- The Observer,
- Sunday October 5, 2003
This article said: 'Some 125,000 firearm licences were issued last year.' We should clarify that the figure referred to the year 2000 and reflected the total number of firearms certificates in existence in England and Wales that year, not the number of new certificates. This was actually a decrease of 5 per cent on 1999. The total for 2001 was 119,560, a similar decrease.
On Friday morning a man was shot dead as he left a gym in Hoddesdon. On Friday evening three people were injured from gunshot wounds in a drive-by shooting in Reading. Earlier in the week, near Nottingham, a 64-year-old jewellery shop owner had been gunned down in front of her family. Every day brings further evidence of rising gun crime, now increasing by some 35 per cent a year. In the past 12 months there have been nearly 10,000 incidents involving firearms in England and Wales, and 97 gun-related murders.
Middle England has tended to think the escalation of gun violence is related only to fratricidal wars between Afro-Caribbean or Eastern European gangs in inner cities it would never visit, the byproduct of a drugs trade it has nothing to do with. The consensus has been that while everyone would welcome less gun crime, its menace to 'respectable' middle-class people is minimal.
This is a dangerous delusion. Marian Bates's jewellery shop was in a prosperous suburb of Nottingham; Hoddesdon is a quiet market town.
The demand from drug gangs for firearms has created a trade in cheap lethal weapons, easily imported, often even sent by surface mail. Their use is becoming commonplace. In more than two-thirds of reported armed robberies in England and Wales, the weapon used was described as a small handgun. Reports are also rising of houseowners with expensive cars being threatened with guns at their homes. The number of armed robberies on public highways has also risen, by 19 per cent in a year.
Last week, the Home Secretary, responding to the killing of Mrs Bates, pledged that Labour would defeat gun crime during a third term for Labour. But if he is to fulfil that pledge, the response must start now and be multi-pronged. David Blunkett is right to call for tough sentences for possessing unlicensed fire arms. But that will not be sufficient. Some 125,000 firearm licences were issued last year. To whom? For what? How regularly are certificate holders checked? Numbers of police on the street must be increased; visibility and speed of response to gun incidents is essential to their control.
We need, too, greater protection for witnesses in gun crimes; in recent cases, including the tragic shooting last month of seven-year-old Toni-Ann Byfield, witnesses have failed to come forward, frightened to speak up. Finally, communities sheltering drug gangs responsible for gun crime have responsibilities, too. The consequences to their families of failing to act can be tragic.
