More than a hundred firearms, 1000 rounds of live ammunition and 400 rounds of blank ammunition were handed in during a two-week amnesty this month.
The initiative was launched following a triple shooting in Aldershot in December 2009 that left Julie Harrison and Maisie Harrison-Copland dead, before Julie’s ex partner and Maisie’s father, Andrew Copland, turned the gun on himself.
Nine police stations, including Basingstoke, took part in the amnesty that saw 41 shotguns, 12 handguns and 16 air rifles handed in among other types of firearms between Friday, April 2 and Sunday, April 18.
Chief Superintendent Mark Chatterton, Commander of the North and East Operational Command Unit, said: “We launched this amnesty in response to community concerns about gun ownership and a lack of knowledge about handing firearms in and we have been extremely pleased with the response we have seen.
“This was never about violent crime; we were responding to a community concern about gun ownership and I am extremely pleased with the response we have had. We wanted to give people the opportunity to hand in any illegal or unwanted firearms and ammunition and it is satisfying that people heard our message, walked into a police station and handed these weapons in.
“Hampshire Constabulary is rated excellent at suppressing gun crime in the police report card. Although the amnesty is now finished, we have many ongoing initiatives running across the force to educate young adults about the dangers of carrying knives and weapons which continue throughout the year. As we anticipated, a large number of the weapons handed in are BB guns or imitation firearms.
“Almost 70 per cent of all incidents that our firearms officers attend involve knives and imitation firearms and one hour of policing a firearms incident costs the equivalent of 27 hours of local beat policing. Some of the guns that we seize are so realistic that a firearms officer would not immediately be able to decide if it were real, and therefore have to treat every gun incident as if the weapon is real.
“As the families of everyone involved in this tragedy stated when we launched the amnesty, if anything good can come out of this, it would be that nobody else loses a loved one in this way.”
