Former soldier set up secret gun factories to supply street gangs

[derby378]

Source: The Guardian

A soldier turned thriller writer who set up a chain of secret gun factories from which he supplied weapons to street gangs in Liverpool, Manchester and the West Midlands is facing a lengthy prison sentence after admitting a string of firearms offences.

Paul Alexander converted replica guns at factories in an Essex village and Bath and then sold them for as little as £1,500 a time, complete with ammunition, silencers and carrying cases, in what police have described as "assassination kits".

Alexander, 53, who was born Paul Daintry, used 30 aliases, including John Bourne and Franz Bauer, apparently after the fictional agents in The Bourne Identity and 24. He acquired the skills that later allowed him to convert replica firearms and manufacture ammunition while serving in the Royal Artillery for 20 years...

Alexander had been arrested in Britain and the US for a number of minor offences after retiring from the army with an exemplary record in 1992. But his secret firearms enterprise began to unravel only after his DNA was discovered on a handgun seized by Merseyside police two years ago, during a crackdown on gang violence in the wake of the murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in Liverpool.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/sep/21/former-soldier-gun-factories

[damntexdem]

1. Ah, the wonders of private enterprise!

What an entrepreneur!

[anonymous171]

2. More proof that banning guns keeps guns out of the hands of criminals. nt

[Earth_First]

3. How is this any different from the Blackwater/Xe stories from Iraq and Afghanistan?

:shrug:

[ZombieHorde]

4. When factories are outlawed, only criminals will own factories. nt

[villager]

5. apparently they didn't have to pry the factory from his cold, dead hands?

n/t

[Treo]

6. Any reasonably competent machinist could do the same thing NT

[JonQ]

7. Most be a series of typos

guns are banned in britain, you can't own them, it's against the law, so he couldn't have been selling them, because it's illegal, and would be against the law because . . . .

And so on.

Oh well, at least the innocent victims of these guns were forcibly disarmed by the state, that's something.