doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com A bit OT: Looking for a number from our UK friends

I'm in a bit of a whizzing contest elsewhere about the increase in violent crime in the UK post confiscation of privately owned handguns.

Any idea on the number of privately owned handguns confiscated in the UK? Even a good approximation is OK.

Likewise, any idea on the actual numbers of crimes pre and post confiscation? Things like home invasions, burglaries, robberies (esp. armed), and the like. I'm especially interested in "official" numbers.

Thanks!

I can't give a number as I don't know it - but I can give an opinion - which is fairly unbiased as although I'm a shotgun man, I have never had a handgun, or particularly wanted one.

ALL legally held private handguns were confiscated. That's because the authorities had a full detailed record of everything legally held. Illegally held handguns are a different question - those held by 'criminals' weren't on any record - and I very much doubt any were handed in. There is also a (small and decreasing) number of 'war souvenirs' from fathers and grandfathers forgotten in boxes in lofts and garages that are still occasionally handed in at 'amnesties' that occur periodically. I have never heard of these being used in crime directly, though I suppose that very rarely they may have fallen into criminal hands. The general view is that the illegally held guns come in from overseas. Border/security controls for sea and tunnel travel are not like airline security, and as most countries, there is a problem with drugs, alcohol and tobacco smuggling, the last two because we have relatively high duty rates on these items compared to some other European countries.

On crime, my impression that the 'crime' side such as armed robbery etc (banks, jewellers etc) - is largely unchanged because very very few of these used legally held guns. I guess there would be a very small reduction in 'domestic' crimes where a handgun was involved, but this was a very low level anyway, since it was never easy to hold a handgun legally and there was a vetting system in place.

I suspect that 'Googleing' may turn up some official figures, but those are my impressions as a UK citizen (and resident).

Dave, I don't know which side of the argument you are on but I very much doubt there is any connection between the rise in violent crime and the handgun ban. (However much I would like there to be!)
Firstly you must realize that in terms of % population, the numbers of handgun owners was tiny. I have been involved in shooting sports for about 50 years and I have never personally known anyone who has had a handgun other than for humane despatch of deer and then only two.
However the vast majority of people who did own handguns had them as collectors and target shooters, not for personal protection.
I believe that the only place that non-police or armed forces personnel were (relatively) commonly allowed to have a handgun for personal protection was in Northern Ireland, with very few exceptions.
To have used any weapon for personal defence would have always put you in a very dubious position legally. Many are the cases of people who have used there weapon for protection of person or property and have found themselves in the dock as a result.

One difficult truth for North Americans to comprehend about the UK is that we have never had a common 'gun culture'. Guns have always been owned by a small disparate minority who are viewed by the vast majority as strange and probably a little deranged!
This is why it has been relatively easy for us to get stuck with ever tightening firearm legislation: the general population don't get it and we are too few and fragmented to have a strong lobby to defend ourselves.
At a time in our history when North Americans were having to feed and protect themselves with a firearm, we were busy executing and transporting people for poaching a pheasant. At that time in the UK only the rich had the opportunity to shoot and the wherewithal to afford guns.
With the industrial revolution and sporting possibilities of the colonies came the interest in sporting shooting but still it was a pastime of the wealthy and privileged.
Around the turn of the C19th there was a degree of democratisation of shooting sports but it was a slow progress that was fatally damaged by the 1st WW.
The 50's and 60's saw the rise in clay pigeon shooting for the working man, especially as transport became more affordable, but it never grabbed the population as a whole.
And finally the atrocities of Hungerford and Dunblane, helped by an unsympathetic media, only confirmed what the general population had always believed...!
I truly wish that there was a connection between the handgun ban and rising violent crime which might result in the ban being lifted but there isn't and that argument is never going to fly in the UK.
If anybody was brave enough to suggest some sort of readily available 'concealed carry' permit in the UK, there would be a vast outcry from politicians, media and the general population.
And I have to say that I would agree.
What arguably works in one country just can't simply be applied to another. Take the NHS for example...but that is a whole other subject and even more OT!

John and Toby make good points. I think there would be very little statistically about handgun usage in the UK that would correlate with any argument, for or against, in another country.

Unlike John and Toby I have come across pre-ban handgun ownership in the UK, other than for target shooting, though since I was then a serving army officer that is perhaps not surprising. The first handgun I ever shot as a boy was a .38 Webley service revolver, owned by a farmer friend who had had it in WW II. He also had a Baby Browning .25 which he had carried in that war as a concealed personal defence back-up. That he still had them in the late 1960s was perhaps a reflection of his large (to my eyes) armoury of sporting guns and rifles, used mostly on his farm. I don't suppose he was alone in having such a collection, as a farmer, at that time. Its different now, of course.

I did five tours in Northern Ireland (1970s & early 80s) and used concealed handguns often, usually the issued Browning 9mm, though the Walther PPK and, on one memorable occasion, a large frame Webley revolver, also got used. Remarkably the army only had a limited number of shoulder holsters available and they were of poor quality. I ended up buying my own holsters (from the US). Many others in the army, the UDR, the RUC used to carry concealed issued weapons. There were very few non-combat incidents with these.

Several of my service friends also had licensed handguns. I remember obtaining a firearms licence myself for a .357, though I never got around to owning one. Why handguns then? A general interest in firearms and a desire to learn to handle and shoot a handgun competently, I guess. Of course, we had easy access to ranges where they could be fired and suitable armouries to keep them in. I don't think we were odd or unusual in this, though we were certainly in a minority.

Dave, sorry not to have been able to answer your question directly. I hope the background may be of passing interest and of some small contextual help.

Tim

http://dvc.org.uk/dunblane/ssaagreenwood.html

according to this source more than 162.000 handguns were handed in
1997

plus, according to a BBC report,
quote:
Three months after the Dunblane massacre in March 1996, there was a national firearms amnesty that saw nearly 23,000 firearms and 700,000 rounds of ammunition surrendered.
This was considerably less than the 48,000 weapons surrendered after the Hungerford killings nine years before.
In January 2003 the killing of teenagers Charlene Ellis and Letisha Shakespeare in Birmingham provoked another gun amnesty.
Nearly 43,000 firearms and more than a million rounds of ammunition were handed in to police stations across the UK.
unquote

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/16/newsid_3110000/3110949.stm

Are you talking about Massachusetts? After MA passed its gun legislation in 1998, legal gun ownership dropped 80% and today roughly 10% of the voters are gun owners. And that is reflected in the mentality around here - I recently arranged for my son's Scout troop to shoot for their Riflery Merit Badges at my club, and some of the parents would not let their sons participate until I confirmed that this was not an NRA program (no shi!).

Sorry for the hijack but Toby's comment struck too close to home.

I sappreciate the help, guys. The hard numberds Gunter put up were along the precise lines of what I was looking for, but the perspective the UK gents provided was and is quite welcome.

I have always come at the issue from the POV of less gun control is better. (I've been arguing the case against gun control since I was old enough to form a coherent argument - sometime around age 11, over 40 years now.) I got into this latest argument on another site, where some dimwits were trying to make that cop in SC shooting a black guy in the back into another pretext for gun control and simultaneously dismissing as false the entire concept that privately owned guns do have an effect on the crime rate - i.e., lowering it. I have found lots of now-dead links to old articles (circa 1999-2001) in which the rise in UK crime and the then-recent confiscation of handguns were tied together. (I have time to research and write my rejoinder to those dimwits on the other site b/c I have article-posting privileges there and they don't.)

I understand the hazards of trying to prove cause-and-effect but also recognize that in the heat of debate (or even in the less-heated room of forming opinions) no one takes the time to parse out where the gaps might be. And I know how to construct a pretty solid case even when there are gaps.

I also appreciate that reasonable minds can differ and that the UK experience is quite different from the US. There's probably a series of books in there somewhere that I'll never have the time to read, let alone write. But I gotta fight my battles where I live.

And, for that matter, those Mass. laws are (along with much better rental rates) why I live in Maine and not Mass.

BTW, it looks like Maine's "constitutional carry" bill is likely to pass. It has something around 100 co-sponsors, last I checked.

Thanks again, guys.

Dave, I understand that following the Dunblane inspired handgun ban that crime involving handguns went up by around 300% since in Scotland alone. The simple reason being that the ban did not affect criminals and terrorists because there was no record of them having them.

Burglary has always been fairly widespread in Britain and street robbery seemed to take off in the late 70's. I was a serving Police Officer from 1973 to 2003. Gun crime is fairly low here anyway. I used to be a recreational handgun shooter until mine were confiscated by Government. Ironically I was also a member of the Tactical Firearms unit from 1980 until 1998; a sort of equivalent to the swat teams and also a part time instructor. I couldn't be trusted to use a gun to punch holes in a piece of paper but could be trusted to make on the spot life or death decisions with one! Ignore the rubbish about what got handed in at amnesties as very few illegal stuff was actually handed in. Most guns were things like worn out air rifles, old out of proof shotguns that people could not get rid of any other way, some antiques and even toy guns. They were all counted. Out of 30 some handed in where I was only two were held illegally; one a Baikal single barrel shotgun and the other was a Greener .310 Cadet rifle that would have been perfectly legal to keep without a certificate but for the fact it had been re-tubed to .22rf. at some time. The rest was just junk and as I have described. As for ammunition the figures were manipulated to make it sound better. A tin of air rifle pellets would be counted a 500 rounds of ammunition in order to boost the figures. All of it was a Government inspired publicity stunt. Criminals just do not hand guns in ever!

One book that I would strongly suggest that you get hold of that puts a lot of useful information forward is 'Does the Trigger Pull the Finger?' by Richard Law & Peter Brooksmith. It only costs about �10 ISBN: 978-1-906174-99-6

If you have any specific questions that I may be able to assist with then please feel free to PM. me and I will try my best to help. Lagopus.....

You might consider just asking them if they'll be open to reading your research, before you take the time to do it. It may not be practical to blame them if they decline to appreciate your efforts.

When the Government of Great Britain decided to confiscate all legally held private handguns, was there any financial compensation given to the owners of the said handguns? Was there any challenges about property rights? An individual could have a sizeable amount of money tied up in a collection.

Sorry, I missed the newspaper link provided earlier by Gunter; states,"More than �UK80 million was paid in compensation and the cost of the confiscation scheme to police and government cost tens of millions more."

Tim