Guns being smuggled in among internet shopping, West Midlands Police chief warns
Online shopping is helping criminals to camouflage guns being smuggled into Britain, West Midlands Chief Constable Dave Thompson has warned.
Mr Thompson, who is also the leading officer for countering firearms nationally, said there had been a surge in the number of guns circulating in the UK because of the rise in parcels being delivered.
He said firearms were being reactivated overseas and then ordered for delivery into the UK.
Mr Thompson said guns and ammunition were still hard to acquire in the UK, and after the Paris attacks police had intensified their focus on stopping weapons being available for sale. But firearms are coming in from the US and Europe, with Germany causing special concerns, as well as Balkan countries.
Once the weapons are smuggled into Britain, it is feared, they could fall into terrorist hands. "We can't safeguard ourselves by relying on criminals who might have access to firearms to have benign intent," he said.
He said criminals were trying a range of tactics to avoid detection. "We have to watch a trend of disassembling the weapons and sending them in component parts," he added.
Mr Thompson said the area was second only to London for the number of terror plots linked to it. In counter-terrorism circles there is a quip about Belmarsh, where a number of convicted terrorists serve their sentences. "The most common accent in Belmarsh is Brummie," he said.
