Firearms: East of England

Home Office written question – answered at on 20 January 2015.

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Photo of David Ruffley David Ruffley Conservative, Bury St Edmunds

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many firearms were confiscated in each police force area in (a) Suffolk, (b) Bedfordshire, (c) Cambridgeshire, (d) Essex, (e) Hertfordshire and (f) Norfolk during the most recent firearms amnesty in November 2014.

Photo of Lynne Featherstone Lynne Featherstone The Minister of State, Home Department

The data from November’s firearms surrender is being collated and analysed by the National Ballistics Intelligence Service (NABIS). In the listed police force areas, the following numbers of firearms were surrendered: (a) Suffolk:

381, (b) Bedfordshire: 61, (c) Cambridgeshire: 123, (d) Essex: 126, (e) Hertfordshire: 223, (f) Norfolk: 577.

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Annotations

Mike E.
Posted on 21 Jan 2015 12:18 pm (Report this annotation)

"how many firearms were confiscated "

This implies that the police were actively "confiscating" guns. In fact, the VAST majority of these guns were useless but legally held guns such as broken air rifles.

They were NOT confiscated, they were voluntarily handed in for destruction.

Either Ms Featherstone's question wasn't answered (It's probable than NO guns were "confiscated") or her naïve use of this term is a good way of annoying those people who handed their old guns in.
Personally, I'm never going to take part in another amnesty if this is how the government view the issue - confiscation rather than voluntary surrender. It implies legal confiscation due to criminal acts, not the voluntary surrender of legally-held property.