Ever since the recent Plymouth shooting I have been wondering about guns in the UK. The first question that comes to mind is why do people need guns? So I’ve been doing a bit of research.
Well, more firearms certificates are currently held in rural areas like North Yorkshire (2,837), Dyfed-Powys (2,637) and Cumbria (2,512) than in big city conurbations. (Are the guns in big cities largely illegal? Probably so!) In rural areas they are probably for game-keeping and hunting. Fair enough!
Are people asked the reason why they want to own a gun when they apply for a gun license? Apparently so.
Before a license is given the chief police officer for the district where the applicant lives must be “satisfied that: (i) the applicant has good reason for having the firearm; (ii) the applicant is fit to be entrusted with a firearm; and (iii) the public safety or peace will not be endangered.”
So what reason did the young man in Plymouth have for owning a gun? I wonder.
The population of UK is 66.8 million. As of 31st March this year just under 600,000 firearm and shotgun certificates were on issue. So I suppose it’s not a huge percentage of the population as a whole. The youngest certificate older is only 8 years old but he is an exception. However, year on year only about 2% of applicants are turned down.
“Firearm and shotgun certificates can be revoked by the chief officer of police for the force concerned if they have reason to believe that the holder:
• can no longer be entrusted with firearms in accordance with the Firearms Act 1968
• is of unsound mind or is otherwise unfit to be entrusted with a firearm and/or shotgun
• can no longer be permitted to have the firearm and/or shotgun or ammunition to which the certificate relates in his possession without danger to the public safety or to the peace
• no longer has a good reason for having in his possession, or for purchasing or acquiring, the firearm or ammunition which he is authorised.”
So I’d still like to know how the young man in Plymouth justified his application. After all, his license was revoked and then returned to him. How did that happen?
It’s another of those things that leave me mystified. Another is this:
Michael Rosen posted on Facebook this observation by Richard Burgon MP:
“At #PMQs today, every Conservative MP is wearing an “NHS 70” badge - to mark 70 years since they voted against its creation.”
Actually that does not really mystify me. Those badge wearers just want to look like good guys.
The Afghanistan turmoil continues but I’m hearing a number of pundits assuring us that the young Afghans who have grown up in the last 20 years without Taliban will not accept restrictions on their freedom. In particular, they assure us, no-one can take away the education girls have received on the last 20 years. But 20 years isn’t really such a long time.
Sippi Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, a social scientist and consultant with 17 years of international experience in programming in conflict and post-conflict settings who has worked and travelled extensively in Afghanistan since 1995, thinks that the situation of women in the country changed only superficially.
She wrote:
“The assistance allocated to women has never been enough. The very few women seen by westerners in their projects may have been safe, but the non-literate woman who earned money at the sewing project would get a fist in the face. The young girl who got into the police academy would be told to empty bins, make tea for the men and make her body available for the sexual pleasure of men. The woman who was put in prison for adultery, in the reign of Hamid Karzai or Ashraf Ghani, would be terrified of leaving prison in a northern province because she feared for her life and for her children’s welfare because there are no well-paid jobs for illiterate women in rural hinterlands.
I was one of the many Afghans and foreigners who tried to make sure that millions of girls would go to schools and, if lucky, high schools and possibly university. But I had to face the truth that they would struggle to find jobs because the economy is still dominated by male-run institutions. Many of those girls would have come out of school, married and having forgotten what little they learned.
Even last year I was fighting with educated young Afghan men in my victim assistance project. I wanted the widows we were helping to receive assistance in their own right. The argument from them was that any male relative, however distant, was a better choice because a grieving woman was “not in her right mind”. Some even wheeled out the old excuse that women are naqes ul aql, according to their interpretation of Islam, roughly translated as having half a brain.”
She reminded readers of the fate of Farkhunda in 2015, a young woman killed by a mob in Kabul because she challenged a mullah’s right to sell “tawiz” slips of paper with quotations from the Koran, believed to be powerful spells. This was in the city, supposedly modern and westernised.
It seems that even if the Taliban have changed, as many are assuring us, there is still a long way to go.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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