THE scale of gun crime in Britain since the shooting of 14-year-old Danielle Beccan in Nottingham last weekend is revealed today in a survey by The Times.

It found that a firearms offence was committed once every five hours in the six days after Danielle’s death, with at least 31 gun crimes in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland between Saturday and Thursday.

The survey results prompted a call for more armed police on the streets. Jan Berry, chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales said that the number of armed response officers had declined in recent years despite gun crime being on the increase.

“We have expressed concern about this as the pressure on those officers trained to deal with these incidents is getting greater,” she said. “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.”

Her call came after Paul Evans, David Blunkett’s American police adviser, said that Britain’s gun crime problem had to be nipped in the bud. “The one thing you want to make sure of is that it does not get out of control. You want to make sure that there are consequences for individuals who carry guns,” he said.

He said that a co-ordinated approach to police intelligence on who was using and selling guns was needed, together with tougher penalties for those who supplied weapons to juveniles.

Mr Evans told a Commons select committee on Tuesday that special laws had been adopted in Boston, making it a specific crime to traffic or supply firearms to young people.

Rather than stopping every young person in high-crime areas in the search for weapons, police should use a targeted approach. “It becomes critical to have a national intelligence model to identify those individuals that you believe are carrying firearms,” he said.

But police had to have a “very, very good handle and intelligence on the drug situation. Drugs and handguns go hand in hand. Many people in the drugs business will use firearms to help them continue their business.”

Sir Keith Povey, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, said that gun crime had a huge impact and that the police did not underestimate its effect. But he admitted: “It is very, very difficult to overcome the random shooting that took place in Nottingham.”

The Government toughened gun laws last year, introducing a minimum jail term of five years for possessing an illegal firearm.

The Times survey found that only 24 of the 52 police forces in the UK had reported no firearms incidents in the past week, while nine were unable to provide any statistics. The rest had recorded between one and six incidents, the most being in London, where there were six shootings resulting in injury. They included a shooting in Hackney in which an 18-month-old girl was injured. The girl was in the car with her father when she was caught in a crossfire of up to 15 bullets. Two men were also seriously injured.

There were 13 reported armed robberies and attempted armed robberies, although a gun was fired in only one case: when a security guard at a north London bank was shot in the stomach on Thursday. The only shooting incident outside London was in Manchester.

The total figure is likely to be much higher, given the missing statistics. Many incidents are not classified as involving firearms unless a weapon is recovered or positively identified by a witness.

• A 20-year-old Nottingham man will appear before magistrate this morning charged with the murder of Danielle as she walked home from a fairground.

  He was detained by police during routine stopchecks in Westminster on Monday and charged last night. Two other men remain in custody.

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