Dozens of firearms handed in during two week gun surrender on Merseyside
Dozens of firearms have been handed into police during a two week gun surrender on Merseyside.
The Force say a total of 184 weapons and lots of ammunition handed in during the force’s two weeks firearms surrender, including 37 firearms.
They joined other police forces to take part in the ‘Give up the Gun’ firearms surrender, which ran from Monday 4 April to Monday 18 April.
It was designed to give people in possession of firearms an opportunity to hand them in. It also extended to giving people a safe disposal route for antique, replica and decommissioned firearms which could be capable of being reactivated and used for criminal purposes.
The last firearms surrender carried out by Merseyside Police resulted in 126 hand ins.
Assistant Chief Constable Nikki Holland said: "We are extremely pleased with the results of the surrender and the firearms that the public have handed-in and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their excellent response to the surrender operation.
"Our commitment is to protect the lives and livelihoods of the law abiding members of our community and I want to reassure people that we will continue our fight against those who are involved in criminality and who continue to make other people’s lives a misery through firearms, drug dealing and serious and organised crime."
"The surrender has run alongside the pro-active work that we do every single day and we will stand shoulder to shoulder with the community in our pledge to disrupt criminal activity, take guns off our streets and put the people responsible behind bars."
"I am delighted to see that the public have heeded our message about surrendering firearms, weapons and ammunition so that they don’t fall into the hands of criminals and used to cause fear or intimidation"
"In just a two week period a substantial number of viable weapons and a large quantity of ammunition has been handed into police stations across Merseyside"
"Just removing one weapon from our streets means that there is one less chance of it being used to seriously injure or kill someone."
The hand-in included: 20 handguns/revolvers 17 shotguns/rifles 30 imitation/deactivated weapons 52 air weapons 14 blank firers/starting pistols 29 separate lots of viable ammunition including over 750 shotgun cartridges 15 other ammunition (pellets/bb’s etc) 7 items miscellaneous