Learning the hard way

Britain has the toughest gun laws in the European Union.

Following the 1997 Dunblane massacre of 16 children and a teacher at a primary school, it banned handguns and other weapons with the aim of making the country a safer place to live in.

However, instead of focusing on the causes of such a tragedy and enacting laws ensuring appropriate safeguards, they opted for a knee-jerk reaction. Britain is now paying a dear price.

Two youngsters in Birmingham have just been gunned down in a hail of sub-machine gun fire, prompting Home Secretary David Blunkett to admit that "while we already have some of the toughest gun laws in the world, there has been an unacceptable increase in the flagrant use of guns in crime across the country".

He now wants tougher action against illegal guns. While falling short of declaring that its policies were misguided, recent government statements are a stark admission that it has failed miserably in its drive to make the UK a safer country to live in. Violent firearm offences have risen by 42 per cent since 1997!

Shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin accused the government of failure: "These figures are truly terrible. They will continue to be dreadful until the government produces a coherent long-term strategy to attack crime at its roots and get police visibly back on our streets."

While the British government punishes law-abiding gun owners by confiscating their firearms at the expense of the law-abiding tax payer, it ignores the real threat that exists in the illegal possession of firearms and the wholesale promotion of violence in the media.

Britain is now deluged with illegal firearms which are increasingly used in crime ranging from armed theft to street warfare between rival gangs.

Until now there exists in the UK no minimum sentence for carrying a prohibited weapon. The maximum is 10 years, but many offenders receive much less. Mr Blunkett intends to establish minimum sentences for gun crime.

However, he also wants to outlaw airguns too, irrespective of whether they are legal or not! Rather than regulate, the Home Secretary opts for prohibition by trial and error in the hope that one day armed crime will finally be eradicated. Sadly it will not!

How would one feel to be a law-abiding British citizen and have his possessions forcibly taken away by his government, using his own tax contribution to fund the scam, when those responsible for the mayhem are violent criminals who always find ways and means to bypass the laws?

In the local context, a White Paper has been published for a new Arms Act to replace our outdated 1931 Arms Ordnance. The initial draft confirmed our worst fears that the government would adopt the same misguided approach taken by the UK.

However, my organisation and other gun-enthusiast groups that make up the gun owners' Lobby took a strong stand and proposed an alternative based on the fair EU Arms Directive.

We negotiated with the authorities in order to change and refine the proposed law into an instrument that truly guarantees public safety while recognising the rights of law-abiding users and collectors of firearms.

It has been a long and arduous process but one that gives me great satisfaction as the authorities have finally recognised the validity and responsibility of our recommendations.

It is now up to the government to urgently turn these months of negotiations into tangible results and the opposition's duty to support our initiative. It would prove that our politicians have learnt from the tragedy of the UK's misguided gun policies.