Vision of Humanity"

Gun ownership in England and Wales. Firearms certificates are on the increase.

Police investigating the deaths of four people shot dead on new year’s day in Horden, County Durham have found the killer to have held six gun licences.

It is expected that police will question why a man with a history of self harm was allowed to hold the licenses. Helen Carter writes today:

Michael Atherton, 42, had licences for the firearms despite police revealing they were told in 2008 he had threatened to harm himself during what they describe as a “minor” incident.

Gun ownership is always thought of as a rarity in the UK. We may like to think that this country has lower levels of gun crime than the US, and that we don’t have the same problems of US gun control – especially after the Tucson shooting last year.

But there are still plenty of firearms around here, all held legally. These latest figures from the Home Office have released in March 2011 show that more guns have been licensed than ever before.

Shotguns are covered by one type of police certificate, while other firearms such as pistols or rifles, are covered by another. The figures (you can get the original statistical bulletin here) show that:

• There were 141,775 firearm certificates on issue on 31 March 2010, an increase of 2% compared with the end of March 2009
• 580,653 shotgun certificates were on issue on 31 March 2010, 1% up
• Those certificates cover a total of 1.8m guns

The figures show that the highest number of guns are covered by certificates in Devon and Cornwall, where 97,954 guns are licensed. Most of those are shotguns (71,768), however, and that maybe reflects the rural nature of the area.

Gun ownership by police force in the UK

But we’ve also added the populations of each area into the mix, to see how that changes things. That shows a different picture: 11,357 guns per 100,000 people in Dyfed-Powis, compared to a national figure of 3,323 – and a low of only 815 in Merseyside.

The data comes as the BBC revealed that children as young as seven have been granted shotgun licenses. The Freedom of Information request showed that:

Between 2008 and 2010, there were 7,071 licences issued to under-18s … Devon and Cornwall police granted the most certificates, 418, followed by West Mercia (346) and Norfolk (324).

You can download all the key data and compare it to the previous year’s numbers. What can you do with it?

Source: Guardian Data Blog