Firearms regulation in the United Kingdom


In the United Kingdom, gun ownership is considered a privilege, not a right, and access by the general public to firearms is subject to strict control. Members of the public may own certain firearms for the purposes of sport shooting, recreation, hunting or occupational purposes, subject to licensing.
There is a uniform system of firearms licensing across Great Britain, and a separate system for Northern Ireland. All firearms are registered.
As of 2025, there are approximately 2.37 million legally-held firearms in the United Kingdom.

Great Britain

Licensing

With a few exceptions, all firearms must be licensed on either a five-year firearm certificate or a shotgun certificate issued by the police for the area in which they normally reside. Each certificate can list multiple firearms. Shotguns thus defined are subject to a less rigorous certification process than for the full FAC; an applicant is not required by law to make a good case for being granted a certificate, but the police may withhold a certificate if they consider that the applicant does not have satisfactory security in place, or granting it would constitute a danger to public safety or to the peace. A certificate holder may possess as many shotguns as can be securely stored.
When applying for a firearm certificate, justification must be provided to the police for each firearm, and they are individually listed on the certificate by type, calibre, and serial number. A shotgun certificate similarly lists type, calibre and serial number, but permits possession of as many shotguns as can be safely accommodated. To gain permission for a new firearm, a "variation" must be sought, for a fee, unless the variation is made at the time of renewal, or unless it constitutes a one-for-one replacement of an existing firearm that will be disposed of. The certificate also sets out, by calibre, the maximum quantities of ammunition someone may possess at any one time, and is used to record ammunition purchases.
To obtain a firearm certificate, the police must be satisfied that a person has "good reason" to own each firearm, and that they can be trusted with it "without danger to the public safety or to the peace". Under Home Office guidelines, firearm certificates are only issued if a person has legitimate sporting, collecting, or work-related reasons for ownership. Since 1968, self-defence has not been considered a valid reason to own a firearm. The current licensing procedure involves: positive verification of identity, two referees of verifiable good character who have known the applicant for at least two years, approval of the application by the applicant's own family doctor, an inspection of the premises and cabinet where firearms will be kept and a face-to-face interview by a firearms enquiry officer, also known as a firearms liaison officer. Only when all these stages have been satisfactorily completed will a licence be issued, which must be renewed every five years.
Any person who has been sentenced to between three months and three years in prison is automatically prohibited from possessing firearms and ammunition for five years from release. A person who has been sentenced to more than three years is prohibited for life. Application may be made to a court to reverse these prohibitions and this is likely to be successful in relation to convictions for crimes which do not relate to a person's fitness to possess firearms. Similarly, persons applying for licences with recent, serious mental health issues will also be refused a certificate.
Any person holding a firearm or shotgun certificate must comply with strict storage conditions by storing their firearms/shotguns in a safe bolted to the floor or wall that complies to the standard BS 7558:1992. These storage arrangements are checked by the police before a licence is first granted, and on every renewal of the licence.
In the case of a firearm certificate the issuing police force may impose additional conditions over and above the statutory ones. However any condition appended to a certificate must be reasonable and must not be of such a restrictive nature as would amount to a constructive refusal to grant the certificate by making use so unlikely as to be practically impossible. Failure to comply with any of these conditions can result in criminal prosecution resulting in a prison sentence of up to six months. Revocation of the certificate is also possible, depending upon the nature of the breach. A visitor's permit is available for possession of firearms without certificate by visitors to the UK.
The penalty for possession of any type of firearm without a certificate is a maximum of 14 years in prison and an unlimited fine. The penalty for section 5 categories of firearm is subject to a mandatory minimum of five years. The Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 increased restrictions on the use, possession, sale and manufacture of both airguns and imitation firearms.

Definitions

Section 57 of the Firearms Act 1968 defines a firearm as:
  • A lethal barrelled weapon, meaning a barrelled weapon of any description from which a shot, bullet or other missile, with kinetic energy of more than 1 joule at the muzzle of the weapon, can be discharged
  • A prohibited weapon
  • A relevant component part, namely a:
  • * Barrel, chamber or cylinder
  • * Frame, body or receiver
  • * Breech block, bolt or other mechanism for containing the pressure of discharge at the rear of a chamber
  • An accessory to a weapon where the accessory is designed or adapted to diminish the noise or flash caused by firing the weapon
A shotgun is defined as a smooth-bore gun and:
  • Has a barrel not less than 24 inches in length and does not have any barrel with a bore exceeding 2 inches in diameter
  • Either has no magazine or has a non-detachable magazine incapable of holding more than two cartridges
  • Is not a revolver gun

