Quarterly Update
The Home Office produces Quarterly Updates on
Crime in England and Wales. These include data on firearms
offences (excluding airguns).
For "A Guide to and Review of Home Office
Gun Crime Statistics" see
Hales (2006)
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The most recent
information was published in April 2008 and covered the Year to
December 2007.
The data show an increase in the Total Number of Offences compared with the same period in
2006, though the number of Fatal Injuries and the number of
Serious Injuries were both down. The Total number of Offences,
the number of Serious Injuries, the number of Slight Injuries, the
number of offences involving Handguns, Shotguns and Imitation Guns
were all lower than they were for the Year to
September 2006.
There were a
provisional 9967 firearm offences, an increase of 4 per
cent from 2006
Handguns were
used in 4,163
offences, a decrease of 1 per cent from 2005/06
Shotguns were
used in 609 offences, an increase of 2 per cent from 2005/06
Imitation weapons
were used in 2,663 offences, an increase of 6 per cent from
2005/06.
Firearms caused
49 Fatal Injuries, 7 less than in the previous year.
The number of offences that resulted in
Serious Injury decreased by 16% to 355 while the number of
Slight
Injuries increased by 5% to 2,644. Nearly 70% of
firearm offences involved no physical injury, although they were
5,282 instances in which they were used to Threaten (5
percent more than in 2006).
See
Comment
Other includes CS
gas, disguised firearms, machine guns, pepper spray, stun guns and
other specified weapons (majority are paintball guns)
