Clause 31 - Specification for imitation firearms
Violent Crime Reduction Bill
5:30 pm
Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)
Clause 31 allows the Secretary of State to make regulations that require imitation firearms to conform to specifications. Those specifications may be set out in regulations or approved by persons in a way set out in the regulations.
A person will be guilty of an offence if he or she manufactures or imports an imitation firearm that does not conform to the specifications. It is also an offence to modify an imitation or real firearm to create an imitation that does not conform to the specifications.
To help the Committee, I shall explain that the provisions are aimed primarily at blank-firing imitations, whether they are realistic or not, and to deactivated firearms. We propose to make regulations that will require any blank-firing imitation to be made with an inclusion that will make it almost impossible to convert it to fire live ammunition. That inclusion is a metal insertion that cannot be drilled out in order to convert the firearm.
The amendments would limit that power, either by linking it to specific imitations that are considered to pose a threat to public safety or by confining it to realistic imitations only. Therefore one could have an unrealistic imitation that could be converted to fire real ammunition. That is a real mischief.
The amendments would defeat the legislation’s purpose. Were they made, an unrealistic imitation that could still be converted would not have to conform to the specifications. To protect the public, we want to ensure that both realistic imitations and non-realistic imitations must conform to those specifications.