Labour MP makes gun reform plea and says laws needed to tackle incel violence
Thousands of pump-action guns must be removed from UK homes, while violent misogyny should be treated as a hate crime to prevent a repeat of the Plymouth murders, an MP warns.
Labour's Luke Pollard urged Parliament to back his radical shake-up of gun regulations, which is set to be heard on Friday.
Mr Pollard, who represents Keyham - where the 2021 atrocity claimed five innocent lives, including a three-year-old girl - says not enough is being done to tackle incel radicalisation.
He told The Mirror he hopes MPs back his Keyham's Law, which would outlaw dangerous weapons from homes and start to address the dangers of violent misogyny.
He said: "These streets where the shootings happened could be any streets in the country but they were our streets, and it gives us the responsibility to say never again. We've got to learn the lessons from that."
Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decadeThe MP, whose private member's bill is re-listed in the Commons, continued: "There is no reason these guns should be in people's homes."
Killer Jake Davison, who had posted misogynistic material on social media before the August 2021 shootings, murdered five people, including his mum Maxine and three-year-old Sophie Martyn.
The 22-year-old had a licence to possess a shotgun. Last year there were 23,955 current certificates for pump action shotguns and 1,918 certificates for pump action rifles in England.
Under Mr Pollard's private member's bill, which is listed for a second reading, it would be illegal to bring a pump-action gun into the home, except for those with legitimate reasons like farmers and pet controllers.
He said: "After Dunblane the country took steps to ban the possession of handguns in the wider public. We still as a nation perform really well at the Olympics with shooting sports but the people who do that go to a gun club where guns are safely and securely held, where transit is properly licenced and where they can enjoy their sport without hurting anyone else.
"We've established that principle for handguns, what I'm arguing for is that pump action weapons sit as a separate category to shotguns.
"I'm not convinced there's ever a need to have a pump action weapon in someone's home. The ability to shoot a number of rounds very quickly is something that is concerning."
Mr Pollard also hopes classing violent misogyny as a hate crime will lead to greater understanding of how to prevent radicalisation.
"The lack of action on incels is a serious and growing problem," he said. "We don't have a strategy for incels in the UK, we don't have a plan for identifying them or how we rescue our young people who go down the hole.
"The more I look into it, the darker the world of incels is and the more urgent the action is to address it.
Richard 'shuts up' GMB guest who says Hancock 'deserved' being called 'd***head'"There's radicalisation going on in bedrooms around the country that parents can't see that we don't have a strategy for and we don't know how to rescue people from."
He said that while an inquest - which is currently ongoing - into the killings will shed light on ways Davison could have been stopped, politicians have their role to play too.
One proposal that has already been taken on board since Mr Pollard first proposed the law last year is the linking of GP records with gun ownership.
This means that if a registered gun owner is identified as having a mental health problem, this can be flagged to police.
But Mr Pollard believes there's still a long way to go.
Asked what his message was for fellow MPs, Mr Pollard said: "This could happen in any of our constituencies, any one of our communities. Tragedies like this are horrible and thankfully rare, but because it's happened once it can happen again.
"Taking time to work out causes of it is right, but there are things that Parliament should be doing to keep people safe."