Gun laws and hunting in the The UK

[X]

In the United Kingdom, access by the general public to firearms is tightly controlled by law which is much more restrictive than the minimum rules required by the European Firearms Directive, but it is less restrictive in Northern Ireland. The country has one of the lowest rates of gun homicides in the world. There were 0.05 recorded intentional homicides committed with a firearm per 100,000 inhabitants in the five years to 2011 (15 to 38 people per annum). Gun homicides accounted for 2.4% of all homicides in the year 2011. There is some concern over the availability of illegal firearms.

Office for National Statistics figures show 7,866 offences in which firearms were involved in the year ending March 2015, 2% up on the previous year and the first increase in 10 years. Of these, 19 were fatalities, 10 fewer than the previous year and the lowest since records began in 1969. There was a further rise to 8,399 in the year ending March 2016, the highest number in four years, but significantly lower than the all-time high of 24,094 in 2003/04. Twenty-six resulted in fatal injuries.

Members of the public may own sporting rifles and shotguns, subject to licensing, but handguns were effectively banned after the Dunblane school massacre in 1996 with the exception of Northern Ireland. Dunblane was the UK's first and only school shooting. There has been one spree killing since Dunblane, the Cumbria shootings in June 2010, which involved a shotgun and a .22 caliber rifle, both legally-held. Prior to Dunblane though, there had only been one mass shooting carried out by a civilian in the entire history of Great Britain, which took place in Hungerford on 19 August 1987.

Police in the United Kingdom (aside from Northern Ireland) are not routinely armed. Fatal shootings of police are extremely rare; there were three in England and Wales in the eleven-year period from 2000/01 to 2010/11. Armed response units are available to deal with incidents, and as of the 31 March 2017 there were 6,278 armed officers serving in territorial police forces in England and Wales.


Handguns and fully automatic rifles are completely prohibited, as are semi automatic weapons over .22 (there are exceptions, such as slaughterhouses, items of historical interests, elite sports teams and animal culling)

Shotguns are permitted, subject to extensive vetting and the issuing of a licence. Many people living near me have shotguns.

All other rifles are permitted, but all are covered by the Firearms Act (including air rifles, interestingly)

If you are caught with a prohibited weapon - including just having live ammunition - or if you have another weapon without the right licence, you get an automatic 5 year jail sentence.

There are loads of pros and cons to this legislation, and I know it's a big issue in the US. We have hardly any gun crime here, but of course and logically have higher knife crime or acid attacks etc because people find it hard to get guns and/or are put off by the hefty jail sentence. Of course, some criminals still do have guns.