I’m about to tell you something you already suspect but maybe haven’t seen written down quite this plainly…
Imagine I told you that I knew what was wrong with firearms licensing.
In fact, that lots of people know and have done since 1993.
That’s not my attempt to be sensational. It’s what the evidence shows.
THE KEY ISSUES
Every major HMIC inspection, 1993, 2002, 2015, and everything postKeyham, has said the same thing in slightly different words: inconsistency, substandard leadership, absence of training, poor data, and a system built on outdated processes and an IT platform that should have been retired years ago.
If you examined inquests into the most recent tragedies, you’d find much more of the same themes.
Repeatedly we hear from Government that the proposals around collapsing Section 1 and Section 2 into a single regime are based on public safety. But is that what the evidence tells us?
In reality, this proposal risks amplifying the very problems that have been ignored for decades.
A SYSTEM THAT CAN’T DELIVER NOW
Before we think too much about the future, it’s worth considering the present.
Across the UK firearms licensing teams are struggling with current demand and largely unable to meet their own national service level agreement.
The operations of Beds, Cambs and Herts Tri-Force licensing team are so concerning that the body tasked with monitoring police standards (HMIC) have served an accelerated cause for concern notice on them. This is a rarely used measure reserved only for most serious cases.
Then there is the subject of consistency. Your chance of being refused or revoked can vary up to twentyfivefold depending on your postcode. Even next-door neighbours can feel the effects. An applicant for the grant of Shotgun Certificate in Dorset is over 13 times more likely to be refused than someone living in Avon & Somerset. (Home Office Statistics Mar 25) Same law. Same guidance. Completely different outcomes.
UNDERSTANDING THE SYSTEM
Recently, the NPCC has started publishing national statistics. In theory, this is welcome. In practice, some of the headline figures simply don’t add up.
Rolling 12month completions appear to jump by more than 28,000 in a single quarter. For that to be true, every force in the country would have had to more than double output, simultaneously, for three months straight. It’s hard to read these in any way that doesn’t cause serious concern.
If we can’t measure the system accurately, we can’t reform it intelligently. And if the data is unclear, the conclusions drawn from it are unsafe.
ALIGNMENT – PUBLIC SAFETY RISK
The detail of practical considerations is yet to be decided but requiring shotgun holders to justify each firearm would dramatically increase workload in a system already struggling to deliver. Safe and lawful disposal routes could be overwhelmed. Backlogs would grow. Forces already operating defensively would become even more riskaverse.
And crucially: none of the tragedies cited as justification would have been prevented by alignment. The actual failures identified were known years in advance.
It’s also worth remembering that when the Home Office ran its 2023 firearms consultation, shooters didn’t push back against safety. Quite the opposite. Tens of thousands of respondents supported stronger safeguards, clearer processes and better decisionmaking. The industry isn’t resisting reform. It’s resisting reforms that don’t solve the problem.
DO THE BASICS BRILLIANTLY
This is a phrase shamelessly stolen from a Superintendent many years ago and is as true now as it was then.
If the Home Office genuinely wants to improve public safety, alignment isn’t the answer. It’s to build a licensing system that is:
• ready to capitalise on the efficiencies of modern technology
• consistent
• nationally led
• transparently measured
• legally clear
• properly resourced You can’t modernise a system you can’t measure. You can’t improve consistency by increasing complexity.
And you can’t enhance public safety by placing more weight on a structure already cracking under its own load.
Alignment may change the paperwork but it won’t change the outcomes. Not until we target the system beneath it.