You asked

I would like to know all recorded incidents of attacks on people, animals (pets and wildlife), and property using air guns/rifles.

Please provide data from 2015.

We said

Thank you for your request.

The ONS Centre for Crime and Justice publishes crime statistics based primarily on two sources: the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and police-recorded crime data.

Our "Offences involving the use of weapons" dataset uses police-recorded crime data and contains some data relevant to your request. Most of the tables in this dataset cover the last 5 years, providing a time series going back to March 2003, while the latest year available is the year ending March 2019.

Most relevant to your request is Table 08, containing estimates of air weapons offences by offence grouping, including "Violence against the person" and "Criminal damage".

The following tables may also be of interest:

  • Table 06 (Numbers of air weapons offences reported to have caused injury)
  • Table 04 (Air weapons offences which caused injury by degree of injury – fatal injury, serious injury or slight injury).

Note also that there is a publication associated with this dataset, containing some analyses: Offences involving the use of firearms: year ending March 2019.

Police-recorded Crime data is provided to the ONS by the Home Office. Should you have any questions about this dataset, you might considering contacting the Home Office at CrimeandPoliceStats@homeoffice.gov.uk.

Unfortunately, we do not hold any data pertaining to air weapons attacks on pets and wildlife.

If you have any further enquiries related to crime, please email us at CrimeStatistics@ons.gov.uk and we will be happy to help.