Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many incidents involving handguns and pistols were recorded in each year since 1996.

The Home Office does not collect information on the number of incidents involving firearms but does hold information on the number of offences involving firearms recorded by the police.

The 2013/14 Focus on Violent Crime and Sexual Offences publication released by ONS showed the number of offences recorded by the police in which a handgun was reported to be the principal weapon has fallen by 1,627 (43%) since 2009/10. Yearly figures from 2002/03 can be found in the following table.

Data for pistols (which are a type of handgun) are not separately available, however there is data in the table from 2004/05 for some types of handguns including converted air pistols.