Dave, I understand that following the Dunblane inspired handgun ban that crime involving handguns went up by around 300% since in Scotland alone. The simple reason being that the ban did not affect criminals and terrorists because there was no record of them having them.
Burglary has always been fairly widespread in Britain and street robbery seemed to take off in the late 70's. I was a serving Police Officer from 1973 to 2003. Gun crime is fairly low here anyway. I used to be a recreational handgun shooter until mine were confiscated by Government. Ironically I was also a member of the Tactical Firearms unit from 1980 until 1998; a sort of equivalent to the swat teams and also a part time instructor. I couldn't be trusted to use a gun to punch holes in a piece of paper but could be trusted to make on the spot life or death decisions with one! Ignore the rubbish about what got handed in at amnesties as very few illegal stuff was actually handed in. Most guns were things like worn out air rifles, old out of proof shotguns that people could not get rid of any other way, some antiques and even toy guns. They were all counted. Out of 30 some handed in where I was only two were held illegally; one a Baikal single barrel shotgun and the other was a Greener .310 Cadet rifle that would have been perfectly legal to keep without a certificate but for the fact it had been re-tubed to .22rf. at some time. The rest was just junk and as I have described. As for ammunition the figures were manipulated to make it sound better. A tin of air rifle pellets would be counted a 500 rounds of ammunition in order to boost the figures. All of it was a Government inspired publicity stunt. Criminals just do not hand guns in ever!
One book that I would strongly suggest that you get hold of that puts a lot of useful information forward is 'Does the Trigger Pull the Finger?' by Richard Law & Peter Brooksmith. It only costs about 10 ISBN: 978-1-906174-99-6
If you have any specific questions that I may be able to assist with then please feel free to PM. me and I will try my best to help. Lagopus.....
