Plymouth
I suppose it was inevitable: the mass shooting in Plymouth is the main news. At the moment there are only tentative attempts to look for culprits other than the murderer but some MSM reports raise some unintended questions relating to the police, our gun-licensing system and to the anti-social media.
We’re told that the murderer had his licence revoked in December last year and reinstated last month. How was that possible? Well, the Police Watchdog, the IOPC, is investigating but the first ‘explanations’ are already coming to light:
“[The shotgun] was legally owned but the licence had been revoked in December, following an allegation of assault two months earlier. The police’s decision to return the licence and weapon last month will be the subject of an IOPC inquiry.” (link, paywalled)
Before we look at this in more detail, here are some numbers to provide a perspective which inevitably raises more questions, not least about keeping things in perspective. We find that:
“As of September 2020, the force has 3,273 police officers, 323 special constables, 206 police community support officers(PCSO), 915 police support volunteers (PSV), and 2,167 staff.” (link)
Yes, it’s a large area and yes, forces are stretched and yes, “we” must save money which is needed elsewhere, for example looking after and housing all those illegal migrants, mustn’t we. Now see these other numbers and marvel:
“There are around 1.4 million licensed shotguns in England and Wales, and 546,000 shotgun licence holders. The fee for a five-year licence is £80 – £16 per year. This is not the true cost because the fee is subsidised by the taxpayer.” (paywalled link)
Remind me – how many people are currently living in the UK, officially? Are 546,000 licence holders too huge a number for the UK police forces to handle? Here’s more:
“A senior police source said firearms licence departments were stretched in their ability to check on owners, especially in a force area like Devon and Cornwall with a huge number of shotguns, let alone rifles and glocks. “The resources are not there to regularly and proactively visit every single firearms licence holder. There are simply not enough staff to do that because of the sheer number of licences,” he said.” (paywalled link)
No indeed – staff is stretched and they cannot possibly visit ‘regularly and proactively’ every licence holder, not when, according to a report in a local paper from 2018, there were “In total, 11,224 valid firearm licences in Devon and Cornwall covered an average of 3.2 guns each.” (link). I assume it’s one licence per gun, so that would reduce the number of licence holders to about 4,000 – correct me if I’m wrong. That looks a bit more manageable.
Why though was it possible for the Devon and Cornwall Police to revoke that licence in December and reinstate it last month, given their stretched resources? What had changed? Why did the murderer get that licence in the first place – he was only 22 years old and did not live on a farm? Firstly, see this:
“Jake Davison, 22, killed his mother and four members of the public before turning the gun on himself in Plymouth days after relatives appealed to mental health services for help, it was claimed.” (link, paywalled)
I’ll just note that relatives appealed in vain to mental health services – a service stretched to bursting point before covid and now practically inaccessible. I’ll also note that there have been many mass murderers going on a ‘killing spree’ who were reported to have mental health issues. We were always told that ‘the system’ was ‘unable to cope’.
‘Modern mental health care’ now takes place in ‘the community’ as the big mental health hospitals were closed – see e.g. here. There are always calls for more money for those mental health community services. Who runs them? The good old NHS … ! There’s more, and grim as this issue is one really must ask if the authorities are actually living in the real world when we read:
“[…] it emerged that Davison’s shotgun certificate and a shotgun were returned to him in early July. They had been removed by police in December following an assault allegation made two months earlier. He is believed to have escaped charges and gone on an anger management course.” (link, paywalled)
No charges and an ‘anger management course’, was it? So it wasn’t about ‘mental health’ but about assault allegations, was it? We’re not yet told who decided that the murderer was ‘safe’ and that his licence and gun could be returned. However, we should ask who runs such ‘anger management course’ and how good and effective they really are. Of course it would be utterly inappropriate to wonder if such courses actually do what it says on the tin or if they’re just a box-ticking exercise by the authorities needing to show that they’re ‘doing something’.
