Talk:Firearms regulation in the United Kingdom

No consensus?

There is no political debate on gun control, which to me implies there is a consensus. After this misleading reference in the intro to a pro-gun lobby and a lack of a consensus, there is no mention in the article of any organisation that is pro-shooting, which also implies the title of "Gun politics in the UK" is an oxymoron. The purpose of the intro is to describe what is in the article. I have to admit to sympathy for pistol shooters who find it impossible to practice their sport but they could not be described as 'pro-shooting' in a way that people such as the Americans would recognise. There may be a handful who disagree with gun control but does there have to be 100% in favour for there to be a consensus? JMcC 18:18, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

While there is certainly no debate equivalent to that in the United States, firearms are still a major political issue, but largely restricted to their use in a criminal use; any discussion of legal use is firmly fixed in that context. Nick Cooper 08:41, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry Nick you have absolutely NO idea what you are talking about, let me ask you, which British shooting organisations do you actually belong to? There is a very strong debate going on and has been for decades, what astonishes me is that you suggest there isn't. Which shooting bodies suggest there is no debate on UK gun control of which you are a member? Twobells (talk) 22:30, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

You seem to be unable to differentiate between discussion within pressure groups, and a wider debate on the issue within society as a whole. The latter simply does not exist in any meaningful sense, no matter how loud the former. One does not have to be a member of any pressure group to know that the general public is not interested in changing the status quo. Nick Cooper (talk) 09:28, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Pro-shooting organisations? Well, let's try http://www.basc.org.uk/ who are an active enthusists and lobbying group. It's also not hard to find those who want the UK gun laws to go further e.g. http://www.mothersagainstguns.net/. Neither site makes much headway in getting its voice repeated by the mass media. Perhaps people don't spend much time debating it because the general consensus is that it isn't too broken? Of course, that's an opinion; any such statement in the article would need to be sourced. Notinasnaid 12:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

We've probably reached a stage now where the public - if they consider it at all - consider that current restrictions are about as far as they can go without banning firearms outright. The MAG site seems long on hyperbole and selective use of statistics, and short on common sense or a sense of proportion. The bottom line is that the high-end figures usually bandied about are over-inflated by a) air weapons and replicas, and b) criminal damage; essentially offences that wouldn't have been reported even ten years ago. Nick Cooper 17:31, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Please stop cleaning this article according to a certain ideology, there are many orgs that are dedicated to relaxing firearm ownership in the UK including the NRA, BASC, NSA, CPSA, BSSRA, Campaign for Shooting, the list goes on and on. Twobells (talk) 13:53, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

All of which pale into insignicance compared to the overwhelming majority of the population which has either little interest, or wish for the exact opposition. Please stop tryign to insert your bias for what you think the situation should be, in the place of what it actually is. Nick Cooper (talk) 19:09, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Excuse me are you speaking for the British public? Do you actually shoot or a member of a shooting body? You say that the largest shooting bodies in the UK 'pale into insignificance' compared to the 'majority' dismissing essentially millions of people. However that is not the issue, you state that there is no debate, you are quite wrong. So please stop editing according to your mistaken and ignorant view of British shooting of which it is quite clear at this point you have absolutely no understanding. This is just the NRA's most recent activity in regards to UK gun control http://www.nra.org.uk/common/asp/general/Legislation.asp?site=NRA Twobells (talk) 22:38, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I shoot air pistols, if that's any business of yours. Again you seem unable to tell the diofference between what happens within special interest groups, and society as a whole. Whatever the NRA gets up to is not the sort of wide scale political debate that you seem to think it is. There are no calls by the general public to relax current firearms legislation, and no apparent moves within Parliament to do so. Nick Cooper (talk) 09:33, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Updated Poor Poor NPOV Article

I have yet to see such a poor article, I had to update the main body with actual facts as they pertain to the law and include cites. UK gun ownership is the highest it has ever been and rising year on year, I have now included the actual legal pistol calibres and removed the npov nonsense. The article was so npov it had yet to include a single cite and instead offered up npov ideological fairy stories, that has now been rectified along woth some needed balance. The Dunblane shootings have now been put into context as pertaining to police incompetence and their failure to use existing legislation to prevent the tragedy.Twobells (talk) 13:28, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

