A link to the BBC article on gun ownership and the current lawAs far as numbers are concerned, the article says:
According to the most recent figures for England and Wales, there are 138,728 people certificated to hold firearms and they own 435,383 weapons. There are 574,946 shotgun certificates which cover 1.4 million shotguns.
Statistics for Scotland show that 70,839 firearms were held by 26,072 certificate holders at the end of last year. Some 50,000 people in Scotland are certificated to hold shotguns - and 137,768 weapons are covered by that scheme.
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That's a total of sbout 790,000 people rather than the 1.7m per the Sky news item.
The Home Office statistics for last year are:
- In 2008-09 firearms were involved in 0.3% or 1 in every 330 crimes recorded by police in England and Wales
- Firearms were used in 14,250 recorded crimes in 2008-09, an 18% decrease on 2007-08, and the fifth consecutive annual fall
- Excluding air weapons, firearm offences decreased by 17% to 8,208
- Handguns were used in 4,275 offences during 2008-09, a rise of 2% on 2007-08
- There was a large fall in the use of imitation weapons, which fell by 41% to 1,511
- Overall, firearm offences involving any type of injury were down by 41% in 2008-09, from 4,164 in 2007-08 to 2,458
- There were 39 fatal injuries from crimes involving firearms in 2008-09, the lowest recorded by the police in 20 years
These statistics don't split the figures between offences by registered owners and those not registered which I would assume are likely to be the majority.
It should be noted that you do not need a licence to possess a knife - the statistics for knife crime are vague - but some 22,000 incidents were recorded by the police a couple of years ago compared to 14,250 firearms crimes.I'm not trying to justify guns, but if someone is intent on killing people, would a ban on firearms reduce the threat or would that person merely use a different means?