Call for UK gun law reform
Britain’s gun laws need “root and branch” reform to protect the public, the Government has been warned, in the wake of the Plymouth mass shootings in which five people were shot dead.
Ian Arrow, the senior coroner for Plymouth, said the 50-year-old Firearms Act was at “odds with public safety and the fundamental principle that owning a gun is a privilege and not a right”.
In just eight minutes, Jake Davison, 22, killed his mother Maxine, 51, and then shot dead three-year-old Sophie Martyn, her father Lee, 43, Stephen Washington, 59, and Kate Shepherd, 66.
He then turned the weapon on himself as he was confronted by an unarmed police officer on August 12 2021 in Keyham, Plymouth.
Last month jurors at a long-running inquest in Exeter ruled each victim was unlawfully killed. They were critical of the failings within the firearms licensing unit, which handed the apprentice crane operator back his shotgun five weeks before the killings.
The jury also found there was a “serious failure” at a national level by the Government, Home Office and National College of Policing to implement the recommendation from Lord Cullen’s Report in 1996 following the Dunblane killings.
In a series of reports sent to Home Secretary Suella Braverman, Home Office minister Chris Philp, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, all chief constables in England and Wales, the College of Policing and Lord Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice, Mr Arrow raised a series of concerns around the Firearms Act, Home Office guidance provided to police forces applying the Firearms Act legislation, the training offered to police staff assessing licence applications and training given to judges hearing licence appeals.
Mr Arrow called for the legislative distinction between Section 1 firearms – such as rifles – and shotguns to be ended.
“I am concerned the public would be better protected if the legislation provided that a certificate ‘shall not be granted’ unless the applicant has satisfied the relevant chief officer of police that they are safe to hold a gun of any type,” he wrote.
“I am concerned that whilst the criteria for issuing shotgun licences remain less stringent than those for holding Section 1 firearms, a misleading impression of potential fatality of each type of weapon will continue to affect the perception of and attitude to risk amongst police firearms and explosive licensing units and public safety will be compromised.”
Mr Arrow said that “numerous recommendations” arising from previous tragedies and reviews had highlighted a lack of nationally recognised training for police staff involved in firearms licensing decisions and there was an “urgent need” for it.
“If any lessons had been learned in the aftermath of earlier tragedies, they have been forgotten and that learning had been lost,” he wrote.
“Over the past 27 years, there has been an abject failure to ensure that nationally accredited training of firearms licensing staff has been developed and its currency maintained.
“I am concerned to ensure that the momentum to effect change after the horrific tragedy in Keyham should not be lost, as it has been in respect of lessons and recommendations over the past 27 years.”