I would say that any sentence in a lede which includes "to place these demands into context, what was unknown .." raises an immediate flag over its status under WP:NPOV. This article is about gun politics; the point of it is to describe how British gun laws ended up the way they have, and to describe the current and past debates over what they should be. To introduce even the most uncontentious fact as something "which was unknown" when the law was unframed is to endorse a point of view that the decision was taken in error. And even if we accept unchallenged that Thomas Hamilton's possession of guns was due to a failure to operate the gun laws as they existed at the time correctly, that does not in itself establish that the subsequent decision to tighten them was wrong. The King's Cross fire happened because someone failed to obey the existing rules for smoking on the London Underground. Many aircraft disasters happen because the crew do not follow the correct procedure: Kegworth, Staines, Ermenonville, Tenerife ... but that doesn't stop procedures being changed in the aftermath.

To pointedly refer to the mass shooting incidents as "extremely rare", even though cited to a BBC News online backgrounder, is also endorsing a point of view. Their rarity is demonstrated anyway by the neutral statement that there were only two. However I wonder if space can also be found to record that after the Cumbria shootings, the Prime Minister specifically rejected "knee-jerk legislation", and there was no subsequent significant demand for any. Sam Blacketer (talk) 22:44, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Rejections for it may be also be based on the guns used being 'snob guns'.

Thomas Hamilton's possession of guns was due to a failure to operate the gun laws as they existed at the time correctly, that does not in itself establish that the subsequent decision to tighten them was wrong.

It is considering the actions afterwards.Pleasetry (talk) 23:29, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Twobells, while the page clearly did need some remedial work, I would question some of the edits you have made, including but not limited to:

• "...there are 7,000 armed [police] officers who routinely carry both a battlefield assault rifle, the Heckler & Koch G36 as well as a Glock 17 automatic pistol."

Firstly, I do not believe it can be said with any authority that the G36 is the most common police long-arm, especially considering the long-standing near-ubiquity of the MP5. Secondly, it is grossly misleading to describe even the G36 used by police as "a battlefield assault rifle," given that they are all semi-automatic only, and generally the compact G36C variant. This sort of emotive exagerration is almost as bad as the ignorant media describing semi-automatic only MP5s as "sub machine guns."

• "Gun ownership levels are currently the highest that they have ever been, the sport of shooting is becoming increasingly popular with many women now taking up the sport..."
• "However, gun ownership levels have increased dramatically from 2005 to 2012 and are currently the highest that they have ever been, the sport of shooting is becoming increasingly popular with many women now taking up the sport."

The given citation ([1]) does not suport these claims. The data table shows that Firearms Certificates at 141,775 in 2009/10 was only 75 more than the number in 1995, but Shotguns Certificates that numbered 653,800 in 1995, stood at 580,653 in 2009/10, a drop of 73,147. In the same time period, the number of firearms held under Certificates did rise from 1,739,400 to 1,809,653 but that's a relatively modest increase from 2.2 to 2.5 firearms per Certificate. Really all these figures show is that we "now" have less people holding marginally more firearms. In addition, given that the population of England and Wales increased from 51.82 million in 1995 to 55.2 million in 2010, the ratio of certificates to population has actually dropped from 1:65.1 to 1:76.4. Possession of a Shotgun or Firearms Certificate remains the preserve of just 3.28% of the population; we can't give the impression that it is has anything like mass appeal. The cited source makes no mention whatsoever of women taking up sport shooting at all, so the claim elsewhere that, "hunting... which was once a relatively elitist activity has in modern times become far more popular amongst sportsmen and women from all walks of life," is also suspect, despite what BASC may claim.

The specific claim regarding the period 2005 to 2012 is selectively biased, not least because the cited data only goes up to 2009/10, but mainly because it apparently uses the earlier date solely because that was the lowest point of the steadly decline after 1995. You really can't tout the 20% increase from 2002 to 2009/10 as being significant, without mentioning the 17% drop from 1995 to 2002.

