cuchulainn
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from the Evening Standard
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/londonlife/articles/7510730?source=Evening Standard
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/londonlife/articles/7510730?source=Evening Standard
Just a harmless replica?
By Lester Holloway, Evening Standard
4 November 2003
From the outside there is nothing sinister about the little shop opposite Paddington station. Sandwiched between the mini-mart and the newsagent's, it is an innocuouslooking sports store with footballs and badminton racquets in the window and a rack of T-shirts on the pavement.
Guns? Yes, there are also guns at British Sports, but they are harmless replicas, collectors' items capable of firing nothing more lethal than a small pellet or a blank. Legal, too.
Yet it is here that the road that leads to so much of London's gun crime begins. In the wrong hands, these apparently innocent guns can be converted into lethal weapons, capable of firing real bullets. In the wrong hands, they are enabling drug gangs to fight it out in increasingly violent turf wars.
It took me less than an hour to get one of these guns into the wrong hands. It was a Brocock replica revolver that can, with the use of a special pump, be used to fire airgun pellets. It cost £295 and even came with a receipt.
Within an hour I had taken it to an underworld contact in south London who said that, for as little as £200, he would get it converted into a gun that could fire live ammunition. "I could take that gun and convert it for less than £200 cash," he told me. "It would have to be cash."
We were talking in an unlicensed backstreet café in Peckham. My contact insisted on his anonymity but the Standard has confirmed his identity - and the fact that he has a criminal record.
"There are hundreds of guns of this quality circulating," he said. "It is one of the great concerns of the Caribbean communities across London.
"They could be used in a raid or to threaten. How is the person at the other end of the barrel supposed to know if the gun is real or not?"
That is how easy gun crime is these days. British Sports is not the only shop selling quality replicas, and the Brocock is not the only gun that can be converted into something rather more deadly.
But for the young hoodlums who propagate the city's drug trade, the Brocock is said to be the weapon of choice - partly because of the ease with which it can be converted and partly because, even unconverted, it is a realistic and frightening weapon.
Ron does not see it that way, of course. Ron has been running British Sports for the past decade and is well-informed and enthusiastic about the products he sells. They are on display in their glass cabinet, everything from cheaper replicas that merely fire pellets or blanks to quality products like the Brocock .22 calibre - and Ron does not need much prompting to wax lyrical about their virtues.
The replicas - which can be used as starter pistols and on licensed firing ranges - are, he says, popular with "collectors" who regularly come to him for the latest models on the market.
British Sports is doing nothing illegal in selling such guns. But a new law - the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill - will soon be in place to outlaw convertible weapons.
One so-called collector is Doctah X, a DJ on a pirate radio station, who owns three replica guns and believes in the right to own them for protection.
When asked about converting replicas, he said: "It's rather technical. You have to have an engineer to do it, someone who knows what they're doing. It's the barrel that needs unblocking but it needs to be bored with precision."
Some weapons also need to have a firing pin fitted. "The Brocock is the easiest one to convert and it's the weapon of choice for many," said Doctah X.
"To do it you have to be close to the underworld. You've got to be close to someone who knows somebody. It's the places you hang out, the clubs and pubs and bars you go to. You can get it converted for around £250 to £300.
"If you're making real money, like £15,000 a week as a dealer, you need a real weapon."
Abdul - known as "Abu" on his pirate radio phone-in show - says: "I know of a gun-conversion factory near to where Toni-Ann Byfield got shot, on one of the side streets off the Harrow Road.
"There are lots of replica converted guns about. Business is often done from places like pubs in the Old Kent Road and Bermondsey.
"Many of the 'converters' are metalwork engineers who also do legitimate work but have the tools to carry out conversions. They are registered businesses so it is difficult to catch them."
Although the shops that sell such replicas are doing so legally, campaigners say they are contributing in a significant way to gun culture in the capital.
Scotland Yard is deeply concerned about the Brocock in particular.
Between January and September last year, 72 per cent of the firearms seized were either imitation firearms, air weapons, blank firers or starter pistols that had been converted, modified or upgraded to fire bullets rather than pellets.
A confidential Yard document produced by the specialist crime directorate finds that the conversion of fake guns has become as much of a problem as the illegal importation of handguns.
The threat is particularly acute because of the ease with which they can be bought over the counter in shops.
And the imminent changes to the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill are, in the short term, boosting the market for convertible Brococks.
My Peckham contact said: "There is a major trade in this type of gun at the moment because it is known that pretty soon one will not be able to buy it over the counter."
In a new push to control the illegal use of replicas in London - where 40 per cent of all the nation's gun crime occurs - police are to monitor the sellers of fakes to establish whether they are knowingly being supplied for conversion by criminals.
The Scotland Yard report also emphasises concern about guns banned and disabled after the 1988 Hungerford massacre being obtained and used by criminals. The National Criminal Intelligence Service estimates that up to 120,000 guns deactivated then could be reactivated.
©2003 Associated New Media
