the city council since
1976 has supported the ban on handguns. I think that the authorities
in Washington DC, including the police department, felt that there
was a very direct correlation between the possession of firearms
and the use of those firearms in significant crimes of violence.
Possession offences are simply based on a person's
being in possession of a firearm illegally. That happens very
often here, because we have so many people who receive or buy
firearms in another state and bring them into Washington DC without
appropriate authorisation. They can be arrested for possession.
What we're really concerned about is the use
of firearms in connection with crimes of violence—assault,
robbery or homicide. We have found that when you register a gun,
and when you have the kinds of records that we have with respect
to the guns that are registered and the individuals who are registering
those guns, those guns—those registered firearms—have
very rarely, if ever, been used in crimes. So when we have crimes
that involve firearms, we have found that when we trace the firearms
back, they're firearms that relate to purchases in other jurisdictions
around the United States. That is a significant problem for us.
We have also not found a situation in which
registered firearms have led to shootings intra-household or within
a home, but the bottom line for your inquiry here is that when
you register a firearm and have the kind of conditions that we
have imposed in Washington DC, you rarely, if ever, find that
crimes of violence involve those registered firearms. The problem
is getting your hands on firearms that are not legally registered.
Chair: Thank you. Our next question comes
from Mr David Winnick.
Q316 Mr Winnick: Attorney-General,
how many firearms homicides take place in DC each year and is
there a comparison with cities across the US that operate looser
or tighter gun controls?
Peter Nickles: Our data show that
about 75% to 80% of our homicides in a given year are committed
with guns. The FBI estimates that, generally speaking, some lesser
percentage—67% to 68%—of all homicides are committed
with firearms, and that, of course, varies from urban areas to
suburban areas. Once again, the problem is that so many of the
firearms used in violent crimes have not been registered in DC,
but have been bought in Ohio, Virginia or Pennsylvania and brought
illegally into the city.
Q317 Mr Winnick: We're rather
surprised—if I can just make this comment by way of a question—about
how loose the firearms controls are in your country. There is
a general feeling abroad, certainly in Britain, that the gun lobby
is very, very strong in the States.
Peter Nickles: You're absolutely
correct. The NRA—the National Rifle Association—is
one of the most powerful lobbying organisations in the United
States. It regularly develops a list of politicians who are acceptable
to it, based on their votes on gun matters. It is literally impossible
to get through Congress any kind of national legislation relating
to firearms.
So that brings us to the individual states.
I think it fair to say that most people in the United States regard
Washington DC as the jurisdiction with the strictest gun laws
in the United States. If you go out to states such as Oklahoma,
Texas and Wyoming and a number of other states, there are literally
no gun laws. One is entitled to purchase as many guns a month
as one would wish. One is entitled to carry guns openly into public
places; one is entitled to carry concealed weapons.
One of the problems that we have in Washington
DC, is that Congress has plenary power over Washington DC. Congress
can effectively do whatever it wants with our laws. A year or
so ago, in light of the composition at that time of Congress and
the presidency, there was an effort to bring voting rights to
Washington DC. As you may know, we have no voting rights at all
in DC. That was for the purpose of having one vote in the House
of Representatives. The condition came back to the city that to
have Congress consider giving Washington DC one vote in the House
of Representatives, they—that is, the Washington DC folks—would
have to set aside all their gun laws and accept the imposition
by Congress of its own set of gun laws, which have no resemblance
to any kind of regulation.
I would also say that the NRA and a number of
groups are behind a lot of lawsuits that we have had, and not
only leading to the Heller case in 2008; we have been involved
in lawsuit after lawsuit since then, testing the limits of our
current effort to provide some balance between safety and the
second amendment right to bear arms.
So, bottom line, Washington DC has been one
of the strictest jurisdictions, out of line with the views of
the NRA, with what should be the situation, and it has been out
of line with many other states in the country that effectively
have no gun laws.
Mr Winnick: Thank you, Attorney-General.
That was most useful.
Chair: Before Mr Burley comes in, this
session needs to end at 2.30 pm: you will hear a lot of bells
going on at 2.30 pm, which is when Parliament starts. So we're
going to try to get all our questions in briefly before then.
Q318 Mr Burley: It is fair
to say that America has some of the loosest gun control laws and
here in Britain we have some of the strictest in Europe if not
the world. Why do you think we still have so many problems with
guns being used in crime in this country, with all of our tight
controls? Can I ask you about stopping weapons crossing state
borders? We have heard lots of evidence about guns coming in to
the UK from Europe. Is that analogous to your problem of guns
coming in from other states?
