Gun ownership far too excessive in UK

The highly competitive and much coveted GPYA - Gormless Politician of the Year Award - might go to Priti Patel for her knee-jerk reaction to the Plymouth pump-action shotgun massacre.

The local squire calling to get a signature from their physician for a gun licence renewal is a hopelessly

outdated anachronism.

It’s as peripheral to mainstream British life as granny’s table mats with pictures of a fox hunt.

The real elephant in the room is our government’s incompetent failure to grossly reduce firearm ownership.

Do over 500,000 people in our congested island nation really need to have firearms?

Mental Health workers often come across challenging circumstances, where legally held guns bring a contentious and unwelcome additional risk.

To be ridding ourselves en masse of weapons is surely the best way

forward and a wholesale system change is urgently required.

Should a city dweller ever be eligible for a pump-action shotgun?

This immediately exposes the lunacy of our government’s longer term handling of the matter.

Pressurising busy police or doctors to do an expedited and rapid review of firearms certificates is just plain daft.

Fixing a review of each gun owner’s internet activities, and interpreting who is dangerous, will be fraught with problems.

A gun owner’s ‘social media risk assessment’ might be just be another pathetic government bungle, pointlessly eating up the time and energy of front line workers to cover up top level political and cabinet minister incompetence.

The real nettle (or weapon), for Priti Patel to be grasping out at is grossly excessive UK gun ownership: over 500,000 firearms.

J T Hardy