What Paul is enunciating is a view about the perceived dangers of firearms in the hands of private individuals. It is certainly the case that people having guns in their possession for other than essential purposes are regarded with suspicion by many people in Britain.
Agreed. There probably are a lot of people who regard private individuals who have guns with suspicion, however that does not and cannot mean that his proposed "solutions" should be taken seriously.
So far as I've been able to establish, each murderer had previously come to the attention of the police and each held a firearms certificate at the time of the attack.
Correct. So, let's look at the known facts
19th August 1987, Michael Ryan (16 dead, 15 injured)
Police informer and known low-level criminal who should never have passed any form of vetting, the suggestion here was that it suited the police to give him what he wanted simply because he was useful to them.
He didn't have a good reason for being allowed to possess any of his firearms, because in order to possess them lawfully he needed to either belong to an approved gun club or to have land over which to shoot. He did join an approved gun club but the members were unhappy with his conduct and the club secretary wrote to the police, clearly stating that in his opinion he should not be allowed to possess guns, and they also terminated his club membership. The police chose to ignore this, Ryan came to their attention several times but they ignored this too. He then applied for even more dangerous guns and the police allowed him to have them. Following his spree killings, control of gun licencing was moved from the operational police (because they may have vested interests or there may be questions about their competence) and moved control to separate firearms licencing departments, which in my view was the right thing to do. The Government also (effectively) banned possession of self-loading rifles. Banning self-loading rifles did nothing to reduce crime.
13th March 1996, Thomas Hamilton (17 dead, 15 injured)
Known sex offender (paedophile), thief and fraudster. The police had a number of complaints about him, including from the Scouts (he had been a scout leader but following "incidents" with young boys the Scouts turfed him out and complained to the police about his conduct. He had pistols that he was only entitled to have if he was an active member of an approved club, and when his firearms certificate became due for renewal a police Sgt. wanted to refuse renewal based on the fact that Hamilton no longer belonged to a gun club, had not done so for many years and so had no good reason. He was overruled by a more senior officer. We will never know the true story because the government took the very unusual step of locking away the case files for 100 years -why did they do that? The government also (effectively) banned handguns in GB (but not in NI). Some of us are still allowed to have handguns, mainly for humane despatch of animals only. Banning handguns did nothing to reduce gun crime.
2nd June 2010, Derrick Bird (12 dead, 11 injured)
Bird used a legally-held .22 rimfire rifle and an illegally-held shotgun. Known thief who had been sentenced to a term of imprisonment and who should never have been considered for any form of certificate. Once he had his certificates and had bought guns, he came to police notice several times, there were allegations of theft, allegations of assault and he was also arrested in Thailand for alleged sex offences, but the police ignored all this and, as in the earlier cases, left him able to go on his killing spree. The police investigated themselves and the investigating officer found a number of instances of strange police conduct, including the mysterious loss of many of the police paperwork, but the conclusion, as always, was that the actions of the police did not contribute to the killing spree. I happen to know a bit about this case because I gave evidence to the Parliamentary Committee, and still have their full report. The only change that followed this incident is that, before this, certificate holders had to give their medical GP written permission to provide information about their health conditions to the police, if asked, and this was changed in that the certificate holders had to pay for a GP report, if required.
12th August 2021, Jake Davison (5 dead, 2 injured)
We don't know yet, but the early indications are that this shooting was only possible because of the police actions.
Realistically, nothing can be done to totally safeguard the public from people who are either evil or insane. We've seen terrorist attacks where the terrorists couldn't get guns so killed people with knives or vehicles.
And, horrific those these attacks by people who have wrongly been issued with certificates are, the reality is that there have been just four in the last 31 years, with a total of 49 people dead. In the same period, about 20,000 other murders have been committed, very few with even illegally-held firearms. And a few of those murders will have been committed using vehicles, which nobody seems to want to ban, even though the total death toll from vehicles for the same period will be around 93,000. So, let's keep a sense of perspective here.
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