Peter Nickles: We have had very
little success in stopping the illegal transfer—the illegal
movement of guns across state borders. I suspect that is a problem
that Britain is having now in the common market, where guns move
around among sister states in the EU. There has been an effort
by Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and the mayor of
DC, Adrian Fenty, and some of the other leaders on the east coast,
to impose some kind of regional ban. We co-operate with the states
of Maryland, New York, Virginia and so on. I think the answer
to your inquiry is that guns move across borders. If in fact guns
are used in crime, they will move, and there is a lot of money
involved in the movement of guns. We have been following that
for years here in DC, because we have the strictest gun laws.
We literally have thousands of guns in this city that have not
legally been registered.
Q319 Mr Burley: What, if anything,
can you do to try to stop that?
Peter Nickles: One of the things
we can do is seek to impose conditions on the registration of
guns. We have had a gun tip line, which people can call anonymously,
no questions asked. There is a significant reward. I think we've
received some 5,000 or 6,000 guns through this tipping hotline,
but until all the states get together and impose uniform gun laws,
as a practical matter, it is very difficult. I don't know what
you all have in Britain—whether you have some kind of organisation
akin to the NRA—but in this country, it is a no-brainer.
You are not able to get anywhere in terms of any kind of uniform
minimum gun regulation, so that you can keep track of guns that
move across state lines. In fact, right now, we are fighting in
court not only the question of gun registration, but the question
of the huge guns, huge magazines and machine guns.
Chair: We'll come onto that in further
questions, Mr Attorney-General. We have no equivalent to the NRA
in the UK—not at the moment, anyway.
Q320 Mr Clappison: Attorney-General,
your ban was introduced in 1976, I believe, and it has only recently
been relaxed. Are you able to say if there was any significant
change in the level of firearm violence and firearms used in crime
over that period? What happened after 1976, and has anything
happened recently?
Peter Nickles: We had a pretty
good track record after 1976. Of course, one can use statistics
to prove almost any point, but there was a period starting in
about 1986 when we had a crack cocaine epidemic in Washington
DC and the homicide rate went up to 479—in fact, Washington
DC was then known as the murder capital of the United States.
So there was, of course, criticism fostered by the NRA and some
other groups who said, "Look at the failure of strict bans
on weapons." I think it's fair to say that after the crack
cocaine epidemic was dealt with, the number of homicides—particularly
with guns—has gone down significantly.
Last year, in 2009, we had 143 homicides, which
was the lowest total since 1966. This year we are on a trend to
go well below that number, so the registration system that we
have imposed over the last two years, along with the various kinds
of training and other identification requirements, have been very
helpful not only in reducing the use of guns, but in absolutely
reducing the total number of homicides and violent crime.
Q321 Alun Michael: Could we
look at the use of firearms in crime? What proportion of those
are incidents of domestic violence, distinct from use in the commission
of another crime or anything like that?
Peter Nickles: First, in connection
with domestic violence, we have found that during the registration
process that we adopted two years ago, literally no registered
guns have been found to have been used in domestic violence incidents.
Domestic crimes using firearms are a very small percentage of
the total number of violent crimes. I have used the number before
in terms of violent crimes; in about 75% to 80% of cases, firearms
are used in connection with violent crimes in DC. Most of those
offences are gang related or crime related; they are not related
to domestic incidents.
Q322 Nicola
Blackwood: This inquiry is, in part, a response to some very
tragic events that occurred in Cumbria, where an individual who
had a number of convictions was licensed to carry a shotgun. He
used a legal weapon to kill a number of people. We are having
a debate at the moment about whether it is appropriate for those
people who have convictions or have been sentenced to custody
for a period of three years or less to be permitted to carry weapons
under certain conditions. I wonder what the situation is in the
US. Do you prohibit individuals who, for example, have a history
of domestic abuse or other violent crimes from carrying weapons?
Peter Nickles: We have very
strict requirements on your ability to apply to register a firearm.
We exclude folks who have been convicted of felonies, who have
some mental problem in their background and who have a problem
of domestic abuse. We are trying, through the registration process,
to eliminate those individuals who have a propensity to violence
who we think may be reasonably thought to be in a situation where
they would commit a crime and then have a weapon to make that
crime even more deadly. So we have very strict preconditions on
the application process to register for a weapon. To look at your
example, if that individual had any felony, mental problem or
domestic violence problem, they could not register a firearm in
Washington DC.
Q323 Nicola Blackwood: May
I carry on and ask about the prohibition of people with certain
mental health problems? We are also discussing the role that our
doctors will play in the application process in clearing an individual
as being appropriate to hold a firearm. How does that work in
the US?
Peter Nickles: Individuals who
have been found not to be mentally competent by appropriate authorities—we
have a Department of Mental Health, so individuals who go through
that process—are ineligible to register a firearm. It is
a very important area. We dealt with it very thoughtfully, because
we don't want to exclude people arbitrarily or unnecessarily,
but we look very carefully at the background of each individual
who seeks to register a firearm.
