The families of four people including a three-year-old girl killed by the Plymouth gunman Jake Davison have accused the police of giving him a “licence to kill” by allowing him to have a shotgun despite a known history of violence and are calling for “radical change” to the licensing system.
Speaking after an inquest jury concluded that Davison, 22, unlawfully killed five people, the bereaved relatives said the attack was “pure evil” but argued it was facilitated by systemic failings and incompetence.
On 12 August 2021, Davison – who was fascinated with corrosive “incel” culture, previous mass shootings and serial murderers – killed his mother, Maxine, 51, three-year-old Sophie Martyn, her father, Lee, 43, Stephen Washington, 59, and Kate Shepherd, 66, in Keyham. Davison then turned his pump-action shotgun on himself.
In a statement, Rebecca Martyn – the mother of Sophie and wife of Lee – the Washington family and the Shepherd family said their lives were “changed for ever”.
“Our hearts are still incredibly heavy with grief, and we are still struggling to come to terms with our loss,” they said. “We will never be able to understand or comprehend why Davison did what he did. It was an act of pure evil.
“However, we now know that this evil act was facilitated and enabled by a series of failings and incompetence from the people and organisations that are supposed to keep us safe. In particular, Devon and Cornwall police failed us. The evidence that we have heard during this inquest is a consistent story of individual failures, breathtaking incompetence and systemic failings within every level of the firearms licensing unit.
“It is beyond us how Davison, a man with a known history of violence, mental health issues, and with no real need to own a firearm, was granted a licence to possess a gun in the first place.”
The families also called for wide changes to the firearms licensing system in England and Wales. In legal submissions to the court they said: “There needs to be radical reform. That means fewer guns in circulation with robust safeguards.”
They added: “The national picture reflects widespread complacency by licensing authorities and the home secretary.”
The families called for the Firearms Act 1968, which makes it easier for people to get certificates for shotguns than for rifles, to be amended or replaced. They said the current law “leads to a perception that shotguns … pose less of danger to the public and that an application for a shotgun certificate demands less scrutiny.”
There was “no earthly reason” why Davison should have been permitted to store his shotgun at home, they said. “There ought to be a statutory mechanism whereby an authority can direct that a gun be stored with a responsible third party such as a gun club. This is not possible under the existing legislation.”
The families said: “The home secretary must take action and place primary legislation before parliament. If she does not, she is failing in her duty to protect the public. Any failure by the home secretary to take this action would amount to a betrayal of the victims in this case, and the victims of other such tragedies.”
They called for an accredited training package to be introduced for firearms inquiry officers and for funding of licensing departments to be increased and standardised – issues that have been flagged up by campaigners and in inspections for a more than a quarter of a century since the Dunblane tragedy. The families also want the way police and GPs communicate over medical conditions that could have a bearing on applicants’ suitability to hold firearms to be looked at again.
During the five-week inquest, Devon and Cornwall police accepted they were wrong to grant Davison, an apprentice crane operator, a shotgun certificate, because of his history of violence and since the impact of his autism diagnosis was not fully understood.
The force also admitted it should not have returned his pump-action shotgun five weeks before the shootings, having confiscated it when he attacked two children in a Plymouth park.
The families said it was “unbelievable” that his shotgun was returned to him.
“The evidence that we have heard from Devon and Cornwall police was that of a system that was a shambles from the top to the bottom. Those in charge of making decisions as to who should possess a gun had no training on how to do the job,” they said.
“There was no supervision of those individuals. There was no auditing of the decisions that were being made. There was a culture of granting people firearms licences against a background of serious concern. We firmly believe that these failings have resulted in the deaths of our loved ones. Warning signs were ignored and a licence to kill was granted.”
