The Kenya registration of firearms

Every firearm brought into Kenya was registered on its introduction into the Colony, for a tax of six shillings a firearm and one shilling a consignment of ammunition, besides a customs duty of twenty per cent of its value. Automatic and silenced rifles could not be imported at all. Ammunition was warehoused on leaving the Customs and withdrawn only on a permit, with a declaration that it was for personal use or for sale, and no firearm or ammunition could be given or sold to a native without the written permission of an officer of the Administration.

No certificate of the period has been found, nor the ordinance under it, so Bearer's is set on the handbook's words, and the office says so above it. For the investigators who land at Mombasa with rifles in the hold.

Bearer makes an investigator's papers for Call of Cthulhu and any 1920s or 1930s tabletop campaign: the passport a consul would have filled in, with the visas and frontier stamps a campaign leaves in it, and the permits, certificates and tickets of the period, to print or to share.

An example

Open this example in the office

The paper

A reconstruction

This paper is a reconstruction. The Oversea Settlement Office's handbook on Kenya of February 1924, read, says every firearm was registered on its introduction into the Colony for a tax of six shillings, ammunition warehoused and withdrawn only on a permit with a declaration of personal use or sale, and automatic and silenced rifles prohibited. No certificate of the period has been found, nor the ordinance's own text: the words and the layout are ours.

The same paper elsewhere

• Firearm licences by country

Still to be confirmed

• the whole certificate: the handbook of 1924 describes the rules, the ordinance under them is not named nor read, and its later changes are not followed. What would settle it: the Kenya arms and ammunition ordinance of the period, or a certificate of registration of 1920 to 1939.

Sources

• Oversea Settlement Office; H.M. Stationery Office, London, General information as to Kenya Colony and Protectorate, revised edition, February 1924, pp. 22-23: Arms and Ammunition (registration on introduction, 6s. a firearm, 1s. a consignment of ammunition, the warehouse and the permit, the declaration for personal use or sale, no firearm or ammunition to a native without an officer's written permission); Game (licences from the Game Warden, Nairobi, or Administrative Officers under the Game Ordinance, 1921; the eight licences and the special licences with their fees; private land; trophies and ivory); Immigration Regulations (the law of 1906 amended 1910 and 1919, the Immigration Officer boarding every ship, the prohibited classes, the deposit of £37 10s.) (read directly)

Open the passport office · MGS Toolbox