IT IS A sad but inevitable fact that firearms licensing in Britain has been driven by tragedies in which lawfully held firearms were used to commit dreadful crimes. Governments are apt to make knee-jerk reactions, and the burden generally falls not on the criminal but on the broad mass of the lawful shooting public. Such was the case after the outrages at Hungerford in 1987 and Dunblane in 1996. The killing of five people in August 2021 in Plymouth by Jake Davison, a shotgun certificate holder whose licence had been removed but then returned to him by the police, along with the shootings in Skye and Wester Ross in August 2022 have again brought the lawful possession of firearms into sharp focus.
It is right that such events should be properly investigated so that any decisions that need to be taken are made once all the facts are known. The senior coroner who conducted the inquest into the Plymouth tragedy reported in March, and he made it patently clear that the principal failings lay with Devon & Cornwall Police. The coroner wrote of catastrophic failure in the management of the force’s firearms licensing unit, with a lack of managerial supervision, inadequate training and a catalogue of other failings that led to the outrage.
This story is from the August 2023 edition of The Field.
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This story is from the August 2023 edition of The Field.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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Rory Stewart - The former Cabinet minister and hit podcast host talks to Alec Marsh about the parlous state of British politics, land management and his deep love of the countryside
The gently spoken 51-year-old former Conservative Cabinet minister is a countryman at heart. That's clear: he even changes into a tweed waistcoat for the interview, which takes place at his London home and begins with a question about his precise career status. Having resigned from the Commons and the Conservative Party in 2019, the former diplomat and soldier has reinvented himself, first with an unconventional but promising run as an independent for the London mayoralty (abandoned because of COVID19 in 2020) and then as a media figure, co-hosting one of the country's most popular podcasts, The Rest Is Politics, alongside Alastair Campbell, the former Labour spin doctor.
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