DEACTIVATED guns that can be converted to fire live ammunition are being sold on the internet for as little as £200 each.

Despite a government crackdown on the sale of guns, there is still a widespread trade in deactivated weapons, which criminals are known to convert into working firearms. Gun campaigners last week called for the sale of the guns to be banned.

Weapons being offered for sale last week on British-based websites - such as www.deactivated-guns.co.uk and www.worldwidearms.com - included a deactivated Bulgarian AK-47 for £200, a Smith & Wesson snub-nose revolver for £350, an RPK light machinegun for £395 and a Beretta handgun for £495. The trade in these guns is legal and no licence or checks are required to purchase the weapons.

Some of the guns offered for sale were deactivated before 1995, when the rules on converting the weapons into collectors’ items were less strict. These guns often have more moving parts intact and are easier to reactivate.

Some buyers insist the guns must have been be deactivated to the pre-1995 standards. One buyer on a website last week stated he was seeking a “deactivated Uzi pre 1995”, preferably supplied with a silencer.

“It’s a matter of grave concern that these guns are so readily available,” said Gill Marshall-Andrews, chairwoman of the Gun Control Network. “These guns should be treated as the real thing and people should be stopped from buying and selling AK47s and other weapons - deactivated or not.”

The shooting of Rhys Jones, 11, in Liverpool 10 days ago has again raised concerns over the supply of weapons in the UK. As a large port, Liverpool is an entry route for gun smuggling but gangs also routinely use weapons converted to fire live ammunition.

Gun enthusiasts argue reactivating guns is too costly and complicated an option for most criminals, but the Association of Chief Police Officers has long been concerned about the trade. One senior officer said: “The easiest method of obtaining a sub-machinegun is to legally purchase one deactivated to pre1995 standards and then reactivate it.”

One of the biggest suppliers of deactivated weapons for conversion was a father-and-son team, William and Mitchell Greenwood, from Little Eaton, Derbyshire, who were convicted in 2004 of supplying criminals with thousands of deactivated weapons and tools to enable them to fire live rounds.

Those involved in the legitimate gun trade say they have been unfairly penalised by the crackdown and claim the laws are open to misinterpretation. The confusion was exposed by the case of Mick Shepherd, a Kent gun dealer who was arrested last year.

When Shepherd’s home was raided by the Metropolitan police his cache of 900 guns was described as “the biggest weapons haul in the force’s history”. There was one snag for the police: the guns Shepherd had at his home - and weapons he had sold to undercover officers - were all legal and Shepherd was acquitted at the Old Bailey in June.

“I was having to explain the laws to them,” he said last week. “I had all the correct licences for the weapons that I kept at my home and the ones I had sold were all antique. It’s not illegal to sell those.”

Steve Littlejohn, who runs the site www.deactivated-guns.co.uk, said most of his customers were collectors but he refused to sell to anyone he considered suspect. He said it was cheaper for criminals to buy arms on the black market than to reactivate guns.

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