    Prohibited weapons

These weapons are subject to general prohibition:
  • Automatic or burst-fire firearms
  • Semi-automatic or pump-action rifled guns other than those chambered for.22 rimfire cartridges
  • Manually actuated release system rifles and lever release rifles.
  • Most handguns, other than muzzle loading handguns and handguns that are air weapons.
  • Firearms disguised as another item.
  • Rockets and mortars.
  • Air guns chambered for self-contained gas cartridges.
  • Any weapon of whatever description designed or adapted for the discharge of any noxious liquid, gas or other substance. This would generally include stun guns, or electric shock devices, CS gas, OC spray, etc. Cattle prods would not generally be included, but it would depend on the type.
Firearms which previously fell into a prohibited category cannot be made legal by conversion to an otherwise permitted form. For example, a pistol which is adapted by permanently fitting a long smooth-bore barrel to it does not thereby become permitted.

Rifles

UK law does not provide a statutory definition for a "rifle". Most long firearms with rifled barrels will – by default – be classified as Section 1, and can be held on a firearm certificate. This includes single-shot; bolt-action; Martini-action; lever-action ; and revolver rifles in any calibre. Self-loading and pump-action rifles are only permitted in.22 rimfire calibre.

Handguns

The 1997 acts do not ban pistols as such and are drafted in terms of "short firearms". These acts prohibit firearms with a barrel shorter than or an overall length less than In practice this includes most pistols and revolvers, with the exception of those that are air weapons, muzzle-loading or signalling apparatus.
A wide variety of black powder muzzle-loading handguns can still be possessed in Great Britain, plus a small number of muzzle-loading smokeless powder pistols and revolvers are manufactured, such as the Westlake Taurus and Alfa Proj.357 muzzle-loading revolvers. All other handguns are mostly prohibited in Great Britain, with some exceptions such as those used for the humane dispatch of injured animals and some historical firearms.
That law created a new market for "long-barrelled revolvers" and "long-barrelled pistols", firearms with a permanently attached extension to the grip, with overall dimensions larger than those prohibited. Long-barrelled pistols in single-shot, or long-barrelled revolvers, both of any calibre, or semi-automatic in.22 rimfire, are all permitted with a firearm certificate.
Pistol shooting for sporting purposes was effectively banned in 1997, although a temporary exemption was made for competitors to bring section 5 firearms into the UK for the 2002 Commonwealth Games. This exemption only applied to the Games period and Home Nation pistol shooters had to train abroad prior to the Games. Ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games, Tessa Jowell and the Home Secretary agreed to use Home Office powers to issue a small number of section 5 permits to elite pistol shooters nominated by British Shooting. With Glasgow winning the right to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games, this arrangement was extended beyond the Olympics, with a small number of UK ranges licensed for section 5 shooting.
A few models of ISSF 50 meter pistol have been produced which exceed the defined dimensions for prohibited "short firearms" and qualify as section 1 firearms. Some free pistols offered removable stabiliser bars; UK-legal models are manufactured with stabilisers permanently fixed. Examples include the single-shot Pardini K22 Longarm and the five-shot Westlake Britarms Long Pistol.
Specific models of blank-firing starting pistol that are deemed "readily convertible" to fire live ammunition may also be either banned or require a firearm certificate. The Bruni Olympic.380 BBM blank-firing revolver was banned in 2010 on evidence that it was being illegally converted to fire live ammunition. In October 2024, the National Crime Agency declared that all top/side-venting blank-firing pistol replicas by Turkish companies such as BLOW, CEONIC, EKOL, and Retay, which were previously sold legally in the United Kingdom were officially reclassified by the Home Office as being 'readily convertible' and thus should be considered by the English and Welsh courts to be section 5 firearms.
The decision was made following several police seizures of lethally-modified blank pistols and at least four murders being committed using similar weapons in the past two years. Legal owners of such blank-firing replicas in England and Wales were expected to surrender them by 28 February 2025 in an amnesty, but received no compensation for losses that could stretch to many hundreds or thousands of pounds. There has been no equivalent announcement from the Scottish Government, who have executive control over the Scottish courts and legal system, and no equivalent amnesty was announced by Police Scotland, so the status of these blank firers remains somewhat uncertain in Scotland. In early September 2025, a very similar illegalisation and amnesty process in England and Wales was announced for early 2026 by the National Crime Agency for several blank-firing handguns manufactured by Italian blank gun company Bruni, alleging that the replicas were "readily convertible".