Antique Firearms Regulations 2020

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Garnier (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I recommend the article by Rupert Jones, “Firearms and Fury: The Rise of Gun Crime in the UK”, published in Counsel magazine for June 2018 and helpfully drawn to the Committee’s attention by the Library in advance of this debate. Together with the clear explanation by my noble friend the Minister, it makes the case for these regulations unanswerable. Were it permissible to do so, it should be annexed to the Official Report for this debate.

The penalties for gun crime are almost invariably severe. Mr Jones wrote about a registered firearms dealer who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for transferring illegal firearms and ammunition. He had Home Office authority not only to possess prohibited handguns but also to sell them. His criminal sideline involved making ammunition to fit antique guns. Despite being in prison since 2015, this man’s ammunition was being discharged by criminals on our streets and recovered by the police long afterwards. It very probably still is. It seems that one can lawfully buy a working handgun without any record of the transaction.

Despite the post-Dunblane restrictions, for some reason it was not thought that antique firearms, for which ammunition was no longer commercially manufactured, would be seen other than as items to be admired in collections. The non-commercial manufacture of ammunition is as old as gun-making itself. I have known people like me, who are legitimate and licensed owners of pre-1939 shotguns used only for game shooting, who used to make their own shotgun cartridges either to save money or as a hobby. That skill is well beyond me. However, my great-great uncle, the sixth Lord Walsingham—a trustee of the Natural History Museum until his death in 1919, perhaps one of the greatest game shots of his generation and a world-renowned ornithologist and lepidopterist—used to make paper cartridges filled with dust for a gun with a barrel no bigger than a pencil. He used them carefully to stun hummingbirds in the tropics so that he could study them close up.

Unfortunately, the private manufacture of modern ammunition specifically designed to be fired from otherwise lawful antique weapons in the course of crime is all too common. When I was Solicitor-General a decade ago, I learned that remarkably few handguns were used in a great many criminal shootings. A small number of illegally held handguns are available for hire to criminals and passed around from gang to gang. What I had not realised until I prepared for this debate is that the market is not limited to modern handguns and longer-barrelled weapons. Antique weapons are also used to commit crimes. If they are—I am sure that they are—we must do all that we can to prevent it. If these regulations help with that, so much the better.

Before concluding, I will say one more thing. At the time of the Dunblane reforms, ill-considered damage was done to the legitimate, competitive, Olympic sport of target shooting and its innocent participants. I join my noble friends Lord Shrewsbury and Lord Lucas in hoping that these otherwise commendable regulations cause nothing similar to law-abiding collectors of antique guns.