Police activity in Biddick Drive in the Keyham area of Plymouth
(Picture: PA Wire)Gun crime in the UK is among the lowest in the world.
It comes as Plymouth gunman Jake Davison, who was a licensed firearms holder, gunned down five people on Thursday.
A total of 30 homicide victims in England and Wales in the year to March 2020 were killed by shooting, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics.
According to the Home Office, as of March 31 in England and Wales 565,929 people held a firearm and/or a shotgun certificate which was a 3 per cent decrease of 20,422 since last year.
Bill Harriman, director of firearms at the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, said while Britain has some of the strictest firearm legislation in the world, shooting remains popular.
He said: “(Granting a licence) is a balance between the reasonable expectation of somebody who will do a bit of sport shooting and public safety. The shooting community does not want people who are not suitable to have guns to have them, any more than the police do.”
He added: “People use shotguns for pest control on agricultural land, there are people who shoot clay pigeons for sport shooting – and that’s an Olympic discipline.
“There are people who are target rifle shooters, both in short indoor ranges and long-range shooting. You also have people who own historical antique and vintage firearms for collecting purposes and also for preserving heritage. There really is a great deal of reasons why people have firearms legitimately.”
Davison shot two women, two men and the three-year-old girl in a deadly six-minute spree in the Keyham area of the city on Thursday evening.
But police said the incident is not terror-related.
Devon and Cornwall Police Chief Constable Shaun Sawyer said the weapon used in the shooting had been described by witnesses as a “pump action shotgun” but police were not confirming that at this stage.
He said: “We believe we have an incident that is domestically related, that has spilled into the street and seen several people in Plymouth losing their lives in extraordinarily tragic circumstances.”
The police received calls to an address on Biddick Drive at 6:11pm and armed and unarmed officers arrived at the scene within six minutes.
Mr Sawyer said: “Multiple shots have been fired from a firearm during that six minute-or-so period.”
