How can we stop rise in gun crime?

Ten years ago 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and a teacher in three minutes in a primary school gym in Dunblane, Scotland.

After both incidents, the gun law issue dominated the media, with talk of allowing police to carry guns while on the beat.

A ban on hand guns was eventually introduced after Dunblane, but the use of weapons in crime has continued to increase.

Fatal shootings, both random and related to robberies, have dominated the news since November last year, when 38-year-old Police Constable Sharon Beshenivsky was shot dead and her colleague PC Teresa Milburn seriously injured during a bungled armed robbery at a travel agency in Bradford.

Such incidents appear to be on the increase. Early this month, a 33-year-old plain clothes officer was shot and seriously injured in Wolverhampton.

And at the beginning of this month teenager Jamail Newton was murdered as he protected his friends from a gang of balaclava-wearing youths with machine guns in South London.

The issue of police officers' safety on duty in particular has been under the microscope in recent months after the fatal shooting of WPC Beshenivsky and the stabbing of London special constable Nisha Patel-Nasri in May.

In June, a London police officer was shot in the shoulder during a surveillance operation while in February probationary officer Rachael Bown was shot in the stomach while investigating a burglary in Nottingham.

Locally, the profile of gun crime increased when 15-year-old Jessie James was shot dead close to a public park in Moss Side in September.

But, as yesterday's incident in Horwich - in which two unarmed officers responding to reports of an armed robbery at Barclays Bank in Winter Hey Lane were taken to hospital after shots were fired - shows, gun crime is not confined to London, Wolverhampton, Nottingham or Manchester.

In March of this year, police said armed gangs had stolen almost £700,000 in raids in the Bolton area over the past 18 months, though these were mostly carried out with the use of machetes, axes and hammers.

Last month, in three separate incidents, robbers using machetes and handguns carried out three raids on a petrol station, post office and bank in the area.

Gun crime in this area is not new, though. Yesterday's incident echoes one of six years ago when three police officers were shot at after an armed raid at the Westhoughton branch of Barclays Bank. And in May, 2000, five people were also shot during a high-speed car chase as police pursued would-be armed robbers through Lancashire and Greater Manchester.

Since the shooting of 14-year-old Danielle Beccan in Nottingham in October, 2004, the scale of gun crime in Britain has been closely monitored - and it makes for shocking reading.

Police surveys revealed that a firearms offence was committed once every five hours, with at least 31 gun crimes in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in a single week.

Yet, contrary to public perception, the overall level of gun crime in the UK is very low - less than 0.5 per cent of all crime recorded by the police.

But the number of overall offences involving firearms has been increasing each year since 1997/98. And crime involving imitation weapons was up 55 per cent in 2004-2005 compared to the previous year.

Despite this, the number of armed response officers has declined in recent years.

So what can be done?

Jan Berry, chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said pressure on officers trained to deal with gun-related incidents was increasing, and added: "In some areas - predominantly the urban areas - there should be far more police officers carrying guns than there are at the moment, for the safety of both the public and the police."

After a number of officers were killed in the mid-90s, the Police Federation of England and Wales carried out a ballot of its members, which found that: l 79 per cent of police officers were not in favour of being routinely armed, but 40 per cent believed more officers should be trained to use firearms l 42 per cent felt their life had been in serious danger as a result of personal threat in the previous two years, and l 39 per cent had been threatened with a firearm, knife or other weapon in the previous two years.

In the event of a decision to arm all officers, 43 per cent said they would be prepared to carry firearms on duty or all of the time, while six per cent said they would resign from the police service if they were ordered to carry a firearm.

Federation chairman Fred Broughton said: "Many of us want to see the unarmed service and the traditions of British policing maintained. But for how long we can maintain them is the question."

This plea for more armed officers is not a new one - and it will be made again alongside calls for police to wear better and more protection and for all shotguns to be added to the list of already banned firearms.

However, in a poll carried out by BBC Online, only 34 per cent of those questioned want to see the police routinely carrying guns, while the majority - 59 per cent - want to retain a service that is largely unarmed.

In an attempt to deter people from carrying weapons, the Home Office has introduced a minimum five-year sentence for people convicted of possessing an illegal firearm; made it an offence to possess an air weapon or imitation firearm in public without legal authority or reasonable excuse; increased the age limit for possession of air rifles to 17, and prohibited certain air weapons that are easily converted to fire live ammunition.

In June 2005 it also announced the Violent Crime Reduction Bill.

If the bill is passed it will reduce illegal use of air weapons - by increasing the age limit for buying or firing air weapons without supervision; target illegal firearm supplies and cut off the supply of firearms into the country by tightening security on import routes and monitoring online firearm suppliers.

Last year the Government also launched a strategy in which money seized from criminals would be spent in local communities working to tackle gun and knife crime.

Bolton MP Brian Iddon welcomed the initiative and said: "Quarter of a million pounds of cash taken from convicted criminals is available for community groups working to reduce crime as well as groups offering support to victims. This is a real opportunity for local groups working to offer people an alternative to crime.

"We are tackling crime in Bolton South East and I'm pleased that now we can use criminals' assets to make our streets safer."

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