If you have a gun that you don’t need or want anymore, you may wonder what to do with it. Some might put it somewhere in the attic or display it on a wall as an ornament. But if it is still live, it may pose a danger in the wrong hands.
This subject could be treated flippantly, rather like the Winchester in the comedy horror film Shaun of the Dead, when the rifle after which the pub is named turns out to still be a live weapon, not a prop gun. But in real life, such a weapon could cause a tragic accident.
Alternatively, such a weapon could fall into the wrong hands, leading to it being used for criminal purposes. These are good reasons to get the gun decommissioned.
Some may be familiar with the term decommissioning in relation to the Northern Ireland peace process in the 1990s and the quest to remove terrorist guns held by the IRA and Loyalist groups. Eventually, with the Republicans preferring to use the term “put beyond use”, weapons were indeed destroyed.
This is particularly relevant because, amid the very tense negotiations over this issue, Republican leaders would sometimes argue that the best decommissioning agent was “rust”, meaning that if a political settlement could be agreed upon, the guns would fall silent and be unusable in time, without the symbolic sense of ‘surrender’ involved in handing them over.
However, this is factually incorrect, as guns do not just rust and fall apart on their own, at least not for a very long time. If you want to make a gun safe, hiding it in the loft and hoping for the best is not a good idea.
As we have stated before, the process of decommissioning means altering a firearm so that it can never be used as a weapon again. This is what our gun decommissioning service does and it means that whether you want to dispose of the weapon entirely or have it put on display safely, you can do so without risk.
This can also be a legal requirement in some cases, with some gun laws incorporated into UK law when Britain was in the EU still on the statute books. This means that some types of weapons may be illegal to own at all, or only with a licence. Getting a gun decommissioned means you don’t have to spend money on a permit for a gun you will never fire.
A key point to note is that decommissioning doesn’t mean we have to take a big circular saw and cut a gun into lots of little bits, or take its metal parts and melt them down. Instead, we can simply remove those components that would make it a viable weapon capable of discharging a round, while maintaining its appearance.
This is the sort of procedure that can enable guns to be displayed safely in public places like museums, as well as private ones like homes.
By getting your weapon decommissioned, you can be sure you won’t have a dangerous weapon on your hands. That may not have been much use in The Winchester when the zombie apocalypse happened, but in real life, it will make everyone safe.