Gun licenses issued and crimes involving guns from January 2021 to January 2022

 

I note you seek access to the following information:

 

The number of gun licenses issued and crimes involving guns that have taken place in the last two years, from January 2021 to December 2021 and January 2022 to the present date. 

 

Please provide me with:

a) A list of the number of gun licenses issued and information about to whom these have been issued (age, sex). If it is not possible to provide information about to whom they have been issued, just the number will suffice. I would like the number issued from January 2021 to December 2021 and the number from January 2022 to December 2022 separately, please. 

 

b) the number of gun license applications that have been rejected, from January 2021 to December 2021 and from January 2022 to December 2022, separately please. 

 

c) the number of crimes involving guns that have occurred in London, from January 2021 to December 2021 and January 2022 to December 2022 separately please.  

I have today decided to disclose some of the requested information.  Some data has been withheld as it is exempt from disclosure and therefore this response serves as a Refusal Notice under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) by virtue of the following exemptions:

 

Section 21(1) - Information Accessible to Applicant by Other Means

 

 

Section 21(1) - Information Accessible to Applicant by Other Means - exemption is to ensure that there is no right of access to information via FOIA if it is available to the applicant by another route. To claim this exemption the data must be reasonably accessible.

 

Section 21 is both a class based and absolute exemption, therefore there is no requirement to carry out a public interest test to claim this exemption. There is also no need to consider what potential harm would result from disclosing the requested information.

 

 

This notice is to inform you that the MPS will disclose the answers to questions A and B below. In relation to question C, I am pleased to inform you that this information is already in the public domain via the MPS Crime dashboard. 

 

Please note that these are summary figures from a large data set with complexities that are not well addressed in this format. Official data from the Home Office can be found via this link:

 

 

The request asks for numbers of applications that have been “rejected” during the relevant periods. The term rejected has a specific meaning in this context and refers to those applications which are incomplete from an administrative perspective. (e.g. application form incorrectly completed). As a result data in this area is incomplete as a number of such applications do not progress to being recorded on our systems.

 

In light of this please find figures below for numbers “refused” – This refers to an applicant who has been assessed by Police and deemed unsuitable.

 

 

	2021	2022
Female	357	343
Male	5611	5338
	5968	5681

  

 

Age	2021	2022
1920-1929	5	1
1930-1939	131	81
1940-1949	764	628
1950-1959	1188	1079
1960-1969	1319	1379
1970-1979	1044	951
1980-1989	913	885
1990-1999	536	594
2000-2009	67	83
2010-	1	0
	5968	5681

 

 

2021- 65

2022- 102

 

 

The information you seek can be accessed via the following link:

 

This link provides gun crime figures in London. Please note the data can be filtered by a number of variables including month, therefore you will be able to find information for the timeframes stated. 

 

QC - The number of crimes involving guns that have occurred in London, from January 2021 to December 2021 and January 2022 to December 2022 separately please.  

 

In supplying the link to question C of your request I have claimed a Section 21 exemption of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The information requested has been identified as being accessible via other means.