It has been revealed that hundreds of gun licences were granted in Avon and Somerset over the last year. A total of 860 new applications for firearm and shotgun certificates were granted in the year to March locally, according to the latest Home Office data.
Only six applications were refused. A further 5,692 applications to renew an existing certificate were granted. This brings the total number of people in the Avon and Somerset area with a firearm or shotgun certification (or both) to 21,540.
It comes as a new scheme gives GPs the right to alert police if a gun owner starts suffering from a medical condition that may make having the weapon unsafe. Doctors will now be alerted to the ownership of weapons via GP records.
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Last year's August 12 mass shooting in Plymouth led to the Home Office asking police forces to review their firearm licensing practices, with additional safety checks being introduced.
These rule changes come almost a year after 22-year-old Jake Davison shot and killed five people – including his mother and a three-year-old girl – with a pump-action shotgun in Plymouth. After turning the gun on himself, it later emerged Davison’s gun and certificate had previously been removed after he allegedly assaulted two youths, before having the weapon returned.
Over the last year to March, Avon and Somerset Police revoked just 28 gun licences. An individual acquiring a firearm or shotgun must obtain a certificate from the chief officer of their local police force area, unless they are exempt.
To issue a certificate, the chief officer must be satisfied that the applicant has a good reason for having the firearm and that they are fit to be entrusted with one. They also must be satisfied that public safety or peace will not be endangered.
A new scheme, only applied in England, allows GPs the ability to add a "digital marker" to a patient's medical record once notified by police they have a firearm or shotgun licence, to remind doctors to alert police if a gun owner starts to suffer from a medical condition that may make having a weapon unsafe. Anyone applying for a gun licence must also fill out a medical form signed by a doctor.
Dr Peter Holden, the British Medical Association’s lead for firearms licensing policy, said the new GP scheme is a step forward in improving gun licencing. However, he's warned against the public being under any illusion that this will be an 'overnight solution'.
He said, "This new scheme will apply only to new applicants or people renewing their licences, so it will take up to five years before all licensed gun owners are included within this framework. Of course, when there is a diagnosis of concern, GPs will continue to use all of the information in front of them and where there is a danger to the wider public or the patient themselves, they will alert authorities.
"The introduction of the marker though must not imply that the buck for public safety stops with the GP. As the police have acknowledged, they themselves are ultimately responsible for firearms licensing.”
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