2022/25067 - Converted Firearms

REQUEST

I would like to request the following information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000:

1. For each of the years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 - How many crime reports recorded the theft of a legally owned firearm?
2. For each of the years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 - How many crime reports involved the possession of a converted firearm (non-prohibitive, top venting, firing weapons) as proscribed under Section 4A of the Firearms Act 1968?
3. For each of the years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 - How many crime reports involved the use of a converted firearm (non-prohibitive, top venting, firing weapons) as proscribed under Section 4A of the Firearms Act 1968?
   1. Of those crime reports - for each of the years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 - How many related to injury or serious injury?
   2. Of those crime reports - for each of the years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 - How many related to Deaths?

RESPONSE

1. For each of the years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 - How many crime reports recorded the theft of a legally owned firearm?

There is no filter to identify if the theft was of a legally owned firearm. In order to find this information, a manual trawl would have to be completed on each offence within this time period which were categorised as ‘All Other Theft’ and ‘Theft from the Person’. There are 4979 such offences recorded in 2017 alone. It would take 2 minutes to look through each record to identify if the theft was of a legally owned firearm. This would take over 165 hours to complete (4979 records x 2 minutes per record = 9958 minutes = 165+ hours) which is over the 18 hours and would therefore be exempt.

To avoid an exemption, a keyword search has been completed on the crime summaries of all crimes recorded in 2017 – 2021 where the offence had been categorised as ‘All Other Theft’ or ‘Theft from the Person’. The following terms were used in this search:

• Gun
• Firearm

Please be advised keyword search includes any and all crime summaries with the terms in - it doesn't confirm whether those offences were necessarily the theft the firearm or gun.

Please see below table for results

1. For each of the years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 - How many crime reports involved the possession of a converted firearm (non-prohibitive, top venting, firing weapons) as proscribed under Section 4A of the Firearms Act 1968?

There is no filter to identify how many crime reports involved possession of a converted firearm. In order to find this information, a manual trawl would have to be completed on each offence within this time. There are 47079 such offences recorded in 2017 alone. It would take 1 minute to look through each record to identify if the crime involved possession of a converted firearm. This would take over 784 hours to complete (47079 records x 1 minute per record = 47079 minutes = 784+ hours) which is over the 18 hours and would therefore be exempt.

To avoid an exemption, a search has been completed on the crime summaries of all crimes recorded in 2017 – 2021 where the offence title had been categorised as ‘Conversion of firearms.’

Only one result came back for the above search, and this was from 2017.

2. For each of the years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 - How many crime reports involved the use of a converted firearm (non-prohibitive, top venting, firing weapons) as proscribed under Section 4A of the Firearms Act 1968?
   1. Of those crime reports - for each of the years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 - How many related to injury or serious injury?
   2. Of those crime reports - for each of the years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 - How many related to Deaths?

This answer is based on the data in the crime summaries. None related to injury, serious injury or death.