More to the point, prior to 1995, the peak year for Certificates issued was actually 1988, with 155,400 Firearms Certificates and 882,000 Shotgun certificates - a total of 1,037,400 (the peak year for Firearms Certificates was 1987, at 159,000), compared to 722,428 in 2009/10. Moreover, the most recent figures for 2010/11 show that Firearms Certifcates dropped to 141,347 and Shotgun Certificates dropped to 564,269 - a total of 705,616. Regardless of whether this is a temporary fall, or the start of a more more sustained one, we certainly cannot claim that legal ownership is now "higher than ever," because it clearly isn't.

• "Two extremely rare incidents in 1987 and 1996 where men holding licensed firearms went on shooting sprees and killed led to strong political demands to restrict firearm use."

This sentence, the rest of the paragraph it starts, and the treatment of Hungerford and Dublane in general is misleading. There was massive public pressure for new legislation after both events, but especially after Dunblane, so to suggest that the only impetus from was from the government and the Snowdrop Campaign (and the "media storm" before Robofish deleted it) is disingenuous in the extreme. In more general terms, I would question whether Uttley can be considered a reliable source, considering that her book is structured around an unproven conspiracy theory. It is no secret that Hamilton's certificates could and should have been revoked under the existing legislation, so we should be able to find a more acceptable citation for it.

• "Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 which made private possession of automatic and semi-automatic rifles larger than .22 calibre illegal."
• "Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997 which extended the ban to automatic and semi-automatic handguns..."

It is already established elsewhere that fully automatic firearms were banned by the 1937 Act, so they can't have been "more banned" by the late-1990s legislation.

Nick Cooper (talk) 15:56, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I am sorry but the HK G36 is an assault rifle as described by Wikipedia, HK and every source available. The weapons fire mode has absolutely nothing to do with it's ability as an assault rifle. Twobells (talk) 22:20, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

A weapon with no automatic or burst fire mode cannot be an "assault rifle" by definition. If a rifle does not have selective fire, it cannot be an "assault rifle." Nick Cooper (talk) 09:37, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

For an article on gun politics there does seem to be a lack of the politics on the more recent issues for example the spurious arguments for restricting the sale of airsoft guns were often along the lines that somehow you could make a real gun from a toy one.Pleasetry (talk) 23:29, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

I do not believe that that was ever seriously suggested, rather the argument was that "realistic imitation" firearms - including Airsoft types - can be both used in crime, but also may be treated as genuine firearms by armed police, leading to fatalities of "suspects," which has certainly happened in the past. Nick Cooper (talk) 16:06, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I've removed from the lead of this article some of the text which was criticising the responses to the Hungerford and Dunblane massacres and arguing that the gun laws haven't made much difference. This may or may not be true, but more importantly it doesn't belong in the lead of the article. The lead should simply give a summary of the facts. The body of the article is where the pro-gun and anti-gun arguments belong. Robofish (talk) 11:07, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Misleading Data and Country Comparisons

While there is no doubt that the US has a problem with its murder rate, this article (especially the introduction) reads as very misleading especially regarding the comparison of the UK to other countries (mostly the US) and the effect of gun control laws on murder rates. It is true that the murder rate specifically of murders in the UK using guns (and excluding police shootings in the UK while those are counted in the US numbers) are considerably lower. However, as the table below shows, the UK murder rate is still quite high and while depending on the year, it's anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 that of the US, the difference is nowhere near as extreme as is implied in this article as having been affected by gun laws. It's obvious that a lack of access to guns has done little to deter those in the UK who wish to murder someone from coming up with ways of taking lives. Similarly, UN stats show that the UK has a considerably higher rate of rape, assault, and overall violent crime than the US does. While I am not arguing that the value of gun control be downplayed, these other crime stats that show that reducing legal gun ownership does not necessarily change the safety within a country should be accounted for in this text.

United Nations Homicide Rates
Country	Year	Murders	Rate	Source
United Kingdom	2009	722	1.2	Eurostat
United States	2009	13636	4.4	FBI
United Kingdom	2008	780	1.3	Eurostat
United States	2008	14180	4.6	FBI
United Kingdom	2007	915	1.5	Eurostat
United States	2007	14831	4.9	FBI
United Kingdom	2006	904	1.5	Eurostat
United States	2006	14990	5.0	FBI
United Kingdom	2005	894	1.5	Eurostat
United States	2005	14860	5.0	FBI
United Kingdom	2004	1047	1.7	Eurostat
United States	2004	14210	4.8	FBI
United Kingdom	2003	1046	1.8	Eurostat
United States	2003	14465	5.0	FBI
United Kingdom	2002	1220	2.1	Eurostat
United States	2002	14263	4.9	FBI
United Kingdom	2001	1052	1.8	Eurostat
United States	2001	14061	4.9	FBI

