The number of firearms incidents recorded by police fell by about one-fifth in a year, official figures show.
The reduction of 21% took the total from 647 in 2010-11 to 514 last year in Scotland. This represents the lowest total recorded in Scotland in 34 years and marks a reduction of more than 50% of 2006/07's total of 1260.
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said the overall number of recorded offences in Scotland involving firearms had more than halved since 2006/07.
Police cleared up 70% of offences alleged to involve guns last year, up 2%. Mr MacAskill said: "These figures represent great progress in tackling the menace of firearms offences in our communities. Year on year the number of crimes involving guns on our streets is dropping rapidly.
"The message appears to be getting across that guns put lives at risk and anyone caught using them can and will be punished heavily. "
Injuries and deaths from firearms fell by 14% from 111 to 95. Guns were involved in five killings in 2011-12, compared with three the previous year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article