§ Mr. MarlowTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list for each of the last five years the number of offences involving firearms indicating whether the weapons were(a) legally or (b) illegally held. [1665]
§ Miss Widdecombe[holding answer 1 November 1996]: Information as to whether the firearms used in notifiable offences recorded by the police are legally held is not at present collected centrally in England and Wales.
However, a special exercise has recently been conducted to find out whether the guns used in offences of homicide were licensed or not.
This covered the years 1992 to 1994, and out of a total of 196 homicides, information was available in 152 cases to show that 22 cases—14 per cent.—involved the use of a firearm legally held by the suspect.