A blast on airguns - and a little touch of spin

Published on Tuesday 28 August 2007 00:51

IN THE scale of human tragedy, the killing of a child ranks high. I can't begin to imagine the agony faced by the parents in such dreadful circumstances. In the measurement of political actions, anything other than a proper and proportionate response by politicians to such tragedies must rank pretty low. I fear that the Scottish Executive is on the low side in the current debate about air weapons.

It is no coincidence that Sunday's newspapers were full of a briefing from Alex Salmond's officials that he hoped to have laws passed pulling together all the elements of legislation covering firearms and adding a ban on the ownership of airguns (except for pest control and sporting purposes) within a year.

It came after a week in which the whole country was shocked by the shooting of an 11-year-old in Liverpool, apparently the innocent victim of a vicious feud between two rival teenage gangs. Since the public is clearly worried about escalating gun crime, it is entirely proper that Scottish politicians, especially the SNP ones in charge of Scotland, should respond by saying what they intend to do to reduce gun crime.

Yet when you examined what was said, it was hard to find any news in it. We knew that the Scottish Executive and the Home Office have been discussing how to handle firearms legislation. We know that they have talked about two ways of getting round the fact that gun laws are Westminster's, not Holyrood's, job. The only new line I could see was a claim from sources close to Salmond that he will get his way and get laws passed inside the next 12 months.

In fact, this is not news. It is spin. That much became clear yesterday with statements from the Home Office that while they were happy to discuss the matter and find a solution, no agreement has yet been reached.

However, as spin, it looks to be effective stuff. The First Minister has managed to raise expectations that the Scottish Parliament will be able to legislate. If no agreement allowing that to happen is reached with the Home Office, he can then claim that London government is failing Scotland, failing to recognise particular Scottish needs, thus strengthening the argument for independence.

Smart politics, but I cannot help feeling that it is a dubious use of legitimate public concerns, especially those of Sharon McMillan, the mother of two-year-old Graeme Morton, who was shot and killed in Easterhouse, Glasgow, in 2005 by a drug addict firing an airgun. She and the relatives of the other two people killed in Scottish airgun shootings in the last five years do not care, I guess, for their loss to be used as a football in a constitutional political game. They just want airguns banned.

Ministers are aware they are open to this accusation. No sooner had I written the last paragraph than a senior Executive source, having picked up the fact that I was making inquiries, called me to emphasise that Salmond has no intention of making a constitutional challenge out of this issue.

It was, I was told, simply a matter of finding the quickest way to make the fastest progress. Indeed, if Westminster was to choose to pass the necessary laws, the Executive might look favourably on leaving the job to Westminster. As for what was in the Sunday papers, well, that was Sunday papers for you, over-exuberantly interpreting what they had been told.

Hmm. The case for political manoeuvring on this issue might be stronger if there was, as is claimed by the SNP, a specifically Scottish problem that required a Scottish legislative solution.

HERE, two arguments are cited by the Executive for a Scottish law strictly controlling airguns. One is that there is much deeper public concern north of the Border. That may be true, but it can also be argued that Scots are only more exercised by airguns because they, not handguns, have been involved in recent deaths, whereas in England the problem is the more horrific one of teenagers using handguns to kill each other.

The second is that since 2002-3, crimes involving airguns have risen from 329 to 618 in 2005-6, an 87 per cent increase. South of the Border, airgun offences have fallen slightly, though they were still 48 per cent of all firearm offences, not far short of the 58 per cent proportion of Scottish firearm offences.

It is a difference, but not all that dramatic a difference. Indeed, if the rise in offences was a criterion for political action, we ought to be much more worried about other weapons. Over the same period, the number of offences which featured the use of a shotgun rose by 156 per cent, while the number or crimes in which the use of a pistol or revolver was recorded have risen by 441 per cent. Indeed, this last statistic is also a reminder that banning a problem does not necessarily make it disappear. Handguns were banned after the Dunblane massacre in 1996, a year in which they were used in 171 crimes. After the ban, that number fell steadily to just 23 crimes in 2003-4, but since then handguns have crept back into criminal activity, featuring in 98 offences in 2005-6.

Thus it seems to me that on grounds of prevalence and efficacy, the case for rushing a Scottish law banning air weapons on to the statute book is not strong. A much greater priority is a searching examination of why violence, especially among young people, seems to be on the rise. Perhaps I'm being cynical, but that wouldn't involve interesting constitutional questions - which is maybe why nobody is talking about it.