PRESS RELEASE
Licensed gun owner kills 12 people
Twelve people have been killed and 25 injured in Cumbria
(northwest UK) by a gunman who then committed suicide as police pursued
him. The man, a taxi driver who had been a licensed gun owner for 20
years, killed his twin brother, a colleague and the family solicitor
before driving through several small towns firing randomly at people.
Police later recovered a .22 rifle with a telescopic sight and a
shotgun.
This is the third mass shooting in British history, and
in all three cases the weapons involved were legally owned. Most recent
mass shootings in other countries have also involved legally owned guns,
including the massacres in Finland, Germany, and at Virginia Tech in the
US.
The UK
gun law permits licences for possession of firearms for use in hunting
and recreation. Almost anyone can get a license for shotguns, and there
is no limit on the number that can be owned. For rifles the licensing
process is stricter. But there are no mandatory checks for mental
illness, alcohol or drug dependency. And once a licence is issued, there
are no annual checks on the licence holder’s mental or general health.
Gill
Marshall-Andrews, from the UK Gun Control Network, said:
‘This
tragedy demonstrates once again the terrible danger of guns – both legal
and illegal ones. They are deadly weapons and we should know much more
about who is permitted to own them. Gun owners in the UK have always
been protected by a culture of secrecy. Police will not give out
information about gun ownership, saying it’s a private matter. But when
legal gun owners commit such dreadful crimes, it’s clearly not a private
matter. We should know who around us has guns so we can judge whether
they are suitable people to hold such deadly weapons.
‘The
gun licensing system failed yesterday to protect 12 innocent people from
being killed. It failed before at Hungerford in 1987 and Dunblane in
1996. On its own it is clearly insufficient, because it doesn’t foresee
that previously law-abiding gun owners can become depressed, isolated,
delusional, angry, suffering from relationship difficulties or just
unhappy. If more people had known Derrick Bird had guns, someone might
have alerted the police and yesterday’s killings might never have
happened.
‘Two
things need to happen now:
‘First
we need to assert the public’s right to information about gun
ownership. Just as Jennifer’s List enables parents to find out where
paedophiles live, so doctors, social workers, care workers, paramedics
and others with a legitimate interest should be able to find out who the
gun owners are.
Parents also should be able to find out if there are guns in a
neighbour’s house before allowing their children to play there. In many
cases where children are shot accidentally, their parents had no idea
that there was a gun in the playmate’s house.
‘Second, if private citizens are going to be allowed to keep firearms
at home, annual checks should be conducted with their doctor, their
spouse and the police in relation to alcohol or drug abuse, depression,
domestic violence and criminal activity.
‘We
need to join up the dots – odd behaviour, mental health problems,
domestic violence, gun ownership – and maybe, just maybe, we could
prevent such terrible events’
Issued 3 June 2010
