I see the Home Secretary thinks existing restrictions on the
possession of firearms are all they should be. The answer to that is to ask the Home Secretary to read the newspapers. Only the other day an Austrian girl was able to walk into a shop and buy a revolver, get a permit from the Board of Trade on the ground that the weapon was for export, and then promptly shoot herself with it. She might just as well have shot someone else. .This particular procedure has been tightened up since, -but with the columns of the papers full of accounts of hold-ups by armed bandits official complacency seems to me excessive. Why should anyone in this country be allowed to possess revolvers at all, unless for quite 'special and exceptional reasons ? If the police do not need them and prefer to be without them there can be no case whatever for the ordinary citizen carrying such weapons. The ban could with advantage be made much • more rigorous than it is and I hope the M.P. who pilt questions on the matter in the House last week will not let it drop.
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