Costing as little as £14.99, BB guns could be responsible for up to 30 per cent of gun crime, according to police research.Easily available on the internet and with no restrictions on sale, BB guns fire tiny plastic pellets or ball bearings.

Modelled on real weapons such as a Smith & Wesson or Kalashnikov, they usually cause nothing more serious than bruising. Nevertheless, offences involving the guns are included in national firearms statistics for England and Wales.

Chief constables are concerned at the rise in their use and the effect they are having on public perceptions of gun crime. The research, to be presented at the Association of Chief Police Officers’ summer conference this week, comes after a study into provisional gun crime statistics for 2004.

These show a 10 per cent rise in gun crime from 10,080 in 2003 to 11,082 recorded offences. Within these figures, offences involving imitation firearms, including BB guns, rose by 66 per cent from 1,965 in 2003 to 3,268 last year. The number of slight injuries, a sure sign of BB guns, went up 74 per cent from 1,754 in 2003 to 3,051, despite the fact murders went from 77 to 70. Superintendent Rowley Moore, from Merseyside Police, said: “BB guns are a bit of an image issue for some children. It’s almost as if carrying one is considered a cool thing to do, which is terrible.”

The Government is expected to announce plans in the forthcoming Queen’s Speech to bolster controls over the sale and use of imitation weapons, including BB guns. As well as pistols, retailers offer semi-automatic BB guns, which can fire up to 450 rounds per minute.

Simon Clarke, a spokesman for the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, said his organisation had liaised extensively with the police over the problem.

He said: “These weapons have no sporting purpose at all but they are classified as toys across the EU. The big problem is urban gun crime because people are using these as weapons of threat. Kids are buying them, putting them in their jackets and then flashing them as if they have a gun.

“I know that the Home Office is talking about increasing the age limit on them to 18. At the moment there is no age limit. They are also talking about increasing the penalties for carrying them.”

Carrying a BB gun in a public place carries a penalty of up to six months’ imprisonment.

Inspector Steve McGarry, a firearms expert with Greater Manchester police who carried out the research, said the great majority of reports involving imitation firearms involved BB guns. He said that the public needed to be wary of gun crime statistics because the problem may involve youths and antisocial behaviour rather than hardened criminals.

Public fear of BB gunsmay trigger an armed response from police, he said. Armed police were called to a Barnsley school earlier this month after a boy was seen with a BB gun. In March armed officers were sent to a Metro station in Newcastle to deal with a 12-year-old boy found to have a BB gun.

Although injuries are not usual, a man was paralysed from the waist down after being shot in the spinal cord outside his Wirral home.

PLASTIC IMITATIONS THAT CAN BLIND, CRIPPLE OR MAIN

• BB guns are also known as airsoft guns because although they work on the same basis as airguns, they use a weaker air charge to fire the pellet or ball bearing
  
  
  
  
• Although BB guns rarely cause more than a bruise, they can blind, cripple or maim in exceptional circumstances
  
  
  
  
• Most BB guns available in Britain are made by Marui, a Japanese company, and, although made in plastic, are modelled on original weapons and look identical to the real thing
  
  
  
  
• The precursor to the BB gun was invented in the 1500s, when a weapon was designed using spring-loaded bellows to fire a dart
  
  
  
  
• BB guns can have a range of up to 25 yards
  
  
  
  
• Until January 2004, there was no law relating to possession of toy guns, including BBs, in public, but the 2003 Anti-Social Behaviour Act made it an arrestable offence to carry one in public
  
  
  
  
• During a recent six-hour weapons amnesty in Liverpool, 12 ball-bearing guns were handed in to police by children as young as seven

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