The 1972 Mckay Report on Firearms Control

[Gaz]

Possibly? I'm not very clued up on the HBSA's history. Good on them if this frighteningly skewed document drove them to form the HBSA, though. The police of those days really had it in for lawful firearms owners.

Having sat through a power cut here, I've transcribed the first 60 of the report's 75 recommendations. I'll add nos. 61 - 75 as time permits.

Of the report itself, I've only read the first 50 of 250 pages but it's rife with anecdata, extreme logical jumps and plain "we don't think this should be legal so just ban it now" screed. Conclusion 1, for example, was backed up by the report's authors going around their forces and (seemingly randomly) asking their constables, "do you remember any cases where a legally held gun was used", deliberately (as the authors themselves explicitly stated in the report) not backing up those anecdotes with any kind of statistical analysis or research based on hard evidence or conviction rates - and then extrapolating that handful of unverified stories into [paraphrased] "there is clearly a significant problem with legally held guns being used to commit crimes".

Anyway. The first 60 recommendations of the Report of the Working Party on the Control of Firearms, 1972, are on my blog: https://ukshootingnews.wordpress.com/20 ... endations/

[Blackstuff]

I thought this was available online anyway?? I've certainly seen the list of 'recommendations' and think i've actually posted it on this forum before!

I would be interested in an electronic copy though, good work

[M99]

I thought this was available online anyway?? I've certainly seen the list of 'recommendations' and think i've actually posted it on this forum before!

I would be interested in an electronic copy though, good work

http://www.full-bore.co.uk/viewtopic.ph ... rt#p149318

[Blackstuff]

SO that was the list from the Green Paper after the report. Would definitely be intrested in a copy of the report then as it'll likely reveal what else they've got in store for us

[20series]

Gaz

Do you have any figures on how firearms incidents in a given year, and how many of those involved legally owned items??


Alan

Nobody does. The Home Office deliberately muddy the waters and don't count legally owned firearms separately in crime stats. Shotguns and handguns are broken out separately from the main mass of firearms crime figures but, again, are not broken down by legally owned or otherwise.

Ages ago I did ask a police force whether a firearm used in a particular crime was lawfully held. They couldn't answer me, they said, because they didn't collect that data and would instead have to reverse-engineer an answer by locating the gun from that crime in their evidence storage area, reading off the serial number and then running that through the NFLMS computer and seeing if anything came back.

Quite simply, the police are not ordered to record whether a gun involved in a crime is lawfully owned or not. That helps muddle the picture and make it easier for politicians to claim that crackdowns on lawful ownership improve gun crime stats when we know (but can't prove empirically) that that's absolutely not the case.

Chuck - so far I haven't seen any redactions at all. I think it's the whole document.

Why I am not surprised, thanks mate

Alan

[Gaz]

I have now typed up all 76 of the McKay Report's recommendations, which you can read here: https://ukshootingnews.wordpress.com/20 ... endations/

I aim to type up the list of authors from Annex 1 and then get the whole report properly digitised with optical character recognition software and made available as one PDF file, freely available for all shooters to read, digest and discuss.

Our fears were mostly true; this IS the document from which all the bans and restrictions of recent decades came from. Certainly the wording and language of our subsequent bans bears a striking similarity to this document, which you can see from the recommendations.

Strangely there are one or two concessions in there. I can't decide if these were included sarcastically or if the authors really thought they could stop themselves short of destroying the lawful sport of shooting altogether, having effectively demanded that its jugular be severed.

[Charlie Muggins]

Well now we know where "full cost recovery" came from.

Now the big question: is this simply an antigun shopping list which they gradually bring out at any excusable opportunity or a convenient pre-made bag of tabloid-placating measures for the unimaginative civil servant with a deadline?

[Sim G]

I'm really not sure, Charlie. The Horden shooting got Durham Constabulary a "kicking" and apart from their over cautios nit-picking for those in their area, the rest of us have not really had fall-out. Likewise, the spree killing in Whitehaven didn't see what we've had in the past...

[Blackstuff]

The Horden shooting got Durham Constabulary a "kicking"

Well, slap on the wrist anyway, no one was fired or even transferred. Same people running the show to this day, unfortunately.

[Sim G]

Point taken, Mark. But, what's more preferable, drag someone over the coals, kick their arse and then move on with a line drawn under it and lessons learned, or, sack them then have to bring someone new in who doesn't have the experience or know the history, only that their predesessor what binned for allowing them something they shouldn't really have....?