Firearm ownership (FOI)

​Request

A

How many firearms certificates are currently active per parish in 2017

B

Can you give an overview of what kind of firearms are on the island (per parish if possible)

C

Number of 5000+ rounds of ammunition requests put through over all / per parish.

Response

A

Firearms certificates are issued by the Constable of the parish where the firearms holder is resident. The States of Jersey Police hold the register of firearms certificate holders.

The number of firearms certificates currently active in each parish is detailed below.

B

The type of firearms held are distributed evenly across all parishes. Individuals without a certificate can shoot if they become a member of an authorised shooting club. These clubs usually operate at a fixed range. Crabbe (located in St Mary) has five ranges covering pistol (two ranges), full bore rifle, small bore rifle, muzzle loading and shotgun. Some ranges are shared between disciplines.

St Ouen has a shotgun range. There are indoor ranges at Grouville, St Brelade, St Lawrence and St John and St Helier (Victoria College and Fort Regent). These will in the main shoot air weapons and .22 rifles. Some may shoot small calibre pistols. There are other ranges around the island shooting small bore and air weapons.

Weapons range from air pistols and rifles to hand guns, shotguns, historic rifles (Black powder, muzzle loading), modern military rifles up to and including 0.50 BMG (Browning machine gun) calibre. Some weapons are held without a certificate if they are classed as antique (Pre1899) or pre second world war and are of the type where the calibre is obsolete, i.e. ammunition is no longer available. These weapons must not be fired.

Fully automatic firearms are prohibited under the Firearms (Jersey) Law 2000 and may only be possessed with authority of the Home Affairs Minister. Semi-automatic weapons are only permitted if they have been professionally modified by a registered firearms dealer to allow only single shots to be fired with each squeeze of the trigger.

C

It is not possible to detail all of the certificate holders permitted to hold over 5000 rounds without looking at each individual certificate. To do so would exceed the time limit allowed for each Freedom of Information request.

Each certificate holder is permitted up to 5000 rounds of ammunition (in total) as per the guidelines of the Attorney General. A certificate holder may apply to the Constable of the parish where the certificate was issued for permission to hold a greater quantity if they can show a good reason to do so. There have been five such applications this year of which four were granted by the constables of St Brelade, St Peter, St Helier and St Ouen. St Saviour are still considering one application.

Exemption applied

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.