IN DEPTH: Gun Loophole Closed After Police Murder but Expert Warns UK Firearms Laws a ‘Shambles’

Criminals now turning to 'slam guns' and weapons produced on 3D printers

Court artist sketch of Louis De Zoysa at Northampton Crown Court in Northampton, England on June 9, 2023. (Elizabeth Cook/PA)

The murder of a sergeant inside a police holding cell highlighted a legal loophole surrounding antique firearms, which has since been closed.

On Friday, Louis De Zoysa—who suffered brain damage after being hit by one of his own bullets—was convicted of Matt Ratana’s murder, which happened at Croydon police station on Sep. 25, 2020.

But James Marchington, a shooting enthusiast and videojournalist who works for the Fieldsports Channel, said the 1968 Firearms Act and the administration of gun licensing was a “shambles” which needed to be addressed.

During De Zoysa’s trial the prosecutor Duncan Penny, KC, told the jury at Northampton Crown Court the arresting officers had not found the gun on him when he was arrested and handcuffed. Penny said he is thought to have concealed it under his armpit and then produced it and shot Ratana before anyone was able to stop him.

The gun in question was an antique revolver and was legal to own, although the ammunition was no longer manufactured.

The murder weapon was a .41 calibre Long Colt antique revolver—the same type of gun fired by Alec Baldwin on the set of the Hollywood movie Rust, when he killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

De Zoysa bought it in an online auction in June 2020 but because the ammunition was obsolete, he manufactured .357 cartridges for it at the farm in Banstead, Surrey where he lived.

Arsenal of Weapons Found

When his home was raided, police also found a .41 calibre Long Colt New Model Army & Navy antique revolver, a Schmitt-Rubin antique infantry rifle with a shortened barrel, an Umarex Python gas-firing revolver, a .357 Magnum bullet and seven .38 bullets, as well as a pipe-gun and a dummy launcher.

At the time of Ratana’s death, any antique firearm—meaning anything manufactured before Sep. 1, 1939—was exempt under section 58(2) of the 1968 Firearms Act if they were being displayed as a “curiosity or ornament.”

Therefore you could own them without needing to have a firearms certificate.

Screengrab from CCTV footage of Louis de Zoysa near a weapon (circled in red) in a holding cell at Croydon custody centre in London on Sep. 25, 2020. (Metropolitan Police)

But in November 2020—two months after Ratana was killed—the government announced it was closing the “loophole.”

The Home Office cited figures from the National Ballistics Intelligence Service (NABIS) which showed a “sharp rise” in the number of antique guns being seized from crime scenes.

They said the number had risen from four guns in 2007 to 97 in 2016, although it had fallen back to 69 by 2019.

6 Deaths Linked to Antique Firearms

The Home Office made no mention of the Ratana case but said between 2007 and 2020, NABIS had linked six deaths to antique firearms.

So the Firearms Act still contains an exemption for antique weapons but the definition of an antique firearm has been tightened.

Antique firearms are now defined as being either:

• any weapon which is “loaded at the muzzle end of the barrel”, such as a flintlock, musket or a blunderbuss.
• any “breech-loading cartridge firearm which uses an ignition system other than rim-fire or centre-fire.”

The Home Office also removed from the exemption a number of revolvers which used “obsolete cartridges,” including .44 Smith and Wesson Russian, 10.6mm German Ordnance and the .44 Webley, the latter being the gun used by both Sherlock Holmes and James Bond in the original novels.

That list included .41 Colt (both long and short), meaning the weapon De Zoysa used to kill Ratana became illegal, unless the owner had a firearms certificate.

For years the law around antique weapons had contained a grey area and that was highlighted by the trial, in 2007, of firearms dealer, Mick Shepherd, who was prosecuted after police raided his home in Dartford, Kent, and seized 900 guns.

At Shepherd’s trial prosecutor Mark Gadsden, explained to the jury the distinction: “If an individual has a genuine old Wild West type revolver, such as those depicted in cowboy films, in a display case above the mantelpiece of his or her living room—with no intention of doing anything untoward with it—then it will fall within the exemption.”

“If, however, that individual takes that same revolver out of its display case and uses it to commit an armed bank robbery then the exemption does not apply because, while the antique nature of the firearm has not changed, it is no longer being possessed as a curiosity or ornament,” Gadsden added.

Undercover officers had purchased weapons from Shepherd and discussed what ammunition to use in them but the prosecution failed to prove he was encouraging them to use the guns as anything but ornaments and he was acquitted of all charges.

After he was acquitted all 900 guns were returned to Shepherd, who said last week he had been forced to retire when the new rules came into effect in March 2021.

