YouTube videos teaching criminals how to make bullets sparks rise in antique gun use

YouTube videos teaching criminals how to make bullets has led to an increase in the use of antique firearms in crime, it has emerged.

There has been a 20 fold increase in the number of ancient weapons being used in gun crime over the last decade, according to the National Ballistics Intelligence Service (NABIS).

It is thought gangsters are turning to antique weapons as their access to other illegal firearm dries up.

Drug dealers and gang members are able to purchase the guns - which can be more than 200-years-old - legally from junk shops and car boot sales, where they are sold as curiosities.

But they are quickly converted into deadly weapons when fitted with home made DIY bullets.

Antique weapons are exempt from the law if they are appear on the list of obsolete calibres, which means ammunition is no longer commercially available. But criminals are learning how to make the bullets by watching tutorial videos on sites such as YouTube.

Experts at the secretive NABIS headquarters in Birmingham are concerned at the ease with which criminals are exploting instructions that are legally available online.

Detective Chief Superintendent Jo Chilton, the head of NABIS, said the use of antique firearms was one of the most worrying trends to emerge in the battle against gun crime in recent years.

But she said making home made ammunition was not illegal in many parts of the world so there was little that could be done to remove the instructions from websites.

She said: “The use of antique weapons is one of the significant trends that we are seeing and it is keeping us busy,” she said.

There are around 300 firearms discharged in the UK each year and evidence collected from each incident has helped the experts at NABIS build up a national database of illegal held guns currently in circulation.

Around 1,000 guns are seized by the police in raids each year, but NABIS currently has data on 2,480 firearms that have been discharged in the last five years and are still in circulation.

But chief scientist, Martin Parker, said antique weapons had recently become the firearm of choice for today’s criminal.

He said: “In the 1980s it was sawn-off shotguns, in the 90s handguns and sub-machine guns and the noughties replicas emerged.

“Now we have seen a marked increase in the use of antique weapons. They are easy to obtain but can be fired just like any other gun – and have just the same impact.''

In 2007 the police recovered just four antique firearms that had been used by criminals in Britain, but by 2016 that figure had soared to 88.

In December a rogue firearms dealers was jailed for 30-years after being convicted of supplying illegal handguns and homemade ammunition that had been linked to more than 100 crime scenes.

Paul Edmunds, 66, from Gloucestershire was jailed for 30-years, after police found three armouries where he made DIY bullets to fit antique weapons.

He was caught when scientists at NABIS were able to identify a growing trend of pre-war weapons being used in gang shootings and then trace the source of the ammunition.