{"id":214,"date":"2010-06-15T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2010-06-15T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cybershooters.org\/?p=214"},"modified":"2015-04-17T00:16:45","modified_gmt":"2015-04-16T23:16:45","slug":"cumbria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cybershooters.org\/?p=214","title":{"rendered":"Cumbria"},"content":{"rendered":"

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15 June, 2010<\/span> – We may never know exactly what was going on in Derrick Bird’s head on June 2nd, and if we did there’s a good chance we would never be able to make sense of it, because there seems little in his personal life that could have led him to commit murder, let alone mass murder.\u00a0 Mr Bird used a double-barrel shotgun loaded with birdshot and a .22 bolt-action rifle to shoot dead twelve people and injure another eleven on that day, before taking his own life.\u00a0 There was apparently a dispute over a will and also apparently a tax investigation by HMRC, but these are problems faced every day by people and he appears to have been an entirely ordinary person engaged in an ordinary job who possessed ordinary firearms for the most mundane of reasons, i.e. pest control.<\/span><\/p>\n

Given that most of his victims appear to have been randomly chosen and that his route around Cumbria was also apparently random, there appears to have been a lack of planning by Mr Bird of his murderous rampage beyond the first three victims or so.\u00a0 The logical conclusion to draw is that something went seriously wrong inside Mr Bird’s head and it happened pretty rapidly, as witnesses indicate they noticed nothing out of the ordinary until some statements made by him the day before.\u00a0 If in fact he was mentally ill and simply snapped, this is one of the few times an incident such as this has occurred and people have felt sympathy for the perpetrator, as Mr Bird was apparently well-liked in the local community.\u00a0 The other theory is that he harboured resentment over losing a job in 1990 and if someone can hold in that degree of anger for twenty years and go undetected, it’s likely they never would have been.<\/span><\/p>\n

The police response<\/span><\/h2>\n

Apparently two or three officers attempted to pursue<\/a> Mr Bird during his rampage but were unable to do so because he was armed; this obviously has led to criticism of the police not carrying guns, so Cumbria’s Chief Constable has asked for help in a review of how they deal with firearm incidents.\u00a0 As I have previously pointed out, the police probably do need to have more guns <\/a>than they currently have, however arming every PC in the country especially in an area with little armed crime like Cumbria is unrealistic.\u00a0 Faster access to firearms and having more trained officers is probably the best that can be done, but in a place as rural as Cumbria, police stations are few and far between so expecting the police to grab their guns and stop the shooter before any damage is done is a dubious hope at best.\u00a0 Probably the most that could be expected is that they might be able to cut short the incident.<\/span><\/p>\n

One positive thing that has happened though is that the police seem to have been jolted out of their complacency about these sorts of incidents; up until now they appear to have considered that Parliament could actually prevent them with oppressive legislation and instead planned on tackling armed robbers and the like.\u00a0 It’s unrealistic to expect Parliament to ban the possession of shotguns in rural areas by pest controllers, so clearly the police need to have a plan to deal with such incidents.\u00a0 Look at it like this – if it had been a carload of terrorists armed with military weapons rather than a bloke with a shotgun, what would the police have done?\u00a0 Yes, it’s very unlikely but still, there needs to be a plan to deal with it when it does happen.<\/span><\/p>\n

The coalition<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n

David Cameron has taken the approach of calling for calm and no knee-jerk legislation; this is of course the correct thing to do but it’s not clear what the Government is really thinking.\u00a0 What is sure is they have their hands full with the economy and the best read of what they’re thinking at the moment is: “we’ve got better things to do”.\u00a0 The Prime Minister has however promised a parliamentary debate at the end of July on the subject of gun laws, after the Home Office has had a chance to examine the issue; shooters will of course have to monitor this closely.<\/span><\/p>\n

The current thinking<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n

There have been various ideas put forward in the press and elsewhere on how controls could be tightened; the widow of one of the victims of the Monkseaton shootings has been the first to come forward<\/a> to advocate for changes.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Many people have called for central storage of firearms at gun clubs; the standard response to this one is that central storage creates an easy source of guns for criminals.\u00a0 However the real reason why it won’t happen and didn’t happen in 1997 is that it is wholly impractical.\u00a0 The vast majority of guns in the UK are not owned by target shooters who are members of gun clubs; they are principally owned by pest controllers and people involved in a wide variety of field sports.\u00a0 Given that reality, anyone bent on mass murder could easily create a pretext for removing their gun from central storage.\u00a0 Logistically there are approaching two million licensed firearms in Great Britain – if 200,000 handguns could not be kept locked up centrally then clearly two million long guns cannot be.\u00a0 Lord Cullen’s idea of keeping a key component stored at a club won’t work for double-barrel shotguns because there is no bolt to remove.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only places that do have central storage tend to be city states like Singapore and Curacao for example.\u00a0 In Hong Kong where handguns must be stored at gun clubs, pest controllers can keep their shotguns at home.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another idea that is always mooted after events such as this is psychometric testing of licensed gun owners.\u00a0 Japan has such testing but has had two people run amok with licensed shotguns in the past.\u00a0 However in the UK the Royal College of Psychiatrists submitted evidence to the Home Affairs Committee in 1996 stating that no meaningful testing could ever be done given the sheer volume of certificate applications and renewals every year.\u00a0 Checking with GPs has also been put forward as an idea – although the police can check with an applicant’s GP they usually don’t unless they have a concern about the application.\u00a0 As part of an NHS performance review some years ago, GPs were advised not to counter-sign applications for shotgun certificates anymore because it wasted their time, so it’s doubtful they could possibly respond to an enquiry about every certificate application or renewal.\u00a0 Another simple point is that many certificate holders don’t have a GP or if they do might never have seen him or her.<\/span><\/p>\n

Something else that has been suggested is to require firearm certificates for shotguns – however Mr Bird had obtained an FAC in 2007 for his rifle, so that seems unlikely to have prevented his rampage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most likely the Home Office will dust off many previous proposals that they have sympathised with in the past, such as a referee requirement for shotgun certificates; better questions on the referee form; modernisation of the language in section 21 of the 1968 Act (prohibited persons) and most importantly, requiring the police to visit applicants in person prior to granting or renewing a certificate.\u00a0 Although this was recommended by the Dunblane Public Inquiry, some rural police forces with limited resources still perform renewals by post.\u00a0 The additional cost of doing this will likely lead to higher licensing fees which are already under review.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether they propose banning anything else as a sop to public concern remains to be seen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mass shootings in Great Britain<\/span><\/h2>\n

There has been much comment in the press that this is the “third” of these incidents, which is inaccurate.\u00a0 More accurately, it’s the third one that the average journalist can bring to mind.\u00a0 For the sake of factual accuracy, here are some of the others:<\/span><\/p>\n