**THIS IS NOT A GUN DEBATE THREAD.
**
There are already, like nine of those going right now; frankly I’m bored to death. So please. Factual answers only because I am genuinely curious about this - the thread about the British gangsters in the Guy Ritchie movies got me wondering about it.
In places like the UK, where handguns are very hard for private citizens to obtain, where do criminals get their guns?
Here in the US, they either buy them from a gun dealer; steal them from someone else; or buy them from someone who stole them. But either way the country is filled with guns; they’re everywhere; they’re obviously easy to get, for good or for bad.
But I can’t see this approach working in the UK because hardly anyone has the guns in the first place, so there’s no easy source for criminals to steal from. Where, then, do the gangsters in the UK get guns from? Are they smuggled in from the former Soviet Union? Are they stolen from military or police arsenals?
I admit to not knowing anything in particular about this, but it seems like if millions or billions of pounds of drugs can be smuggled into the US that it’s no hard thing to smuggle in just enough guns for a minority class (i.e. criminals).
Anecdotally, it seems often when I see seized firearms on TV, they are described as modified replicas.
And a quick google search indicates that the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 included a number of laws aimed at closing this door such that replicas can’t be so realistic that they can be converted to real guns (and people who buy replicas are recorded).
How do people in the UK get their cocaine or any other controlled item? They can’t grow it or import it legally, so they smuggle it in from places where it is either legal or where enforcement is not effective.
Yes it would. Most of the gun crime in the UK is gang-related, with the guns being used on other gangsters rather than on the general public. But burglars and the like are highly unlikely to be armed with guns.
Absolutely. It’s worth considering that when British patrol officers need body protection, they generally opt for stab vests instead of the bullet-proof models because the risk of being stabbed is so much higher. I haven’t been able to find any official statistics, but here’s a news article on the topic:
Almost half the illegal guns seized by Greater Manchester police are modified replicas.
Prior to conversion, they are sold over the counter in Germany and are designed for self-defence or for sport. The replicas are smuggled into the UK, normally by ferry or using the postal service (according to The Times).
Lithuania is another source of replicas used for conversion over here.
War souvenirs has been common in the past but, according to a lecture I attended from a member of the Forensic Science Laboratory at Lambeth, they are hardly encountered now. It’s gas guns/starting pistols (legal in some European countries, not here) which have been modified. These are effectively zip guns; poor metallurgy, no rifling (in most cases, with the exception of the ‘Baikal’ Makarov lookalike which have had quite sophisticated barrels made in the Baltic states) and rudimentary design, making them zero-range assassination weapons. Double shotguns have been much used in the past - often very old hammer guns possessed from before 1967 when shotguns weren’t controlled at all. Again, not much used now.
This is used in crime, as distinct from merely illegal possession.
The pistol used by David Beiber, aka Nathan Coleman to shoot three officers in Leeds in 2003 was one of a large consignment which had gone adrift while in transit from the Czech Republic (I think)
They smuggle them in, honestly it’s as simple as that.
The U.K. doesn’t have a lot of U.S.-style gun violence, but any place where there are large organized criminal enterprises you will have the capability of getting weapons into the country. The thing is people involved organized crime aren’t looking to kill people from mainstream society, the guns are just part and parcel of the criminal underworld.
If you’re just a petty criminal you’ll have a very difficult time acquiring a firearm in the U.K. or any other country with strict gun laws and few guns to begin with–most burglars don’t have organized crime connections and thus don’t have the logistics to get a gun into the country.
Organizations like the IRA had pretty successful gun running operations–many of the IRAs guns came from the United States and the majority of those that didn’t came from Libya. Almost all were smuggled in on ships.
Well 90 or more of them came from one guy in a village in Berkshire see the article here. He operated a factory converting replica machine pistol for three years.