Tim Bonner: The government is coming for your shotguns

This morning the government fired the starting gun on a debate about restrictions on the ownership of shotguns. It has said that it will consult on “aligning the controls on shotguns with other firearms”. This is a proposal that has long been championed by gun control campaigners and their supporters in the Labour Party.

The thrust of the policy is to license shotguns in the same way as rifles and other guns currently dealt with under Section 1 of the Firearms Act. In practical terms this would mean that an applicant would have to show good reason for owning a shotgun, each gun would have to be licensed separately, the purchase and holding of ammunition would be limited and there may be additional restrictions around the storage of shotguns.

On top of the big hike in licence fees the government has already announced this is clearly a policy that would reduce gun ownership by making it restrictive, expensive and bureaucratic, which is why it has the support of anti-gun activists.

The fact that this significant and unjustified burden on legitimate gun owners would have a huge impact on a sector that contributes £3.3 billion to the economy and supports tens of thousands of jobs - many of them in the most marginal areas of the countryside - is apparently irrelevant.

This policy is, in large  part, driven by reaction to the horrific killings in Keysham in 2021, although calls for shotguns to be licensed under Section 1 long pre-date that. However, as anyone who has looked at that awful case objectively knows, the police’s failings were so appalling that the licensing system was largely irrelevant.

Legitimate gun owners are committed to robust licensing and the Alliance and our partner organisations have consistently worked with the government on issues like medical checks and mental health to improve the system. These new proposals, however, are draconian and unreasonable.

They also create a whole new challenge in the relationship between Labour and the countryside. I have warned of the threat to shotguns for some time, in fact I wrote 12 months ago when the party was still in opposition that “significant voices within Labour continue to push for fundamental changes to the licensing system and in particular the requirement for shotguns to be classified as Section 1 firearms”. Even I am surprised, however, that the government is willing to embark upon another fight with the countryside even whilst the row over inheritance tax and family farms rumbles on.

However much ministers deny it, many people will see this as part of a wider anti-rural agenda. The prime minister had to be air lifted by helicopter today to escape farmers protesting about inheritance tax. If the government persists with this policy on shotguns, it will be giving 600,000 legitimate gun owners a reason to demonstrate against it as well.