Supplementary memoranda submitted by Professor
Peter Squires
1. "MOST
FIREARM OFFENDING
INVOLVES LEGAL
WEAPONS"
When I gave my oral evidence to the committee
on Tuesday 26 October I began with the point that most "gun
crime" in England and Wales was probably committed with "legal
weapons". The significance of this point did not seem to
be fully grasped by the committee and has been otherwise contested
so I will explain the evidence upon which it is based.
According to the Home Office Supplementary Volume
2 statistics: Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence
(Home Office 2010), roughly 40% of recorded firearm offending
involves airguns. Earlier Home Office evidence (Home Office, 1996)
has established that approximately 14% of firearm homicides involve
licensed weapons.[1]
Finally a clutch of other weapon types (BB guns, blank firers,
deactivated weapons) account for a further 8.5% of recorded offences.
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| Hence: | Air weapons | 40% of recorded gun crime
|
| Licensed weapons (extrapolated trend)
| 14% of recorded gun crime |
| Other (not illegal) Weapon types
| 8.5% of recorded gun crime |
| | |
| TOTAL | 62.5% of recorded gun crime
|
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It may be objected that only the second category of weapons
have been through a licensing process and therefore need to be
examined in a different light. Such a point would suggest that
air weapon licensing might go some way to reduce air weapon offending
( a point taken up later) and it also underscores the point that
where weapons are legally or illegally prevalent in a community
they are, much to the same extent, more frequently misused. Nevertheless,
as it stands, around 62% of recorded gun crime in England &
Wales involves firearms that are not illegal.
2. "A PARTICULAR PATTERN
OF LICENSED
WEAPON MISUSE"
The Home Office evidence from 1996 which we have already
considered made it clear that as many as "one in three firearms
used in `domestic' homicides were legally held" (HO: 1996).
This related to 19 out of 56 "domestic murders" between
1992 and 1994. Such domestic murders or, sometimes, murder-suicides
(or, dyadic murders) form a particular patterned subset of homicides.
Such murders are often the end point of a pattern of domestic
abuse going back many years. The Home Office findings are consistent
with a series of studies between 1993 and 2007 reviewing the circumstances
of domestic homicide and domestic murder-suicide in England and
Wales (Milroy, 1993, 1998; Barraclough and Harris, 2003 and Travis,
Johnson and Milroy, 2007) and with a range of international studies
which show that firearms "readily available in the home"
and often legally owned continue to account for a significant
proportion of domestic murder and murder-suicide incidents (Alpers
and Morgan, 1995; Carcach and Graborsky: 1998; Mouzos, 2000. Furthermore
in England and Wales, approximately 70% of firearms misused in
domestic homicides were shotguns and, where shotguns were used
to commit domestic murders, they were legally owned in 32% of
the incidents.
Recent evidence: 2010: I have logged 44 "domestic firearm
incidents" between 1 January and 30 September reported in
national and local media. This figure is undoubtedly an under-representation
of the scale of these incidents. Excluding the Cumbria killings
(12 Murders, 11 attempted murders and one suicide) committed with
legally-owned firearms, these 44 incidents comprise nine further
murders (including three murder-suicides), nine further attempted
murders (including one attempted murder followed by suicide) and
23 other incidents involving threats, wounding, Assault/ABH and
animal cruelty.
Sixteen of the incidents involved air weapons (by definition,
not illegal) and 15 of them shotguns (given the earlier data one
third of these is likely to be licensed). A motley collection
of illegal handguns, converted weapons and imitation firearms
(by definition illegal, were responsible for the remaining incidents.
By these estimates legal weapons are still responsible for around
50% of our most serious domestic firearm incidents. They are not
uncommon, they are not unforeseen "tragedies" like natural
disasters,[2] they are
preventable crimes.
3. "THE PARTICULAR
HARMS OF
AIR WEAPONS"
We have already noted the scale of air weapon misuse, which
accounted for 6,042 offences in 2008-09. Air weapons represent
the single most common type of criminally misused firearm. They
are subject to a different pattern of misuse and are much more
likely to be criminally misused by being fired than any other
type of weapon. Most air weapon misuse results in criminal damage
offences but air weapons are still responsible for 50% of total
firearm injuries (Home Office, 2010, page 43) including ten fatalities
(mostly of children) since 1999-2000 and around 100 serious injuries
per year. Looked at another way, air weapons were responsible
for 19% of serious firearm injuries and fatalities (in 2009-10).
In sum the air weapon evidence underscores the point that
firearms that are routinely available in a community are more
likely to be routinely misused within it. Air weapons are the
most commonly available weapons in England and Wales, the pattern
of harm associated with them suggests that they should be brought
into the wider licensing system. While the recorded air weapon
crime trend is falling significantly there is a recognition that
rates of air weapon offending are very much under-reported (Home
Office, 2010).
The suggestions arising from these comments:
(i) the contribution of legal weapons to British gun crime
needs to be more fully acknowledged.
(ii) This would be easier if more consistent record were kept
of the legal status of crime weapons.
(iii) The crime patterns ands weapon use patterns associated
with firearm involved domestic homicide/attempted murder/assault/threats
needs fuller consideration.
(iv) The harms associated with air weapons need to be taken
more seriously and these weapons need to be brought into a licensing
system.
Nothing in this supplementary memorandum is meant to detract
from earlier written and verbal comments relating to the problems
resulting from—and the need to deal more effectively with—the
complex and changing mixed economy of illegal weapons available
on British streets.
Finally, in view of the Whiting Report's conclusion that
the existing gun laws had been appropriately applied in Cumbria,
that the Police had no grounds for refusing Derrick Bird a gun
licence and that only "far more fundamental changes"
on private ownership of guns could have prevented him carrying
out his murderous shooting spree, I would also reiterate a point
made in my original evidence that firearms and ammunition should
not be retained in private homes where they are most at risk of
illegal misuse and theft.
4 November 2010
1
This figure rises to 20% if illegal misuse of someone else's licensed
weapon (for example stolen weapons or weapons used against their
owners) is taken into account (Home Office Memo, 1996. Back
2
Much of the reporting of domestic firearm incidents, murders and
murder/suicides, as is common in the case of the reporting of
firearm rampage killings, shares a tendency to see them as if
they were "unforeseeable natural disasters" rather than
preventable crimes. See Squires, 2000. Back
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