Chair: Thank you. It would be helpful
if our Clerks talked to your staff about getting a note on your
registration procedures. Two final questions, first from Mark
Reckless.
Q324 Mark Reckless: What measures
do you have in place to ensure responsible gun ownership? Do you
see airguns as part of that regime?
Peter Nickles: With respect to
airguns, you have to be 18 or older to purchase or possess an
air weapon, and you can't discharge or possess an air weapon on
public space within the city. As to the conditions that apply
to registration, let me go through some of them, because we have—the
NRA does not like this—a significant series of preconditions
that apply to the registration of a firearm. First, you have to
submit fingerprints for a national criminal background check and
for identification purposes. Secondly, the handguns that will
be subject to the registration process are submitted to our police
department for a ballistics identification procedure, for which
the registration imposes a fee. If a crime is later committed
with a firearm and that firearm has not been registered, we can
then trace it back to the individual who put the gun up for registration.
We also have a test so that the registrant has
to show a significant familiarity with the laws pertaining to
firearms. We have vision tests and training—individuals
have to take at least an hour of firearms training at a firing
range and at least four hours of classroom instruction. We also
have to look at the background of the individual. If the registrant
is a new resident of the district, we look very carefully at that
individual. The registration lasts for three years, and at the
end of the three years, the registration must be renewed. The
firearm certificate includes photographs so that law enforcement
can more easily find these legally registered firearms.
We have a background check once every six years
to confirm that the individual continues to meet the registration
qualifications. We also have a very important requirement that
if the gun is sold, lost or destroyed, that information must be
given to the police department. So we have over a period of some
time developed a significant set of requirements, which are now
the subject of litigation where we have been asked to justify
these preconditions under the second amendment.
Q325 Bridget Phillipson: To
what extent does the district see control of the supply of guns
as the key to solving gun violence in the inner city and what
other strategies do you use for this?
Peter Nickles: The supply of guns
is critical to the crime programmes that we enforce here in Washington
DC. We have tried to work with other states. We have tried to
work with Congress with respect to the supply issue. In all candour
I have to tell you that we have not been that successful simply
because each state regulates in a very different fashion and because
Congress has been so reluctant to deal with the issue. My own
view, having looked at this for some time, is that if one could
impose a modicum of control over the supply of firearms, one can
impose a significant limitation on violent crime with firearms.
Q326 Chair: Thank you. You
mentioned the age limit, Mr Attorney, and one particular gun—airguns.
Is there an age limit on any of the other guns?
Peter Nickles: Yes, there is an
age limit of 21 on the other weapons. For airguns, it is 18 years
of age. It is interesting that in DC we have been registering
guns for almost two years and my understanding is that we have
registered only about 1,000 firearms during that period. That
indicates first that people do not like to go through the preconditions
we have and secondly folks, I guess, have the view that they can
get the firearms in other ways if they wish to have them.
Q327 Chair: That is very helpful.
It is almost 2.30 pm and Parliament is about to start. I hope
that you found that a more pleasant experience than appearing
on Capitol Hill and being cross-examined by one of the congressional
Committees. Have there been any congressional inquiries into firearms
or has the NRA been able to stop even that?
Peter Nickles: Let's say there
have been hearings. I was at a hearing about six months ago with
the head of the Capitol police, the head of the Park Police, and
the head of own Police Department. The basic point we were making
was that Washington DC is a unique city with all the embassies
and all the demonstrations, with the meetings of the IMF, the
World Bank and so on and so requires a stricter regime of gun
control than, say, Wyoming or Oklahoma
Chair: Indeed.
Peter Nickles: I must say that
very few Congressmen showed up and the result of the hearing was
that Congress didn't do anything because the NRA had done its
homework before the hearing. So to some extent when you have all
the senior police officers dealing with the city, the Capitol
police who guard the very Congressmen who are in the hands of
the NRA, the Park Police, the Washington Metropolitan Police Department
all taking the uniform view that we must find a balance and then
Congress not doing anything, it is very disappointing.
Chair: Mr Attorney, I know you are extraordinarily
busy, so may I on behalf of this Committee thank you so much for
participating in this evidence session? We will send you a copy
of our report and your evidence will be part of that report. On
behalf of the Committee as well could I invite you, should you
be visiting London, to come and meet us here in the House of Commons?
If there is any further information that you think it would be
helpful for us to read before our conclusions are fashioned I
should be most grateful if you could forward that on. Could I
thank the Embassy staff who have made this possible, your own
staff and our staff here for participating in this evidence session?
Thank you very much.
Peter Nickles: Thank you. This
has been very interesting.
Chair: Order. The session is closed.
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