Nigel Farage has called for an easing of the ban on handguns imposed after the Dunblane massacre.
The Ukip leader branded the current law "ludicrous" and insisted it had not helped to keep gun grime down.
He also dismissed his party's 2010 general election manifesto as "drivel", saying it had been written by an "idiot".
The comments came in a tetchy appearance on LBC radio after difficult week, which has seen a Ukip councillor link gay marriage to flooding and Mr Farage argue that women are worth less to City firms than men.
Ownership of most handguns was made illegal by John Major's government following the 1996 Dunblane shooting, when Thomas Hamilton killed 16 schoolchildren and a teacher before shooting himself.
Tony Blair's Labour government then extended the restrictions in 1997 to cover all handguns, including the .22 pistols used at the Olympics.
Asked whether he thought the controls were right, Mr Farage said: "I think proper gun licencing is something we've done in this country responsibly and well for a long time, and I think the knee-jerk legislation that Blair brought in that meant that the British Olympic pistol team have to go to France to even practice, was just crackers.
"If you criminalise handguns then only the criminals carry the guns.
"It's really interesting that since Blair brought that piece of law in, gun crime doubled in the next five years in this country."
He added: "I think that we need a proper gun licencing system, which to a large extent I think we already have, and I think the ban on handguns is ludicrous."
Mr Farage also sought to explain a floundering appearance in a BBC interview yesterday, when he seemed unaware of previous party policies such as repainting trains in traditional colours and setting uniforms for taxi drivers.
The MEP - who had briefly stood down as leader at the time to focus on an unsuccessful run for a Commons seat - told LBC he had not even read the document.
"I didn't read it, it was drivel, 486 pages of drivel, I didn't read it, nor did the Party leader, it was a nonsense, and we've put that behind us and moved onto a professional footing," he said.
"We had a manifesto, and I'm going to put some inverted commas around it that was produced in 2010, it was basically a series of policy discussion papers that was put up on the website as a manifesto.
"It was 486 pages long, I'm pleased to say that the idiot that wrote it has now left us and joined the Conservatives, so there is some traffic going back the other way, and they're very welcome to him."
David Campbell Bannerman MEP was the main author of the manifesto, and is now a Tory.
Ian Mearns, Labour MP for Gateshead, said: "Families facing a cost-of-living crisis will find it bizarre that one of Nigel Farage's priorities would be to relax Britain's tough gun controls.
"This, from a man who thinks prostitution and hard drugs should be legalised, is further proof of how dangerously extreme Ukip are."
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