But wait – there’s another entity which is ‘doing something’, pointing fingers at the antisocial media. We’re told that the murderer was a ‘woman-hating misogynist’, an ‘Incel’, and that:
“Members of the “involuntary celibate” movement, young men who are hostile to women because they are unable to attract them sexually, flocked to Davison’s YouTube channel before it was removed yesterday. The Centre for Countering Digital Hate warned his videos had been used as a “rallying point” for incel extremists and the shooting would help galvanise their movement.” (link, paywalled)
Who or what is this ‘Centre for Countering Digital Hate’? Here’s the wiki entry – yes, I know: ‘wiki’, ain’t that trustworthy, but I didn’t want to go to their official site and be ‘counted’. The entry makes astonishing reading indeed – do have a look and note especially this: “The CCDH has targeted neo-Nazis and anti-vaccine advocates”. That would be a wide-enough field, given the incessant propaganda against those horrible anti-vaxxers.
Now they’ve jumped on the ‘misogynist’ bandwagon. What the CCDH chief executive, Imran Ahmed, has to say in his opinion piece in the Times is quite astonishing:
“The technology that turns lonely men into misogynistic radicals is the social media algorithm, which itself is the result of Big Tech’s overriding commitment to deeper engagement, regardless of the cost. […] This unofficial mantra has shaped the online architecture we find all around us. It helped forge a familiar path that begins with teenagers engaging with hateful content on social media, and increasingly ends with violence and murder.” (link, paywalled)
Ah! So it’s about removing ‘hateful content’, with a self-appointed watchdog, affiliated with Labour, determining what is and isn’t ‘hateful’. But – where are the CCDH’s campaigns against ‘hate’ directed at e.g. ‘transphobes’? Where are their campaigns to stop the campaigns to encourage children to become ‘trans’, with all the medical horrors that implies? Where are their campaigns against pornography, especially that involving children? Isn’t that hateful? Where are their campaigns to remove content propagating islamic terrorism from social media? Are only ‘neo-nazis’ as defined by the Left, are only ‘antivaxxers’ and now ‘misogynists’ the ‘enemy of the people’?
Btw – isn’t it wonderful that neither this latest, self-appointed watchdog nor the MSM and indeed the police are mentioning the state of our country, or the mental health and other health services, all broken now thanks to covid? Perhaps it’s uncouth of me to ask … but I do wish to know how this anger management course was run during lockdown – after all, this is how the murderer got his licence and shotgun back.
And surely, we should ask why it is that the authorities do not trust us one inch – ‘proactively and regularly checking of firearms licence holders’, remember? – but seem to trust their own, i.e. those who run ‘anger management courses’ and tick the proper boxes. Something is very wrong in our country.
KBO!
Photo by Lawrie Cate 
Words fail me. The death penalty will never be re-introduced as too many politicians will be on death row.
Small point, Viv, but you asked for it. I think you will find that it is possible to hold a shotgun licence and have more than one same-same gun listed under that licence. To do otherwise would mean a never ending churn of different expiry dates for individual guns. As it is, I think that the licence expires once, then ALL the guns are no longer licenced. (If you see what I mean?).
That’s what I meant: one ‘license’, holding several guns. But giving the number of guns held by licensees is far more ‘sock-horror’ inducing that lust reporting on how many people hold gun licenses.
Peter Hitchens has been repeatedly saying for years that those responsible for mass shooting incidents always have a drug background. He has proved it every single timet, and is doubtless delving away at this very moment .
Not just “illegal” drugs like cannabis or marijuana. Which Govt should but won’t clamp down on.
But also prescription drugs, mainly certain types for depression, which are dished out willy- nilly by doctors and are a money -spinner for Big Pharma.
Hitchens has pushed for years for these “legitimate” drugs to be researched; but this never happens as it would damage profits, and we can’t have that can we?
Instead Govt prefers to push their propaganda that the shooters are-if white- “right wing extremists” or “incels, hated white male inadequates”. Or if they are Islamic, Govt say it was not caused by Islam.
