Gun crime in Britain is soaring to record levels: executions, woundings and related incidents in the past year are set to be the highest ever, an investigation by The Observer has revealed.

Preliminary figures show there have been more than 15,000 armed offences during 2000, up by almost 10 per cent over last year. The number of armed operations by police is also at a record level.

In October, police in Nottingham began carrying handguns in hip holsters while patrolling two notorious estates. The routine arming of officers came in response to a spate of 14 shootings by criminals.

'There is nothing exceptional,' Sean Price, Nottinghamshire's assistant chief constable, said. 'We are only doing what the police have always done - deploying the level of force appropriate to the threat.'

Manchester, notorious for its levels of gun crime in the early Nineties, is also seeing a dramatic rise in such offences. In a three-week period in September alone, seven people were shot, including a 16-year-old murdered while riding his bike through a park.

Although the use of firearms is a countrywide problem, it is most acute in the capital. In the past eight weeks there have been more than 35 reports of guns being fired illegally in London. The result: five deaths and 12 serious woundings.

At the beginning of this month, there were four separate shooting incidents in 24 hours. The most recent killing took place on Christmas Day when 29-year-old Steven Grant was shot in the head outside an East End nightclub.

Guns were once carried only to commit the most serious offences, but police now say they are increasingly used by small-time crooks such as burglars and low-level drug dealers. In London during November there were 21 cases of armed burglary and 71 muggings in which victims were threatened with guns. In the same month the capital saw arms used in 16 cases of grievous bodily harm and 77 other assaults. The figures also show that increasing numbers of petty criminals are carrying CS gas, supposedly to defend themselves.

The true figures could be even higher, because victims of many of the most violent gun crimes are reluctant to involve the authorities. Two weeks ago, police received calls from two separate hospital casualty departments in north London about young men with gunshot wounds. It was soon established that both were shot during the same incident in Canning Town earlier, but had fled the scene to seek treatment alone to try to lessen the risk of capture.

The use of guns outside the big towns and cities is rising too. Earlier this month shoppers were horrified to see two armed robbers shoot a security guard during a raid on a Securicor van in Hastings, East Sussex. The guard was wounded in the face and mouth.

On the same day as the Hastings shooting, archaeologists found human remains on a site near Bolam, Co Durham. The victim turned out to be 22-year-old career criminal Mark Corley who disappeared from his Lincolnshire home earlier this year. He had died from a gunshot wound.

A week earlier a man was shot dead in the tiny village of Woodleigh, in south Devon. It was the first firearms incident in the area for more than three years.

Gun crime is contributing to a higher number of murders in key areas, even though the national rate of killings this year has fallen. The rate in Scotland has jumped by 20 per cent.

Between 1997 and 1999 there were 429 murders in London, the highest two-year figure for more than 10 years. Reports of shots being fired or cars found riddled with bullets are increasingly common. Initiatives aimed at reducing the number of shootings have been set up in crime 'hotspots', including Hackney, Westminster, Lewisham and Brent.

Nationally, one murder in 20 is now carried out with a firearm. The number of illegally held guns is estimated at three million, a third more than at the time of the 1996 Dunblane massacre. As handguns can no longer be bought or sold legally, the police believe the vast majority of those coming on to the market have been smuggled from abroad. A small proportion of the machine guns involved are 'reactivated' versions of weapons which have supposedly been rendered harmless.

Gun murders are often linked to drugs. Although there have been police successes - particularly through Operation Trident, the initiative against drugs-related violence - such killings have a lower than average clear-up rate.

tony.thompson@observer.co.uk

source: Guardian Unlimited