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Home Office

Answer

Mr. Kidney: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent assessment he has made of the (a) trade in and (b) possession of (i) replica guns and (ii) disabled guns and (c) incidence of conversion of such guns to fire live ammunition; and what proposals he has to bring forward legislation to tackle gun crime. [132546] Caroline Flint: There are no reliable statistics relating to the number of imitation and deactivated firearms in circulation. Imitation weapons were involved in 1,201 recorded offences in 2001-02. An examination of 217 real guns submitted to the Forensic Science Service between April-June 2003 showed that 59 had been converted from blank firing replicas, 19 from air weapons and two from de-activated guns. Offences involving the use of guns are varied and need to be tackled on a number of different fronts. Tough laws and effective enforcement are important and the current Criminal Justice Bill includes proposals for a five-year minimum sentence for the illegal possession of prohibited firearms. We have also included provisions in the Anti-social Behaviour Bill which will ban the carrying of imitation firearms or air weapons in a public place without reasonable excuse. The sale, manufacture, transfer and import of air weapons which use the self-contained air cartridge system--which is readily converted to fire conventional ammunition--will also be banned. The law already regards any imitation which can be readily converted as a firearm which means that it is banned if it is a handgun.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

132546; 411 c681W;411 c686W

Session

2002-03

Subjects

Crime prevention Crime Airguns Firearms Handguns Enforcement Imitation firearms Imports Sentencing Retail trade

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk