REPLICA handguns that are being converted so British criminal gangs can use them to maim and kill can be bought in Germany without a permit.

Guns of the type said to be fuelling gang culture in the UK are available in high street stores and family-run arms dealerships for as little as £80.

Outlawed in the UK, they are sold over the counter in Germany as blank firers, CS gas guns and alarm pistols. They are then smuggled into Britain and converted into lethal weapons.

Greater Manchester police say almost half the illegal guns they seize are converted replicas.

Inquiries by The Sunday Times last week found that the weapons on sale in German shops include exact replicas of popular Smith & Wesson, Luger and Glock models. They are designed for self-defence or sport.

In the Waffen Wissmann shop in a warehouse complex in Cologne, a reporter was able to buy a Valtro 98 alarm pistol for cash without giving a name or other personal details.

The reporter was told by the shop owner that it was possible to place a bulk order for other models of blank firers without a permit. The price of the guns on offer ranged from £80 to £180. At the Kettner weapons shop in one of Cologne’s main streets, bulk orders were also welcomed.

Another reporter in Berlin was able to buy a Cuno Melcher ME 38 Magnum revolver in the Europa shopping centre simply by showing a British driving licence and needed no proof of residence in Germany.

The Manchester police say Cuno Melcher models from Germany and Russian Baikals bought in Lithuania are two sources of gun crime in the city. Most can be converted by drilling through a partial obstruction in the barrel and installing a new cylinder.

One victim of a converted weapon was Jay Patel from Roch-dale, Lancashire, who nearly died in October 2005 when his post office and convenience store was targeted by armed robbers. He was shot by a flare gun converted to fire real ammunition. The bullet hit the right side of his head before lodging itself in the ceiling. “It smelt of firecrackers and I fell back thinking I was hurt. It’s only because the gun was not 100% accurate that I’m here today,” he said.

Patel is lobbying for uniform gun laws across Europe. A campaign to tighten controls on replicas sold on the Continent is being led by Manchester police.

Chief Inspector John Lyons said guns that had been imported and converted were a contri-butor to gang problems. “The guns are inevitably getting into the hands of both older and more experienced and younger criminals, armed robbers and murderers,” he said. “When we deal with this [converted guns] we deal with half the problem.” Last year Greater Manchester police broke up one of the largest gun import rackets in the UK. Between 2004 and 2005, 274 weapons had been illegally imported, including ME 38 magnums and the Umarex Reck King Cobra. The guns had been bought legally in a shop – Firma Hocke Sporthaus – in Cologne and from the Cuno Melcher factory in Solingen. Three men were convicted.

The weapons were brought into the UK by ferry or through the post. The Manchester police began Operation Carbon after 14 Cuno Melcher guns were mistakenly delivered to a shop in Levenshulme. They discovered that the weapons were being converted in a workshop owned by a local engineer before being sold for up to £750 each. Of the 274 guns imported by the gang, only 100 have been recovered.

Lyons said the investigation had been hampered by the absence of a paper trail linking the guns to their buyers. The police are pushing for obligatory registration of the buyer’s name and passport details for all replica guns sold in Europe.

He argues this would serve as a deterrent and also as the start of an investigation. “It’s not bought because it’s a CS weapon but because it looks like a real gun and behaves like a real gun and because of the kudos. If it looked green or was shaped like a banana then nobody would buy it,” he said.

Arlene McCarthy, a British Labour MEP, is trying to update a European Union directive on gun control. “I’d prefer to have them banned but other member states are not ready to. But at the moment they’re not even catego-rised as a firearm and that’s very worrying,” she said.

Additional reporting: Damien Seaman

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