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Drew.ward (talk • contribs) 07:12, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Firstly, I see you make the familiar claim that US firearms murder figures include police shootings, which as far as I know is simply not true. Obviously the overall figure for firearms deaths (i.e. including suicides and accidents) will include police shootings, which I believe is the source of the confusion. Even in the latter, it is somewhat naive to somehow suggest that all police shootings are a "good thing," especially if they are of unarmed people.

Regarding the figures you quote, the Eurostat ones are an amalgamation of the separate reporting streams for England & Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, the homicide rates of which historically rise in that order (i.e. E&W lowest, NI highest, Scotland in the middle). It should be noted that the Home Office figures for England and Wales include "major" outlying events, as follows:

Year 2010/11 includes 12 victims of Derrick Bird.

Year 2005/06 includes 52 victims of the 7 July London bombings.

Year 2003/04 includes 20 cockle pickers who drowned in Morecambe Bay.

Year 2002/03 includes 172 victims of Dr Harold Shipman.

Shipman's victims were actually spread over many years, upto the last in 1998, whilst the rest are individual events, some of which have the effect of . In comparison, the US figures for 2001 do not include the victims of 9/11.

I would dispute your claim that the the UK figures for any one year are between a third and a half of the US, as the range is actually 27% to 43% - nearer to a quarter and three-fifths. The most important factor, though, is that firearms generall only accounts for around a fifth of UK homicides, whereas in the US it is something like two-thirds.

As regards the other crime types you mention, rape in itself is not higher in the UK, but sexual assaults is due to reporting differences - i.e. certain assaults would be classed as sexual in the UK, but would not be in the US. The same applies to assault; for the more serious comparable types there is near parity, with only the minor type having a higher rate in the UK, buecause the figures include incidents that would not be classed as assault at all in the US. Nick Cooper (talk) 10:19, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Suggest consolidate sections on Firearms Crime and Impact of Firearm Legislation

The article could use a bit of polishing. It is rather disjointed at present. One place to start would be to consolidate the information in two separate sections that cover similar topics: Firearms Crime and Impact of Firearm Legislation. Dezastru (talk) 08:11, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Discussion of change of crime figures reporting?

In skimming the article, I did not see much discussion of the change in crime figures reporting after 2002 (just one very brief mention), or discussion about the conflicting information available from different sources of reporting (British Crime Survey vs other methods of ascertainment, for instance). Considering how dense the text is with figures from various years, it would seem important to note how different sources of crime stats have produced some uncertainty as to what the actual figures are, and why it might be that the different surveys produce different figures. Dezastru (talk) 08:16, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

This Home Office document details the impact on the figures by the changes to the National Crime Reporting Standard, and a useful set of examples appears at the bottom of page ix to outline the type of incidents that would be henceforth counted as "crimes," which may or would not have been previously. On page xi it states:

"The national picture for total crime demonstrates an overall NCRS impact of 10 per cent on the recorded crime statistics for 2002/03. In other words, the crimes counted in 2002/03 were 10 per cent higher than they would have been under pre-NCRS re c o rding, reflecting a change in recording practice rather than a real increase in crime. This estimate represents the impact on this year’s recorded crime statistics, not the full impact of the NCRS, as this will have affected the data for some forces in earlier years.

• The violence against the person offence grouping demonstrated the largest NCRS impact (23 per cent in 2002/03). Whilst most of the impact occurred in the first quarter of 2002/03, a subsequent rise in the ratio of crimes to incidents in the latter part of the year may indicate that the NCRS impact is not yet complete for this offence type.
• The national picture demonstrates that domestic burglary figures were three per cent higher because of the NCRS effect, with no indication of any continuing effect beyond the second quarter of 2002/03.
• The NCRS effect on robbery is estimated to have been in the region of three per cent, although the comparatively small numbers of robberies mean that small changes in the number of crimes and incidents can result in disproportionately large estimated effects. Once again, there is little evidence of any enduring NCRS effect post 2002/03.
• The national picture for theft shows an NCRS impact of nine per cent. The data suggest that this effect has now levelled off.
• The impact on vehicle theft was estimated using a different method from other offences because most forces were unable to provide incident numbers relating specifically to these types of theft. The result is an adjustment to the change in recorded vehicle thefts from 2001/02 to 2002/03 from minus one per cent to minus nine per cent. Most of this impact occurred in the first two quarters of the year.
• The national picture demonstrates that criminal damage figures were nine per cent higher because of the NCRS effect."

