http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/cri...p?story=454186
Gun crime rises to record level with 200 incidents every week
By Jason Bennetto, Crime Correspondent
17 October 2003
Gun crime in England and Wales rose to record levels in the past year, with nearly 200 incidents every week.
There were 10,250 incidents, including 80 murders, involving firearms in the year to April, 276 (about 3 per cent) more than the previous year and double the number recorded five years ago.
Overall crime has dropped in the past few months, Home Office statistics show, but there is a continuing rise in the number of violent offences recorded by the police.
Public alarm over gun crime has been raised in recent months by a spate of high-profile murders, including a seven-year-old girl shot in the back in London and a shopkeeper killed during a robbery in Nottingham. Police and ministers stress, however, that Britain is still one of the safest places in the world, with one of the lowest levels of gun crime. There were 0.15 gun deaths in England and Wales per 100,000 population in the past year, compared with 3.6 per 100,000 in the US.
Two-thirds of the offences in England and Wales involved the firearm being used as a threat, but in about 17 per cent the weapon was fired causing injury. About two out of three firearms offences took place in three police force areas: the Metropolitan; Greater Manchester and West Midlands.
Yesterday's crime figures sent a mixed message on the subject of violence. Offences recorded by police in England and Wales rose by 9 per cent, or 27,800, in the three months from April to June, but the British Crime Survey, which was also published yesterday and is considered to be a more accurate, indicated that violent crime has fallen by 5 per cent in the same period.
My last post on this subject showed that gun crime in England rose 45% two years ago, and 35 % last year. So i guess this rising gun crime trend will prove that gun control is a great success?