Recorded Crimes and Offences Involving Firearms: FOI release

Information requested

The disposals that were handed out in the Recorded Crimes and Offences Involving Firearms, Scotland, over the last five years (2018-19 - 2023-24) broken down by category (used to threaten, fired – no injury/damage, fired – damage to property, fired – fatal/non-fatal injury, other use, used as blunt instrument) and disposal (custodial, community, financial, other).

We asked for clarification of your question on the 1st of May of 2025 sending you a list of the crimes related to offences involving firearms with disposals in criminal Scottish courts that, differs from the ones that you mentioned in your initial request.

On the 6th of May 2025 you agreed to get a breakdown of the disposals by the crimes presented in the clarification letter.

Response

Regarding your request, the number of people convicted for offences involving firearms has been extracted from the management information used to publish the Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services Criminal Disposals Dashboard (Source: Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services Criminal Disposals Dashboard).

The data that we hold relating to offences that could be prosecuted in Scottish criminal courts correspond to these crimes: possess a firearm with intent to endanger life, commit crime or cause serious injury to property, prevention of crimes, reckless conduct with firearms, prevention of terrorism other offences, possession of an offensive weapon, possession of a firearm in a prison, firearms miscellaneous offences and pawnbrokers, firearms offences.

Some other crimes/charges may have involved firearms, but the legislation doesn’t always specify the type of weapon used.

Table 1 shows the disposals issued in Scottish criminal courts for crimes involving firearms by financial year and main disposal between 2018-19 and 2024-25. During that period of time, only three of the crimes involving firearms described above (Firearms, miscellaneous offences, possess a firearm with intent to endanger life, commit crime & cause and reckless conduct with firearms) received disposals in Scottish Criminal courts.

Table 1: Number of disposals issued for crimes involving firearms by crime, financial year and main disposal.

Crimes	Financial Year	Custody	Community	Monetary	Other	Total
Firearms, miscellaneous offences	2018-19	92	37	42	18	189
	2019-20	112	52	50	35	249
	2020-21	70	34	40	28	172
	2021-22	76	52	46	17	191
	2022-23	47	50	34	25	156
	2023-24	63	43	34	21	161
	2024-25	64	67	43	15	189
Possess a firearm with intent to endanger life, commit crime or cause serious injury to property	2018-19	20	1	1	1	23
	2019-20	16	6	0	1	23
	2020-21	10	1	0	0	11
	2021-22	8	7	0	0	15
	2022-23	5	6	0	0	11
	2023-24	11	6	0	2	19
	2024-25	10	6	0	1	17
Reckless conduct with firearms	2018-19	2	2	1	0	5
	2019-20	1	0	4	0	5
	2020-21	3	0	0	0	3
	2021-22	1	1	0	0	2
	2022-23	1	0	2	0	3
	2023-24	3	3	0	1	7
	2024-25	5	1	0	0	6

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