Firearms – David Cameron announces Home office review

As funerals were held and the inquest opened for victims of the Cumbria shootings, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that the Home Office would be conducting a review of firearms legislation. He also announced that the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) would be conducting a separate review into Cumbria police’s response to the shootings and the licensing of the perpetrator Derrick Bird.

On Wednesday, 9 June, Harriet Harman MP, the leader of the Opposition, asked the Prime Minister if he was “in a position yet to tell the House if the Government has any plans to reconsider the regulation of guns”.

In response, David Cameron stated: “Specifically on the gun laws, we need to be clear first about the full facts of the case. We also need, I think, to determine the type and scope of reviews that will take place after this tragedy. Of course the Home Office will look again at the gun laws in light of that and I can announce today as well that the chief constable of Cumbria has lready written to the ACPO president asking him to support a clear review, to be conducted by national police experts on firearms licensing, the police firearms response and firearms tactics. These reviews will all become publicly available documents. I do believe we shouldn’t leap to conclusions, I don’t believe in knee-jerk legislations. We do have some of the tightest gun laws in this country, but of course we should look again.”

The rest of this article appears in 23rd June issue of Shooting Times.

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