Ronny Kray's gun license goes up for auction.

 

Britain now has the strictest and most complicated gun laws in the world but this wasn't always the case. Gun deaths in Britain have always been fairly rare.

In Liberal Victorian England, gun laws were almost non-existent. You could buy a gun by mail order and carry a gun without much difficulty. Gun deaths were almost unheard of and many Victorians carried concealed weapons. There were also many shouting galleries that the public could attend.

As a young lad growing up in Britain in the 1950s and 60's, I remember shooting .22 rim fire cartridges at public fairgrounds and most of us had air rifles.

In May 1964, the gangster Ronnie Kray, was issued with a gun license for 10 shillings. The license issued by the police entitled him "to carry and use a gun." It was a 9mm Luger pistol that he used to shoot George Cornell dead in the Blind Beggar Pub, Mile End, East London, on 9 March 1966. Kray's gun license is now up for auction and is expected to fetch thousands.