Arming the police in Britain
| Author | Ian Turner |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X16672223 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Arming the police in Britain:
A human rights analysis
Ian Turner
University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK
Abstract
In 2010 Derrick Bird shot and killed 12 people, as well as injuring a further 11, in
Cumbria. A legitimate question that arose after the tragedy was whether the out-
come would have been different if the British police had been armed? This paper
explores whether human rights law requires, or at least justifies, the UK authorities
to arm the police in the pursuit of public protection? Derrick Bird was licensed to
possess his firearms. Is a more proportionate response amendments to the existing
weapons certification process? These are some of the questions which this article
seeks to address.
Keywords
Human rights, armed police, TASERs, firearms licensing.
Introduction
In June 2010, Derrick Bird, a taxi driver, shot and killed 12 people in and around
Whitehaven, Cumbria, with a 12-bore shotgun and a .22 rifle, before turning a gun on
himself. The ages of those who died ranged from 23 to 71. Eleven other people were
injured, including a 14 year-old-schoolgirl. But soon after killing his first victims, three
unarmed police officers tried and failed to stop Bird. He was to go on and kill a further
nine people, criss-crossing 45 miles of the Cumbrian countryside in his tax i. Bird’s
shooting spree in 2010 is not the only atrocity committed in the UK with firearms: in
August 1987 there was the ‘Hungerford Massacre’ in Hungerford, Wiltshire. Michael
Ryan, armed with two ‘semi-automatic’ rifles and a handgun, shot and killed 16 people
including his mother, and wounded 15 others, before fatally shooting himself. Nine years
later, in 1996, the ‘Dunblane Massacre’ took place at Dunblane Primary School,
Corresponding author:
Ian Turner, Lancashire Law School, University of Central Lancashire, Corporation Street, Preston
PR1 2HE, UK.
Email: idturner@uclan.ac.uk
The Police Journal:
Theory, Practice and Principles
2017, Vol. 90(2) 107–127
ªThe Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permission:
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DOI: 10.1177/0032258X16672223
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Dunblane, Scotland, where Thomas Hamilton, armed with four handguns, shot and
killed 16 children, together with their teacher, before committing suicide. More
recently, two women police officers, Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes, were killed in
a gun and grenade attack in Greater Manchester, in September 2012. Questions at the
time of all of these shootings, most recently in the case of the murder of the two police
officers, centred on the arming of allofficers in mainland Britain.
1
Indeed, does human
rights law require, or least justify, this state response for reasons of the protection of the
public from either a random shooting by owners of licensed weapons such as Derrick
Bird, or a terrorist attack by groups such as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)?
Fatalities caused by the unlawful possession of firearms are outside the scope of this
paper, though the conclusions drawn here may still be relevant to any such analysis
about homicides caused by unlicensed weapons. Before examining human rights obli-
discussion, the existing statutory regime governing the lawful possession of guns will
be considered.
The legal control of firearms in the UK
The principal statutegoverning the lawful possession of guns in the UK is the Firearms Act
1968. At the time of the shootingin Cumbria in 2010, Bird was in possession of a ‘shotgun’,
which under the Firearms Act 1968,s. 2, required a separate licence to a ‘firearm’, such as
Bird’s .22 rifle, which was governed by s. 1. It is a criminal offence to possess either a
firearm or a shotgun withouta licence: Firearms Act 1968, ss 1(1) and 2(1) respectively. In
the aftermath of the Hungerford Massacre the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988 was
passed, restricting the lawful possession of some guns by extending the classification of
‘prohibited’ weapons under the Firearms Act 1968, s. 5 to include, for example, semi-
automatic and pump-action rifles. Furthermore, following the Dunblane Massacre, the
Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997, and later in that year the Firearms (Amendment)
(No.2) Act 1997, were passed, outlawing,for example, the possession of handguns by also
classifying these as ‘prohibited weapons’ under the Firearms Act1968, s. 5.
2
Under the Firearms Act 1968, s. 27 an applicant for a certificate to lawfully possess a
‘firearm’ has to demonstrate that they are a fit person to possess the weapon and have a
good reason for its possession. The latter condition applies to shotgun possessions, too,
as per s. 28. In the case of firearms, the applicant must provide a separate good reason for
possessing each weapon, as per s. 27, but not so for each shotgun (s. 28). A further
condition of either a firearm or a shotgun certificate stipulates that the guns must be
stored securely so as to prevent access by an unlicensed person. Licences for firearms
and shotguns are currently valid for a five-year period.
Article 2 of the ECHR, the right to life
Article 2 of the ECHR confers a ‘negative’ right upon an individual, that is, a right not to
be arbitrarily killed by the state (see, for example, Article 2(2)). But it also creates a
‘positive’ obligation on the state to prevent violations of the right by non-state actors, as
per Article 2(1). The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) considered this
108 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 90(2)
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