The claim
“Mass killings such as those that we saw yesterday are fortunately extremely rare in our country, but that does not make them any less painful, and it does not mean that we should not do everything that we can to stop them happening again, so where there are lessons to be learned, we will learn them, and where there are changes to be made, we will make them.”
Theresa May, addressing the House of Commons following the Cumbria shooting incident, 3 June 2010
The background
The government says it has no plans to change Britain’s gun laws after a horrific shooting on New Year’s Day that left four people dead.
Police say they will investigate why Michael Atherton was allowed to hold six gun licences despite apparently having a history of threatening to harm himself.
But ministers have ruled out tightening gun laws, which say they are some of the toughest in the world already.
That’s almost exactly what Theresa May said 18 months ago, after taxi driver Derrick Bird shot 12 people dead in Cumbria with legally-owned guns.
The Home Secretary promised at the time that there would be no knee-jerk reaction, pointing out that gun murders are rare.
But they are not that rare. Official statistics show that firearm homicides accounted for 6 per cent of all homicides in England and Wales in 2009/10. That’s 40 people.
Which is perhaps why in her first outing at the Dispatch Box as Home Secretary, Ms May said if there were any lessons to be learned, the government “will learn them”.
“Wait until we know the full facts”, she said.
Well, the Home Affairs Select Committee drew up the full facts for Ms May in December 2010. What has been done since? FactCheck investigates.
The analysis
Gun licences are issued by local police authorities, so it was the Cumbria Constabulary that was investigated by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) over Derrick Bird.
The report concluded that there would have been no good reason for the police to revoke Bird’s licence, or seize his guns.
The incident however, prompted the Home Affairs Select Committee to launch an inquiry into firearms control. The Committee’s results were published in December 2010, yet it took three MPs nine months to respond.
While the Home Office told FactCheck there is no deadline for a response, the Committee’s chairman Keith Vaz told FactCheck the lengthy wait was “not normal at all”.
The report made 22 recommendations, three of which the government has taken on board – and none of these included changes to gun licensing laws. Mr Vaz’s central recommendation – to consolidate the 34 gun laws into one Act – was rejected.
He said at the time: “Current gun law is a mess – it needs to be simplified, clear and consistent to be properly understood by both those using firearms for legitimate purposes and those in charge of enforcing the law.”
While the government recognised that there “have long been calls for a new, simplified Firearms Act”, it maintained that “most people have stopped short of saying that the existing law is not fit for purpose”.
The government added: “There have generally been few significant new ideas for how this might be achieved.”
Indeed, Roger Gray, a former firearms adviser to the Met, told the Today programme that the application of the current framework needs to be looked at.
“We need to put (on) more pressure and make more resources available to literally police the ownership of firearms to a greater extent,” he said.
Mr Vaz said that when information is given to the police it needs to be acted on immediately – not hampered by a lack of resources or differing rules between local police authorities.
He told FactCheck: “The big problem is the fact that the government doesn’t appear to have a strategy (on gun law).
“Downing Street treats each case as a one off. But there needs to be uniformity. There is not one, national approach.”
The verdict
The government promised that if there were lessons to be learned, it would act. Acpo’s report into the Cumbrian shootings was “reassuring”, said ministers, because it showed the licensing system wasn’t to blame.
And on that basis, the government won’t be changing the law – but will “keep it in review”.
What is less reassuring, however, is that the same incident prompted an entire Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry which concluded that gun laws overall were in a “mess”.
Its central recommendation was to consolidate the 34 different pieces of legislation on gun laws into one Act, because the laws place an “onerous burden” on the police.
The government however rejected this, stating that it “believes that the best way forward in the short term is to update and revise Home Office guidance in a way which presents the legislation as clearly and simply as possible”.
Overall, the Committee ruled that there were 22 lessons to be learned in the control of firearms. The government took on board just three – none of which attempt to alter gun laws.
Yet eighteen months on from the Cumbrian shootings, we enter 2012 with the news of two horrific shootings, a fresh investigation into how one man obtained a licence for six guns, and more calls for gun laws to be scrutinised.
By Emma Thelwell
