Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she has taken as a result of the Government consultation on air weapons licensing undertaken in 2017.

We published the outcome of our earlier air weapons review along with proposals for new controls in England and Wales, as part of the firearms safety consultation which ran from 24 November 2020 to 16 February 2021. We received over 12,000 responses to the consultation and we will consider these carefully before publishing the Government response.

There are existing controls on both air weapons and crossbows. Retailers are banned from selling crossbows to persons under 18 and legislation is in place to deal with those who use crossbows as a weapon. We keep the legislation on bladed articles and offensive weapons, including crossbows, under review.

It is already an offence to sell or let on hire air weapons or their ammunition to those under 18 years of age, or for a person under the age of 18 years to purchase or hire an air weapon or ammunition. In relation to storage, the firearms safety consultation proposed strengthening the offence of failing to take ‘reasonable precautions’ so that whenever under-18s are on the premises, this must include locking an air weapon out of sight when not in use and storing the ammunition separately.