How many legitimate firearms sales in the UK take place in... a car park?!
Sorry, coming to this late as I've only just heard of it the other day - I can offer an insight into this as I'm a Registered Firearms Dealer.
A good question!
Yes, firearms sales/transfers do take place in car parks, as well as various other places, from time to time. I've done it. It'll only ever be a minority of sales that take place that way, though.
If you're a private individual it actually makes a lot of sense to do something like this in a public space as many people see it as a security risk to be visiting the home of a stranger with a firearm or have a stranger turn up to your house which contains firearms.
A private individual can sell a firearm he owns to another individual on production of that person's shotgun cert or firearm cert. These are paper with the holder's details on including their photo. The seller checks the purchaser's details and as long as everything seems legit there's no reason not to sell to them.
As regards a shotgun certificate, the certificate authorises the holder to purchase as many shotguns and as much ammunition as they like. A Firearm Certificate authorises the purchase of the guns listed on the certificate (by type and calibre, usually) and allows possession of maximum amounts of ammunition. That's the simplified version, anyway.
I've long considered the physical certificate to be a security hole because if you lose it and it gets into the hands of someone else then they have access to all your details; full name, DoB, address, and a list of all the firearms you possess. In this day and age there is no reason not to have it as a plastic card with only a barcode on that you can use to access the holder's details which will give you details of what they're authorised to acquire.
The PCC, Tizard, I think he was named as really should have checked the situation before spouting forth about changes to the system. He's calling for a national database of certificate holders - there already is it's called the National Firearms Licensing Management System! He makes a reasonable point in saying that it should be checkable by a seller, though. The system we have today is one of paper certificates, however, which act as the acquisition authorities.
Interestingly, I can state with 100% certainty that not even on-duty police officers can directly access NFLMS and need to contact the relevant force's licensing section to check specific details of a certificate holder's certificate which they can only do during office hours. An individual's personal record on the PNC will show them as a certificate holder but not what firearms they are entitled to be in possession of.
On the subject of the seller of this gun; there is a provision on certificates that requires a party to a transaction to report to the police anything which appears to be improper or concerning about a transaction - I'll get the specific wording from my certs later.
We don't know the specific details of this transaction so I'm not trying to call out the seller as having done anything wrong. However, speaking as an RFD I think that anyone offering me nearly
50% more for something I had for sale,
and petrol money,
and sell them ammo,
and wanting me to deliver to a car park would raise a flag with me. Individually nothing wrong with any of those points but collectively....??? I'd be asking a lot more questions about the deal, tbh. Again, we don't know the circumstances so it's not easy to comment specifically.
Some articles say that the seller was a firearms dealer, others that it was a private individual. I have to say that I'm amazed that it wasn't made the case years ago that all sales between cert holders had to go through RFD's. Even though an RFD can't check the national database, requiring bother buyer and seller to physically walk into a gunshop with staff who do these transactions every day would be a massive disincentive to the vast majority of people trying a scam like this. Posting firearms directly to cert holders was stopped many years ago.
www.bbc.co.uk
www.telegraph.co.uk
