Aligning shotgun and firearms licensing could cost the shooting industry and the Treasury £2.35 billion, according to a new Gun Trade Association report that paints a grim picture of what lies ahead if the changes go through.
Three-quarters of the 211 businesses surveyed last autumn expect their turnover to drop. For registered firearm dealers, the outlook is bleaker still: they’re bracing for a 50% fall in takings.
Jobs will be lost as well. Businesses reckon they’ll cut a quarter of full-time staff and 39% of part-timers. Scale that across GTA members and you’re looking at almost 900 full-time jobs gone, plus just over 600 part-time roles.
All this while shotgun certificate numbers continue their slide. In England and Wales they’ve fallen 16% in six years, from 572,000 in 2018/19 to 483,000 in 2024/25. The GTA reckons an ageing user base, rising costs and bureaucracy are already pushing people out. Alignment will make that worse by ending walk-in shotgun sales.
Businesses that shared turnover data accounted for £311 million between them, split roughly 40/60 between Section 2 and Section 1 activity – though that ratio may not hold across the wider industry given there are more shotgun certificate holders than firearms certificate holders. Last year those businesses sold nearly 80,000 shotguns and just under 60,000 Section 1 firearms.
The report takes those survey findings and scales them up across the trade. GTA member businesses could lose £393 million in annual turnover. For registered firearm dealers it’s worse, at £627 million. And the £2.35 billion headline figure includes the ripple effects hitting suppliers, manufacturers and other businesses that depend on the shooting industry.
GTA chief executive Stephen Jolly says the report gives the Government hard evidence of what its proposals would actually do, and strengthens the trade’s hand in challenging policy he believes is not grounded in reliable public safety data.
Mr Jolly argues the push for tighter controls is happening without credible national gun crime figures. The high-profile incidents cited in support of change? They show a licensing system that’s badly run, not one that needs recategorising, he says.
He also flagged that firearms certificate formats vary between police forces, an inconsistency that undermines confidence in checks during private transfers. Standardisation could be a practical reform, he argues.
The report, conducted by TDC Research and published in January, gathered responses between September and November. Of the 211 businesses involved, 139 were GTA members, covering retailers, dealers and firms serving both sports shooting and the conservation and pest control sector across the UK.
The trade has laid out what it stands to lose. Whether Westminster is listening is another matter.