‘It’s the Person, not the Weapon, That’s the Problem’

Shepherd told The Epoch Times: “They want to ban everything. They just keep whittling away. In Switzerland, you don’t need a gun licence. It’s the person, not the weapon, that’s the problem. Any idiot can buy a knife.”

Shepherd said many people who had antique guns on display over their mantlepiece had no idea the law had been changed and they now needed a certificate.

“A lot of people just want to own a gun. It’s a fascination,” said Shepherd.

The Home Office is thought to be about to produce a new consultation on updating Britain’s firearms laws in the wake of comments made by the coroner at the inquest earlier this year into the August 2021 mass shooting in Plymouth.

Undated photo of Jake Davison, posted on his Facebook page, who shot dead five people in the Keyham area of Plymouth, England on Aug. 12, 2021. (Jake Davison/Facebook/PA)

Bill Harriman, the British Association of Shooting and Conservation’s director of firearms, recently described the current system as “ramshackle.”

In an episode of the YouTube channel Strictly Shooting, Harriman said police ineptitude had been highlighted by the Plymouth shootings but he said the under-resourcing of police firearms licensing officers was also causing delays which put at risk the livelihoods of those who need guns for their jobs, such as gamekeepers, clay pigeon shooting firms and some pest control officers.

Marchington agrees and said: “The police were struggling before and then COVID-19 brought the system to its knees. The police have an awful lot on their plate and licensing firearms is not top of their list. The whole process is under-resourced and we’ve reached a stalemate where things don’t move.”

He said people interested in taking up clay pigeon shooting were having to wait in some cases up to three years for a shotgun licence and pest controllers who bought new weapons and wanted a variation on their certificates were waiting months.

‘The Existing Laws are a Muddle’

Marchington told The Epoch Times: “The existing laws are a muddle. They are confusing and don’t do the job they are designed to do. The whole process could be streamlined.”

He said: “The Plymouth situation shows we have a proportion of complete lunatics in this country and people are under more stress than they were in the past. You want to keep guns out of the hands of those people. But there is no reason why farmers, gamekeepers and clay pigeon shooters can’t be trusted with guns.”

Peter Glenser, KC, a barrister specialising in firearms-related matters, told The Epoch Times: “There are some 34 separate pieces of legislation that touch upon firearms ownership. It’s a pity that following the law commission’s recent review of the subject that the opportunity to simplify and codify the law wasn’t taken. That said the very few problems involving legally held firearms usually occur where the existing law, Home Office guidance and procedure isn’t followed.”

Glenser said: “It would be helpful for all concerned if certificates could be given a duration of 10 years, rather than five. That would immediately reduce the cost of administering licensing and free up time for firearms licensing managers to concentrate their scant resources on any potential or emerging problems.”

“Any reworking of the firearms laws should start with a blank piece of paper,” he added.

An FGC-9 gun—manufactured with a 3D printer—which was discovered at a house in Bradford, England in May 2022. (West Yorkshire Police)

Glenser said: “Persons seeking to possess guns unlawfully often achieve their aim—look at the FGC-9 for one example but at a much more mundane level slam guns are cheap, easily constructed and absolutely lethal—and quite difficult to detect in that they just look like (and mostly are) old pieces of pipe. Persons owning firearms legitimately are very rarely the problem.”

Guns Created on 3D Printers

In May 2022 police in Yorkshire discovered three FGC-9 sub-machine guns after stopping a car and then raiding a house in Bradford.

Sibusiso Moyo—who was a computer science lecturer—was jailed for 18 years for illegally manufacturing a firearm, and Christopher Gill was locked up for 13 years.

Sheffield Crown Court heard the guns, which had been manufactured on a 3D printer at Moyo’s home in Hull, had been tested by experts based at the Royal Armouries in Leeds who had confirmed they were “viable firearms.”

One website, based in the United States, estimates an FGC-9 can be manufactured for as little as $400 (£315).

Marchington told The Epoch Times: “It’s not difficult to create a gun if you have basic metalwork skills. You can make something which will go bang and kill someone, and now with 3D printers you can print something that will operate as a gun.”

In January the Home Office launched a consultation about creating a new offence of supplying or possessing articles for use in serious crime, one of which was “digital templates that can be used for 3D-printed firearm components.”

The Epoch Times has contacted the Home Office to confirm if the closure of the antique weapons loophole was linked to the death of Ratana two months before, but they have not responded.

A NABIS spokesman told The Epoch Times in an email, “We’re unable to comment on the rationale or timeliness of changes made to legislation made by government.”