§ MR. PEASEasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether his attention has been called to a recent judgment of Mr. Ingham, the stipendiary magistrate at the Hammersmith Police Court, in the case of Joseph Hadley, a boy charged by the Excise for using a pistol without having a Gun Licence, when Mr. Ingham is reported in the public prints to have read, the definition of a gun in the Act 33 and 34 Vic. c. 57, which says—
In this Act the term 'gun' includes a fire arm of any description, and an air gun or any other kind of gun from which any shot, bullet, or other missile can be discharged,and then dismissed the boy, on the grounds that a pistol was not a gun within the meaning of the Act, as "all the provisions of the Act applied to guns and not to pistols; "and, whether he has made any representations to the Home Office on the subject?
§ THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, in reply, said, so far as he understood the ground on which the boy was discharged from custody, it was, not that the article in question was not a gun or pistol, but that it was a toy. Anyhow, the Board of Inland Revenue were dealing with the matter.