Violent Crime Reduction Bill

I, too, have received correspondence on that matter and if my hon. Friend will allow me, I shall respond on airsoft and one or two of the other lobbies in a second, when I have outlined our overall approach. The overall approach set out in the Bill on imitation firearms acknowledges the fact that in 2003–04 such weapons were used in 2,146 crimes, an increase of 18 per cent., on top of a 46 per cent. increase in the previous year. That accounts for 21 per cent.—more than a fifth—of firearms crime if we exclude offences committed with air weapons. Some 75 per cent. of offences involving imitation weapons constituted violence against the person. That is wholly unacceptable, and the whole House would agree that it is necessary for us to legislate on those issues. It is true that a range of existing controls governs the misuse of imitation weapons. Those controls will remain in place and continue to be enforced, but they have been proved insufficient to halt the upward trend, which seems to be fuelled in part by the success of measures to tackle the misuse of real firearms, such as the five-year minimum sentence for possessing a prohibited firearm. Of course, defining an imitation weapon has always been difficult. At present, the law refers to anything that has the appearance of a firearm whether or not it is capable of discharging any shot, bullet or other missile. That definition works in practice by virtue of the fact that it is subject to a qualifier relating either to the weapon’s design: whether it is readily convertible; or to its misuse: whether it is possessed to cause fear of unlawful violence. However, it is a wide-ranging definition, and we want to bear down most of all on those weapons that closely resemble real firearms, which are being increasingly used to threaten, intimidate or rob. If most of us saw one of the imitation weapons that I am talking about lying on a table alongside a real gun, we would not be able to tell the difference between them without picking them up. We will therefore make it an offence to manufacture, import or sell a realistic imitation. Under the definition that we use, an imitation will be caught by the new offence if it is indistinguishable from a certain make or model, or is sufficiently similar to a generic type of firearm. We know only too well about the problems for the police when armed units are called out in response to reports of people seen with guns. Often, the person is a youngster, brandishing an imitation that they are misusing deliberately, recklessly or with little appreciation of the consequences. A restriction on the age at which any imitation can be sold or purchased will help to reduce the incidence of misuse, and we propose a minimum age of 18. We have accepted that a total ban on the possession of imitation firearms is impractical for a variety of reasons, which is why we propose to double the penalty for possessing an imitation firearm in a public place without reasonable excuse. We are saying, loud and clear, that messing around in public with anything that resembles a gun is simply not acceptable, and unless people heed that message, they could go to prison for up to 12 months. The point about airsoft made by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, East (Mrs. James) also applies to paintballing, re-enactment societies and use in television and film, where a legitimate case may be made for a certain use—I emphasise the word ““may””—so we set out in clause 32 the power for the Secretary of State to regulate exemptions in such circumstances. I will listen to such representations, but those representations would have to make a very powerful case for a certain exemption. That is the criteria that I would use.