Clause 44 - Prohibition of certain air weapons
Anti-social Behaviour Bill
3:00 pm
Mr Bob Ainsworth (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Coventry North East, Labour)
I was not in the mood to attack the hon. Gentleman's amendments.
Although we now propose a specific control in relation to self-contained gas cartridge systems, that cannot be the end of our efforts to stop criminals getting hold of firearms. It is just as important that any safeguards that we introduce should be capable of being applied against new designs that might come on to the market. We therefore think it prudent to have an order-making power that will enable the Secretary of State to make provision in respect of any air weapons that appear to be ''specially dangerous''.
I know that concerns have been expressed that the power could be used to ban a wide range of air weapons, to the extent that we could end up with even more stringent controls on such weapons than on other firearms. That is what we are aiming to achieve. I remind the Committee that any air weapon would first have to be regarded as ''specially dangerous''. Secondly, any order would have to be approved by both Houses of Parliament. In the light of those assurances, I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendments and to support Government amendment No. 239.
We must remember that the guns are already classified as firearms, so it is not possible to use section 1 of the Firearms Act 1982, which makes special provision for controlling imitation firearms that are readily convertible to firearms. Although we could have dealt with that without using primary legislation, through the Firearms (Dangerous Air Weapons) Rules 1969, it would have resulted in rifles becoming subject to certification, whereas revolvers, because of their length, would have become prohibited weapons.