Firearms Licensing.

Yesterday we blogged on gamekeepers and guns and wondered if the enforcement of firearms laws was inadequate. Today we will cover briefly how the firearms licensing system is paid for and why that might cause problems with enforcement.

Applicants for a firearms licence pay a fee which can vary between police force areas but rarely covers the cost of the work involved. In the case of Devon & Cornwall Police which has one of the largest number of gun owners in the country, the force spends around £630,000 per annum processing firearms applications in excess of the income from fees. This amounts to a bill of £3,150,000 which has had to come out of the force’s budget over the past five years.

Devon & Cornwall is not alone. In September 2021 the Police and Crime Commissioner for West Midlands, Simon Foster, revealed that his force were suffering a £170,000 loss from processing firearms licences and certificates each year and he called upon the Home Office to allow forces to recoup their costs as part of the national review.

A estimate by Chief police officers suggests that dealing with a firearms licensing application costs four times the fee charged to the applicant. Some people might feel that this money would be better spent on general policing, catching burglars, stopping anti-social behaviour and so on rather than subsidising the hobby of a small section of society. The British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) would disagree. The Home Office too seems to be dragging its heels but this surely cannot be related to the number of MPs and Members of the House of Lords involved in the shooting industry.

Shooting is not a cheap hobby. Is it really fair that the general public should have to subsidise the few who practise it thus reducing the operational budget of our hard pressed police forces?