Background Firearms licensing – Persons previously convicted of crime
26.Two loopholes have come to light in the Firearms Act 1968 (“the 1968 Act”). At present, persons with suspended sentences are not prohibited from possessing firearms or shotguns in the same way as persons who have served custodial sentences. In 2010, the Home Affairs Select Committee recommended that “the legislation should be amended to clarify that persons in receipt of wholly suspended sentences are subject to the same prohibitions from obtaining a licence to hold section 1 firearms or shotguns as they would be if their sentence had not been suspended”. The Government undertook to carry out further work to assess the practicalities of implementing such a change, which section 110 now makes.(12) The second change that section 110 makes is to ensure that prohibited persons are unable to possess antique firearms. Intelligence suggests that there is growing interest from criminal groups in antique firearms, which can currently be possessed as ornament or curiosities without the need to hold a firearms certificate.