Criminals can buy guns 'for £50'

Guns are cheaper if they have already been used, the study found

Firearms can be bought for only £50 in Greater Manchester and Merseyside, according to a Home Office report.

Eighty people serving prison sentences for gun crime were interviewed by academics at Portsmouth University.

The report showed the greatest availability of illegal guns is in Manchester and Liverpool, followed by Birmingham and London.

Criminals in Nottingham, the so-called gun crime capital, had to travel to buy guns as they were not easily available.

Illegal firearms have also become more accessible to younger offenders.

'Intimidatory value'

One interviewee claimed to have earned £52,000 in one week from gun crime.

Home Office research disclosed extraordinary details about the lives of firearm-toting criminals, including their fear of getting caught with a gun which a previous owner had used in a crime.

In response to their findings, the university researchers said the authorities needed to do more to tackle the conversion of imitation guns into live-firing weapons.

The study found that imitation weapons could be bought for less than £100.

Sawn-off shotguns, which are often used by serious armed robbers and favoured for their "significant intimidatory value", could be bought for between £50 and £200, the report said.

Automatic weapons such as machine guns could carry a price tag of £4,000, although the cheapest went for just £800.

Handguns were cheaper if they had already been used in a crime, costing from £150, but a new 9mm model could cost between £1,000 and £1,400.