Blackwell Report

"3. We regard the whole position as one of considerable gravity. There are two distinct categories of person from whom danger is to be apprehended, viz., (1) the savage or semi-civilised tribesmen in outlying parts of the British Empire, whose main demand is for rifles and ammunition, and (2) the anarchist or 'intellectual' malcontent of the great cities, whose weapons are the bomb and the automatic pistol.

There is some force in the view .... that the latter will in future prove the more dangerous of the two. At any rate, his activities will call for unceasing vigilance, and very special precautions will be necessary to control the trade in automatic pistols, which, apart from their extreme deadliness, are, by reason of their size and shape, more easily smuggled than any other type of weapon. As regards the tribesman, he already possesses rifles in abundance, and, desirable as it is to prevent him from adding to their number, it is, in our opinion, of still greater importance to check his supplies of ammunition, without which his weapons are useless to him ....