Weapons and Firearms in UK Law

The gravity of gun crime cannot be exaggerated. That is why criminals want them: that is why they use them: and that is why they organise their importation and manufacture, supply and distribution. Sentencing courts must address the fact that too many lethal weapons are too readily available: too many are carried: too many are used, always with devastating effect on individual victims and with insidious corrosive impact on the wellbeing of the local community.

However, it is to be noted that if an offender has no idea that he is doing anything wrong, a deterrent sentence will have no deterrent effect upon him. The section makes clear that it is the opinion of the court that is critical as to what exceptional circumstances are. Unless the judge is clearly wrong in identifying exceptional circumstances when they do not exist, or clearly wrong in not identifying exceptional circumstances when they do exist, this court will not readily interfere.

Where imitation firearms are involved, the risk to life and limb is absent, but such weapons can be and often are used to frighten and intimidate victims in order to reinforce unlawful demands. Such imitation weapons are often very hard to distinguish from the real thing—for practical purposes, impossible in the circumstances in which they are used—and the victim is usually as much frightened and intimidated as if a genuine firearm had been used. Such victims are often isolated and vulnerable.

Save for minor infringements which may be and are properly dealt with summarily, offences against these provisions will almost invariably merit terms of custody, even on a plea of guilty and in the case of an offender with no previous record.

If such injury was not intended by the others they must be acquitted of murder; but having started out on an enterprise which envisaged some degree of violence, albeit nothing more than causing fright, they will be guilty of manslaughter.

" What are offensive weapons? – Section 1(4) defines 'offensive weapon' to mean 'any article made or adapted for use for causing injury to the person, or intended by the person having it with him for such use by him'.

In most cases where guns are carried and used, it is desirable to pass a consecutive sentence to mark the additional gravity attributable to the presence of firearms. But if that is done in a case such as this, the sentences which are passed have to be adjusted to ensure that the total sentence is not too high.