British police urge gun owners to hand over weapons

The UK’s National Ballistics Intelligence Service (NABIS) has urged owners of hundreds of gas guns, blank firing pistols, and unregistered shotguns to hand them over before they are stolen and used for violent crime. ..

NABIS is coordinating the national firearm surrender from May 12th to 29th, calling on people to bring weapons out of distribution and destroy them.

People are given the right to surrender their guns anonymously, and NABIS forensic leader Greg Taylor says they will not be prosecuted unless the weapons they hand over may be related to a crime. Reassured people.

He told The Epoch Times: So it’s clear that we always know what the weapon of interest is, and if any of those types of weapons surrender, we want to pull them out and check them. “

According to Taylor, the most commonly used guns in the UK were self-loading pistols (SLPs) and shotguns, which are illegally imported or modified weapons from Europe.

“Tit-For-Tat Shootings”

He states: The majority will be SLP or shotgun blast. “

There are 30 to 35 firearm-related murders a year in the UK and 20,726 in the United States in 2021, but NABIS intelligence director Ian Head said: It is at the lowest level since then. “

Both men welcomed the numbers from Metropolitan Police DepartmentRecently, he said that there have been no such deaths in London since October 2021.

Graham McNulty, Met’s deputy commissioner, told the Guardian last month:

“Weapon supply is known to increase and decrease over time, but is it a supply issue, a change in law, or an aggressive policing with successful operations? I don’t always know why. I’ll give you key members …. But historically criminals have always been looking for loopholes in the law, but they can still bring those weapons into the country. You can, “Taylor added.

Outside London, there were numerous shootings, including two in the West Midlands in February.

On February 25, a shotgun was used to kill John Jones outside his home in Stourbridge, near Birmingham, after which two men were charged with his murder.

“Unfortunately, there are still many unlicensed shotguns since the law was amended many years ago,” Taylor said, saying that shotguns can be stolen from licensed owners. Said.

In August 1987, gun enthusiast Michael Ryan shot and killed his mother and 15 others in a shocking massacre in England before killing himself in the small town of Hungerford in western London.

Later, laws were introduced that restricted the use of many weapons, including shotguns.

When the law was amended in 1988, many people did not register or apply for a license for shotguns, and police hope that many of these guns will surrender this month.

“Pool of unregistered shotguns”

Taylor said: “There are millions of legitimate shotguns out there, as well as a fairly large pool of unregistered shotguns. The purpose of surrender is to ask people if they have weapons in their homes. If a weapon is lost or stolen, it can fall into its criminal use stage. “

Hand guns banned in the UK since the law enacted after the 1996 Dunblane massacre have been highly sought after by criminal gangs, and NABIS has stated that they are often converted into gas guns or airsoft firing pistols. rice field.

NABIS said it recognizes that organized crime always requires people with firearm modification and modification expertise.

Many “underworld armor” have been guilty, including former British Army sergeant Paul Alexander, who was imprisoned in 2009 after being convicted of supplying weapons and ammunition related to 28 crimes around the United Kingdom over the years. I have been sentenced.

Last week, Mane Gerell, a professor of criminology at Malmö University, noted that there were 27 gun-related murders in Sweden during the first four months of 2022, and an additional 36 were injured.

Gerel wrote on Twitter: “Sweden already has a very bad view of shootings from a European point of view, and 2022 is twice as bad as the average for the last five years so far.”

Taylor said he couldn’t comment on gun crime in Sweden, but said it was unlikely that such a surge would occur in the UK in the near future.