Most firearms crime sub-types show a sharp increase in both 2001/02 and 2002/03, after which the settle down again (with the exception of homicide, since you can't really change the definition of a dead victim). This can best be appreciated by figure 2.4 on page 53 of this report. I think it would possible to do our own version of this chart, but including in it the pre-1999/00 and post-2009/10 data, which are also available. This will kill several birds with one stone, in that it will clearly show the long-term trend, as well as the impact of the NCRS, and non-impact of the VCRA. Nick Cooper (talk) 11:24, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Are you sure? QuentinUK (talk) 14:56, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Could you be more specific? Nick Cooper (talk) 15:38, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Should we split the article?

The history of The troubles means that gun policy, politics and gun lawlessness has been different in Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK. Also, in the article we have lots of details shootings reported from England and Scotland, but nothing about the lawless shootings in Northern Ireland which makes it all a bit unbalanced in my opinion. Would it not be better to have this UK article as a very short overview explaining the general similarities and differences within the UK nations, but split most of the article off into separate articles on policy in England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland? The statistics are often restricted to England and Wales and Scotland has a somewhat different legal framework to that in England and Wales though I'm not sure if the laws in Scotland are the same as in E&W, or how the legal system differences/devolved powers affects policy setting, policing and gun controls.. I presume the devolved government in Northern Ireland publishes its own stats. Thoughts anyone? --80.223.105.147 (talk) 15:04, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

There's certainly something to be said about clearly differentiating out the three legal entities, although until very recently it's been the case that Scottish laws on firearms have been reserved to Westminster, so in practical terms any new English/Welsh legislation had a direct Scottish equivalent. Northern Ireland is clearly a completely separate case, and would benefit from a completely separate page, whereas it might be better to have England & Wales and Scotland on the same page, but with specific sections (e.g. firearms crime) clearly separated. I think one thing we are currently lacking is a section imitation firearms, of which the current "Airsoft and BB Guns" section would be a part. The air weapons section also needs some work, e.g. to cover those air pistols that are realistic replicas of modern handguns, which are nonetheless controlled as air weapons, rather than imitations. Nick Cooper (talk) 17:35, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

False claims of rising gun crime

I have deleted the recent anon IP claim that:

"According to Mail Online News, gun crime has skyrocketed in the last decade despite a weapons ban in effect."

This was sourced to this October 2009 article.

In fact, the number of all firearms-enabled crimes had fallen each and every year in the five years before the publication of the article (i.e. 2004/04 to 2008/09), while crimes not involving air weapons had falled in two out of the previous three years (i.e. 2005/06 to 2008/09). In addition, both measure fell consistently in both of the two years since then (i.e. 2008/09 to 2011/12). The actual figures are (all gun crime/non-air weapons crime):

1997/98 = 12,805 / 4,903
1998/99 = 13,874 / 5,209
1999/00 = 16,946 / 6,843
2000/01 = 17,698 / 7,471
2001/02 = 22,401 / 10,024
2002/03 = 24,070 / 10,248
2003/04 = 24,094 / 10,338
2004/05 = 22,893 / 11,069
2005/06 = 21,526 / 11,088
2006/07 = 18,481 / 9,645
2007/08 = 17,343 / 9,865
2008/09 = 14,241 / 8,200
2009/10 = 12,976 / 8,051
2010/11 = 11,227 / 7,024

Gun crime as a whole is now lower than it was in 1997/98, while crimes not involving air weapons are now lower than they were in 2000/01. Any suggestion that gun crime - by whatever measure - is currently or has been recently rising is completely untrue. Nick Cooper (talk) 15:35, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I light of the anon IP's reinistatement of their bogus claims, I would further note that taking handguns that could only be held for sporting purposes away from less than 0.1% of the population can clearly have no connection whatsoever with the levels of overall crime across the UK. That would be like claiming that banning Ferraris from public roads would affect the overall number of speeding offences. Nick Cooper (talk) 10:26, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Out Of Date (2000) Table

