Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 21:56:56 -0500 From: bobhunt@erols.com Subject: [lpaz-repost] (fwd) Four Years After the Dunblane Massacre, Britain's Tighter Gun Laws Have Failed Completely To: Individual-Sovereignty@egroups.com, lpaz-repost@yahoogroups.com, MDLP-NEWS@onelist.com
On Mon, 26 Mar 2001 09:51:38 -0500, "Alexandra H. Mulkern" <amulkern@Radix.Net> wrote:
Four Years After the Dunblane Massacre, Britain's Tighter Gun Laws Have Failed Completely
-- by Peter Woolrich The Vanguard
Britain's gun control laws, introduced after the Dunblane massacre in 1996, have proven to be a disaster. There are now an estimated three million illegal firearms in the UK, perhaps double the number of four years ago, and the only effect the knee-jerk political reaction that led to the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 has had is to shut down legitimate gun clubs.
Fears that Britain is on the way to adopting a US-style gun culture are now a reality "We look to Los Angeles for the language we use," Morrissey once sang, but it was never envisaged that "drive-by shooting" and "Big Mac" (the Mac 10 sub-machine gun, which fires 20 rounds a second) would become as much a part of the vocabulary of street-wise teenagers in Merseyside, Glasgow and London as hamburger and fries.
Some believe the three million figure, collated by Home Affairs Committee researchers working on a recent parliamentary report into the gun trade, is overstated.
Either way, vast stockpiles of weapons have fuelled a spate of shootings in Britain's cities, including Manchester where a 17-year-old was recently killed.
The new research suggests that in some areas a third of young criminals, classed as those aged 15 to 25 with convictions, own or have access to guns ranging from Beretta sub-machine guns to Luger pistols, which change hands on street corners and in pubs for as little as 150.
"There is a move from the pistol and shotgun to automatic weapons," says Detective Superintendent Keith Hudson of the National Crime Squad. "We are recoverin weapons that are relatively new - and sometimes still in their boxes - from eastern European countries." In London there were more than 20 fatal shootings last year allegedly linked with the Yardies, gangsters who have their roots in Jamaica, compared with nine killings in 1998. In one, Andy Balfour, 32, was shot eight times with a Mac 10, and last summer BBC hip-hop disc jockey Tim Westwood was shot by a man on a motorbike who opened fire as he drove home from a gig in Kennington, south London.
Last month, Gabriel Egharevba, 17, was also shot by a man on a motorcycle in Longsight, Manchester, the eighth fatal shooting in the city in seven months. The previous year, two teenagers aged 14 and 17 were gunned down in the same area by a gang with automatic machine guns.
Police say that modern weapons are fast becoming fashion accessories, along with trainers and jewellery, among young drug dealers protecting themselves and their territory. Unarmed officers now find themselves being confronted by youngsters on mountain bikes brandishing automatic guns.
In Birmingham there have been about 100 crimes a month involving firearms since last March, compared with 88 a month in the year ending April 1998.
Two men were shot dead in the city in separate incidents at Christmas.
The government declared an amnesty on guns after Thomas Hamilton shot dead 16 children and a teacher in Dunblane, resulting in 162,000 weapons being handed in, but this has failed to make even a dent in the underworld's supply of pistols and revolvers. A steady flow continues to come in from former Eastern bloc countries, but criminals have now found an even cheaper and safer source of weaponry.
"Factories" up and down the country are churning out decommissioned guns, often stolen from private collectors and sold at trade fairs and through the classified ads of specialist magazines, that have been reactivated by re-boring the barrels and replacing the firing pin.
Another growing source of illegal guns are "cloning" or "off-ticket sale" dealers, who operate in a similar way to car ringers. Stolen firearms disappear by being given the identity of an older decommissioned weapon, details of which don't have to be recorded under present laws. Last year, ex-Special Constable Tony Mitchell was jailed for eight years for supplying criminals with hundreds of guns - he specialised in Mac 10s at 1,100 apiece. He used his engineering skills to convert the guns from deactivated products bought via mail order catalogues. One was traced to a 1997 street murder in Brixton and another shooting of a police officer by a youth in Manchester's Moss Side. In all, police linked guns supplied by Mitchell to 130 crime scenes.
As an indication of how Mitchell and other dealers feel they can operate with impunity in Britain, he continued his activities even after a police raid that saw him arrested and released when no guns were found.
Detective Constable Cliff Purvis of the National Crime Squad said: "Some of the weapons which bore Mitchell's 'signature' mark have