Recommendation 75

GPs can place ‘flags’ on patients’ medical records to alert clinicians that individuals own firearms.187 Both policy experts advocating gun control and shooting associations have expressed concern that the flagging system is inadequate. Professor Peter Squires, Professor Emeritus of Criminology and Public Policy at the University of Brighton, has stated that police needed to engage in “much more involvement with health services to ensure people with mental health problems didn’t get through the licensing system”188, while the British Shooting Sports Council told us that the flagging system as a whole is “unacceptably weak”.189 The Council said that: “In the absence of agreement from the medical profession for a GP to be required by law to place the marker, the Statutory Guidance envisages it 180 Q159 181 Q218 182 Q139 183 Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland, Facts about NHS funding in Scotland, accessed 8 December 2022 184 Home Office, Firearms licensing: statutory guidance for Chief Officers of Police, December 2021, page 8 185 “Dunblane victim’s dad calls for stricter gun laws after Skye shooting”, The National, 14 August 2022 186 Home Office, Firearms licensing: statutory guidance for Chief Officers of Police, December 2021, page 6 187 British Medical Association, The firearms licensing process, accessed 13 September 2022 188 BBC Sussex Radio, Interview of Professor Peter Squires by Danielle Perry, transcript accessed 13 September 2022 189 British Shooting Sports Council (FLR0010) Firearms licensing regulations in Scotland 25 being placed by the GP on a ‘best endeavours’ basis. We believe that to be inadequate insofar as it allows for the possibility that a medical practitioner is left unaware that the patient who he is treating may be in possession of firearms”.190