The one truth they never speak is their own culpability in all this.
Have you noticed, in the whole wall to wall coverage of Afganistan I have heard no single mention of the I***m word,. Nix, NOthing. It’s extraordinary amongst every country in the world from Mali to Yemen to Chad, to Ethiopia etc Nothing. Inexplicable, From UK to Germant to Hungary, Uighers (?) and Greece , Nothing. Poor little drowning well heeled fit young men without females. Sad innit.
I find the sympathy awash with virtue sickening. While every MSM outlet is awash with suppositions about a bloke in Plymouth. Nothing about what may have occurred in Afganistan Why, Who, How ( Are there any real people left on the left . Do they not know ? ) While I understand Biden is actually not even remotely real, And I do understand that the Afgans themselves have been saddled with the usual crop of political leaders (Bit like Ukip really ) salting it away while pretending to sort themselves out to fight for their people. But greasily sliding away.
Half the world in flames and they still pass on the other side.
TG Spokes……..How you can compare the present situation in Afghanistan with a political party in the UK namely UKIP which has no MP’s in parliament and virtually no influence at all upon anything is beyond me. I think you have an unhealthy fixation about UKIP and how its run and have finally lost the plot. Instead how about commenting upon the out of touch idiots who occupy ministerial positions in the present government as that would be more like it Besides which unless its escaped your notice, I think you will find all leaders of countries wherever they made be and political parties are political. I haven’t come across any political leaders in this country (including Starmer) who are in their positions as a result of the stamp collecting or trainspotting activities. Come on TGS get a grip…..
I was initially surprised when the perpetrator was reported to have mental health issues but had not shouted alluha akbar. Still we will get round to white supremacism , extreme far right etc in due course.
‘incel extremists’ is a new one. Looks like the CCDH is expanding its surveillance. Must be running out of racists. And yes something is very wrong in this country.
Seretonin based anti depressants are probably relatively mild. I’m sure there is much stronger stuff being prescribed Mary.
But as far as seretonin is concerned I can tell you I stopped it because I felt it was making me become a bit reckless in my driving.
It would have been my own car and myself that would have been damaged. No one else.
Good old fashioned marijuana did very little harm, in my opinion.
Many questions raised by this case but the one that stands out to my mind, is that having revoked his license and confiscated the weapon why the hell were they returned?
There had been doubt. It was not sufficiently removed. If there is any doubt about someone’s fitness or need, for a firearm he/she should not have one.
Alternatively, do as the Americans do and let us all look after ourselves.
Come to think of it, that may also apply re prescription drugs and medical procedures!
How do you carry out a mass shooting with a shotgun? Are they so traumatised that they just sit and wait for their turn next or are there repeating shotguns.?
Regarding drugs I’m against all of them weed included, it’s the free licence to move on and have a bash with the real stuff.
I see they are saying the new Mayor of New York is looking for income from “anywhere” and is likely to legitimise and tax Marujana in the near future.
The problem in this country is that for far too long “those at th top” and their pushers have got away with it and that in the end any drug policy is unenforceable, for instance Nigella Lawson’s pusher should have been squeezed out of her and put in gaol and I mean physically “leaned on” and his pushers too.
And while I don’t agree with the government taking advantage of the Covid Legislation to push through all sorts of all and sundry laws, in this instance I believe they have an ideal opportunity to get after these people without too much squealing.
There has been a thread on bringing back hanging, perhaps opportunity might be taken to utilise it same as Thailand etc.
Anyway Viv, brilliant forensic article, I hope someone amongst the “elite” is reading it and joining the dots and taking action or should we save our breath to cool our porridge?
Prescribed drugs can be just as harmful as illegal drugs Roger.
But regarding shotguns, I wondered, same as you. There again, that word ‘mass’ can be misleading. I don’t think they all stood in a line like cut outs in a rifle booth. The perpetrator moved around seeking his targets.