Figures to be issued next week by the Home Office are expected to show fresh increases last year. Police fear a descent into American-style violence and the use of guns as a fashion accessory among teenagers in inner cities.

The two teenage girls shot dead in the backstreets of Birmingham yesterday are the latest victims of a gun culture that is also evident in London, Manchester, Merseyside, Bristol, Nottingham and the cities of South Wales.

The latest available Home Office figures already show that gun offences in England and Wales rose from 12,410 in 1997 to 17,589 during 2000-01. The number of murders went up from 59 to 73 and handgun offences rose from 2,648 to 4,019.

As a result chief constables, led by Sir John Stevens, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, have been urging ministers to adopt tougher gun controls, which they say successfully took guns off the streets of New York.

In Britain 20 years ago few criminals risked carrying or keeping guns and often hired weapons from the underworld for operations such as armed robberies. The weapon of choice was a sawn-off shotgun.

But by the Nineties many criminals were moving into the lucrative drug trade, where a weapon was a necessity to protect trade or fight turf wars. Young criminals also had few scruples about tackling a soft target such as a post office or betting shop with a gun, or using one in a mugging.

In 1990 shotguns were used in 1,193 crimes in England and Wales while handguns were used in 2,537. By 2000-01 there were 607 crimes involving shotguns and 4,019 involving handguns.

The ban on handweapons above .22 calibre, which was introduced in 1997 after the Dunblane primary school shootings, forced many legitimate owners to surrender their guns but did nothing to stop underworld supplies.

Police have seized Israeli-made Uzi sub-machineguns and American Ingram micro- machineguns as well as AK45 assault rifles and a vast range of pistols. The present favourite is said to be the Walther PPK automatic, as used by James Bond.

There has also been a brisk trade in the underworld in reactivating guns that have been deactivated for collectors, or the alteration of high-powered air weapons such as the Brocock. The Brocock ME38 Magnum air pistol can be bought legally for about £120 and illegally converted for just £70. Real guns can be bought for little more than £100, depending on their condition.

The rise of crack cocaine sold by Jamaican-based Yardie gangsters who routinely carry guns added to the rise in gun use and what police now call “black on black killings”.

The gun, police say, has become an essential possession for young black men emulating Yardies. A spat on a dance floor can quickly lead to a killing by a gunman who feels that he has been denied “respect”.

The shootings have reached such an extent that one man was shot for stepping on another man’s foot in a bar. Another was shot after he laughed at someone’s haircut and a woman was wounded by a stray bullet when two gunmen confronted each other outside a food shop.

A month ago Sir Keith Povey, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, warned David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, that the biggest menace facing police was the spread of gun crime often linked with the drug trade and in particular crack cocaine.

After studying reports from chief constables around the country, Sir Keith said: “The issue of gun crime and its connections with the drugs trade, particularly crack cocaine, is beginning to overshadow other efforts being made to reduce crime and the fear of crime.”

He added: “The increasing number of drug-related firearms incidents, the rise in the use of crack cocaine and the turf wars being fought between drug dealers all combine to strike fear in the heart of the worst-affected communities.”

It was a message that Paul Scott-Lee, the new Chief Constable of the West Midlands, knew by heart. Gun crime in his region rose between 2000-01 and 2001-02 from 1,512 to 2,262 offences.

In one incident in August police were involved in a gun fight with a gang of men chased from Staffordshire by officers investigating an attempted armed robbery. An exchange of gunfire took place in front of a row of houses on a busy road in Erdington at about 4.30pm as the evening rush hour was beginning.

In another incident 15 shots were fired during a gun battle in the car park of a pub. The West Midlands has become one of the biggest hotspots for gun crime outside London.

In October Mr Scott-Lee began a new drive against gun crime codenamed Operation Ventara. It focused on gun crime hotspots in the West Midlands — Handsworth, Winson Green, Ladywood, Highgate, Smethwick, Wolverhampton and Aston itself, where the two teenage girls died.

The latest national figures show that 29 of the 43 forces in England and Wales are investigating black-on-black shootings and London, which is the epicentre of gun crime, has been running a special investigation code-named Operation Trident for more than four years.

Last year there were 22 black-on-black murders in London under investigation and more than 170 people were wounded. Scotland Yard seizes 144 guns a month and weapons were fired 200 times between April and December, compared with 171 for the same months of last year.

Two weeks ago Scotland Yard announced that it would beef up its 24-hour armed patrols across London by recruiting another 50 officers.

Norman Brennan, of Protect the Protectors, which campaigns for frontline police officers, said: “Gun carrying is taken for granted in many of our cities and offenders now carry a firearm like they would a fashion accessory.

“Without tougher penalties against such offenders and heightened information from the public and others, the many people who carry guns will increase, each of them a walking assassin.”

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