Go and have a look at this:
http://www.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm50/5001/5001-03.htm
There's a lot of interesting stuff here. Look for example
at table 3.12, that indicates that 142 handguns were stolen
from residential premises 1999-2000. As very few handguns
can be legally kept at home now and this figure is not
dramatically lower than years when they were legal, it supports
the argument we made that most stolen guns were illegally
held to begin with.
Also have a look at table 3.10 on locations of armed robberies.
Robberies at banks and building societies have fallen, no doubt
because of target hardening, but offences on public highways
and at shops have increased sharply.
The figures in 3.13 show that there are a lot of prosecutions
for illegal handgun possession, you can see this because from
1997 the offences under Section 1 fall sharply and Section 5
they rise sharply.
Table 3.8 indicates that there were no fatal injuries caused
with an airgun in the period 1999/2000.
The figures in table 3.6 show that shotguns and handguns were
about as equally dangerous when fired, which totally blows
the Home Office position out of the water that they presented
at the public inquiry in 1996 (that handguns were more
dangerous than shotguns).
Table 3D shows clearly that the overwhelming majority of
homicides committed with firearms are with illegally held
firearms (but not broken down by type, unfortunately).
I'm sure there is more that can be extracted from this
information.
For what it's worth, my opinion is that the rate of firearm-
related crime is rising because of the complete shambles the
Government has made of the Met. Moving members of the flying
squad out to "share their experience" has not worked and
efforts aimed at stopping armed criminals appear to be dropping
off.
Steve.
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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