Here is a passage from a book by John Dickson Carr (one of my favorite mystery novelists) that takes place in England and was published in 1974:
I must assume this is true, but my question is: does it still stand today? What was the logic for creating it, and what logic was there for striking it down, if it was? I’d try Googling, but on a subject like this, especially with laws 27 years old, I’m afraid I’d get dozens of false hits before I got any that actually answered my question. Thanks!
There’s no death penalty in Britain anymore (except possibly for high treason and desertion in time of war)
When was the book set? The death penalty was effectively abolished in the 1960s, the last actual execution taking place years earlier. In any event, I don’t think the death penalty was reserved for shooting.
The other people who’ve replied, are right, the death penalty has been abolished. However, I thought I’d elaborate on the law that mention hanging was the penalty for shooting, as well as the abolision. The homocide act of 1957 gave in fact 5 cases where the death penalty was to apply:
Murder in the course or furtherance of theft.
Murder by shooting or causing an explosion.
Murder while resisting arrest or during an escape.
Murder of a police officer or prison officer.
Two murders committed on different occasions.
So use of explosives would be out too if you wanted to avoid the handman’s nose. However, explosives probably wouldn’t be the chosen weapon anyway if you were trying to kill someone.
The death penalty was then abolished for murder in 1965 for 5 years, then permanently in 1969 (In Great Britain, and 1973 for Northern Island). It seems that for that time treason and piracy might have been a capital crime, and that it wasn’t until 1999, and the ‘6th protocol of the European Convention of Human Rights’ that it was abolished in all case.
My information was from this website, if you want to find out about all this:
http://www.stephen-stratford.co.uk/capital_hist.htm
So given that, the book would have had to be set between 1957 and 1965, as that was when shooting in particular lead to hanging.
As for the logic, the website might help, but it seems to reflect the oddity of the situation as presented in the book, that it creates problems of its own, that poisoning is somehow not as bad as shooting. It could have been some sort of compromise, with politicians going for a partial ban of the death penalty, but still seeming to be ‘tough on crime’, by having higher penalties for seemingly really serious murder.
The fact they decided on guns and explosives as one class of weapon that turned murder into a capital crime might be because they would be more associated with terrorists, or gang violence. That is speculation though, they might have come to the decision for other reasons, but those seem at least plausible.
The handman’s nose? No, please, not the handman’s nose! 
Which book was it? It may have been published in the US in 1974 but much earlier in England. In fact, by 1974 he was living in the US and was not writing much.
The Homicide Act 1957, which silverfish mentions, was a staging post along the road to abolition - an attempt to compromise fundamentally opposing views. It was not well received, for the reasons pointed out. (How could it be said that murder by shooting is intrinsically more horrific than murder by poisoning or garotting?). The distinctions between different types of murder didn’t last long.
For the record: the death penalty was finally and completely abolished in England in 1998, when we harmonized our legislation in accord with EU principles on human rights. So, while you can’t commit Treason, Piracy, or Arson In Her Majesty’s Dockyards with impunity, exactly, you can’t be hanged for them any more.
If you commit almost any crime with a gun in your posession, even if it is never seen, you are looking at around eight years jailtime.
Even if the gun is an imitation it will still be considered a firearms offence and will attract a very high penalty, depending upon the actual offence committed.
If you discharge the firearm, say as a demonstration, whilst in furtherance of a crime you start to hit double figures for a first time offender, and up to a life licence if you have been in trouble with the law in the past.
Murder someone with a firearm and you will be incredibly unlikely to see freedom inside 15 years, but you may well never see the outside world again, except on tv.
However,
Murder by any other means is treated just as seriously, and poison is considered uniquely in the UK justice system since the view is that it always requires a degree of prior planning and cannot be considered to have been committed in the heat of the moment, as a result this crime is mostly, but not always, prosecuted by the highest prosecuting government barrister, the Attorney General.
For crimes less than murder, the discovery of a gun tends to multiply the jail term quite dramatically and has been seen by most criminals to be not worth the risk to carry one.