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Stricter control of air guns needed

March 21, 2002

The time has come for much stricter control of air guns, urges an editorial in Archives of Disease in Childhood.

The belief that air guns are harmless toys is widespread, write the authors, who, as specialists in children’s surgery and emergency medicine, treat the results of accidental injury from these guns.

But they say that most modern air guns can fire their lead pellets or ball bearings to equal or exceed the velocity of a conventional hand gun. There are an estimated 4 million air guns in UK households.

Most of the injuries involve teenage boys, and the authors chart a relentless rise in the number of air gun offences and injuries since 1989. There were almost 17,000 firearms offences, of which 60 per cent involved air guns in 1999. There were 17 per cent more air gun offences the following year.

One in five offences caused injury and almost one in 10 of these resulted in admission to hospital, for shock, fracture, or multiple wounds, with eye injury continuing to be a serious problem.

The authors draw on their own observations of 73 air gun injuries recorded at St James’s University Hospital, Leeds between 1996 and 2001. Half the patients were under 18, with children as young as 4 needing treatment. Most of them were boys. In 16 of the children the pellet had penetrated the skin and in four it had caused deep internal injury.

Despite having some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, most conventional air weapons in the UK do not require a licence, they write, and children under 14 can use them if supervised by an adult.

Measures, such as restricting their use to supervised target ranges and reducing the penetrating power of the bullet, all need to be adopted, say the authors. “It is time for a coordinated approach from the public, police, sporting organisations, manufacturers, and retailers, and policians,” they conclude.

British Medical Journal (BMJ)