Almost 3,000 guns lost or stolen in UK, figures reveal

Nearly 3,000 guns were lost by or stolen from people registered to hold them in the past five years, according to figures obtained by the BBC.

"There are nearly two million licensed firearms in the UK and 3,000 represents a tiny 0.15% of that figure," said Mr Harriman, who is also a forensic firearms examiner.

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Funny, you could correlate an increase with stolen/lost firearms to a decrease in gun related crime:

Overall, gun crime in England and Wales is falling. There was a 19% drop in annual firearm offences according to the latest figures.

No doubt groups are going to use this report to further restrict licenses citing "we can't trust the guns in the home" and push for them to be locked up at police stations or at ranges.

Amazing in an already highly restrictive society they still manage to find little slots in which to stick more restrictions.

Added fuel for microstamping measures or even an all out type ban:

"The problem with shotguns is they don't leave unique rounds like firearms do. But each quarter, we probably recover about 150 shotguns notwithstanding the other firearms material."

Related: Firearms, cheap easy to get and on a street near you

He said guns could be purchased for a few hundred pounds in many parts of London. "You can hire a gun for a period and, if the gun has already been used for a murder, the going rate comes down."

Who supplies the guns on our streets?

But imported weapons, mostly emanating from eastern Europe, remain the biggest threat.

A lot of shotguns will probably be from farms etc which probably were made pre ww2 so theres no record of them so as farmers die and people find old guns in the lofts etc its hardly suprising that numbers of unregistered weapons rise as they're handed in along with service revolvers etc that grandad stuffed in the back of the loft in 1948 and forgot about

but for lost/stolen guns alot i'd put down to the gypsy and traveller community as they live on the edge of society and almost rely on the fact that they're armed to stop people kicking them off property that they are trespassing on

Screw the guns! It's the hand grenades bouncing down the streets that worry me. £500 a piece off the black market.
There easy to hide and smuggle and highly effective at pissing off your rivals.
They seem to be appearing in the media more and more and you can guarantee that the media are only reporting the tip of the iceberg.

News reports

Perhaps the 3,000 guns are what the recently arrived to Sydney are using to kill each other and terrorise a once peaceful city in Australia, recently two dead in carpark shooting, hardly a day goes by without a shooting in Sydney.