For best practice I have added an 'out of date' tag to the article (2000!) in support of it's supposition that 'England & Wales' (British?) Gun crime has reduced. Twobells (talk) 15:45, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Firearms description irrespective of ideology

I have properly described the British police firearms irrespective of loaded ideological terminology with a link to both their wiki articles and the manufacturers web pages which describe as such. I have included for factual purposes the fact that they are semi-automatic irrespective of the fact that a 2 minute job by someone who is not an armourer makes them fully automatic. So please for the very last time stop deleting the main weapons that British police now use along with the cites and descriptions and for the record a 'semi-automatic' rifle does not affect its lethality. Twobells (talk) 16:15, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Nonsense. Nobody who knows the first thing about firearms would describe as a "sub machine gun" or "assault rifle" a weapon that is semi-automatic only - that sort of flagrant misrepresentation is the stuff of the sensationalist press. If you persist in introducing deliberate factual inaccuracies to this article, I will regard them as vandalism, and treat them accordingly. Nick Cooper (talk) 11:00, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately assault rifles or weapons are the term that's being used even if they are semi automatic. See Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban or the SLR. Pleasetry (talk) 13:32, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

What happens in America has no bearing on the content of this page. The term you refer to is not even remotely in widespread use in the UK, and not the one used by the British authorities to describe the short semi-automatic rifles used by UK police ([2], [3], [4], [5], etc.). "Carbine" is a widely known and recognised term, and is appropriate for this page. Nick Cooper (talk) 20:26, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Police can call them whatever they want. The former label covers their weapons more accurately as they are not all assault rifles neither does semi auto stop it being an assault or battle rifle as the SLR proves. Pleasetry (talk) 13:32, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

The L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle is a battle rifle, not an assault rifle (not least because they use a full-powdered rifle cartridge), but then the UK police don't use them, so there is no comparison. UK police use short semi-automatic rifles, i.e. carbines. Any attempt to "sex up" their description is the stuff of sensationalist gutter journalism. Nick Cooper (talk) 14:02, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Note the SLR is still a battle rifle regardless of it being full or semi automatic. UK police use semi automatic assault rifles and other assault weapons.

However as you've mentioned sensationalist gutter journalism there should be a section on the effect that has had on gun politics in the UK. Pleasetry (talk) 17:33, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

The FN-FAL is a battle rifle by virtue of it firing a full-powered rifle cartridge, which the semi-automatic carbine versions of the MP5, G36, LMT Defender, etc. do not, so they're not battle rifles. There is no such thing as a "semi automatic assault rifles," because an assault rifle by definition must have at least one full-automatic or burst-fire mode, which again the carbines used by the British police do not have. "Assault weapon" is a term that had no place in UK law or common UK usage.

If you find reliable sources dealing with the media misrepresentation of firearms, then they can be used. Nick Cooper (talk) 22:10, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Other guns use a full power cartridges yet they are not battle rifles. Pleasetry (talk) 16:57, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

And? Nick Cooper (talk) 23:35, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

It shows that just because they share the same characteristics doesn't mean they are the same also if you cut the size down it would also be a carbine but still a battle rifle. The police are using assault rifles that have been modded but they're still assault rifles.Pleasetry (talk) 06:25, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

No, to be an assault rifle, the weapon must have certain characteristics, one of which is the ability to fire on full-automatic, which the versions of the G36, LMT Defender, etc. used by UK police do not have. UK police have used the term "carbine" for many years to accurately describe the weapons they use (and, indeed, the semi-auto Sterling used previously), and there is not reason for us to not follow suit here.

You have already breached WP:3RR twice in the last 48 hours trying to impose your POV edit. I would suggest that you stop now before I escalate this matter. Nick Cooper (talk) 11:01, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Please do. Your argument is only based on your pedantic view of what an assault rifle is which differs from their intended use and what everyone else calls them. The Dailymail calls them assault rifles too Pleasetry (talk) 23:48, 1 February 2013 (UTC)