Soviet-era machine gun used to kill Elle Edwards on sale in Slovakia thanks to loophole in EU law
VIOLENT criminals exploited a loophole in EU gun laws to buy deactivated Soviet-era weapons for use in gang wars here, a Sun on Sunday investigation reveals.
Pistols and sub-machine guns converted for sports shooting to fire non-lethal pellets can be bought over the counter in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
The ex-military-grade weapons are being smuggled in cars or parcels posted to Britain — where they are illegal — according to the National Crime Agency, our FBI.
They are then being turned back to deadly weapons which in some cases can fire multiple bullets per second.
The Skorpion sub-machine gun, in particular has become the gang weapon of choice for drive-by shootings in cities including Liverpool and Manchester.
A converted version of the weapon killed beautician Elle Edwards, 26, in a Merseyside pub on Christmas Eve. Four others were injured.
Last weekend there was a drive-by shooting near Euston Station in London that left a seven-year-old girl fighting for her life.
A Glock-style handgun killed nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel last year at her home in Liverpool.
European cops say “thousands” of converted “flobert” guns — which fire non-lethal pellets — have been seized from criminals who abused a mistake in EU gun licensing laws.
‘Not my problem’
Wrongly, Slovakia and the Czech Republic failed to classify them as “firearms”, meaning they could be bought with few checks.
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Ex-Home Secretary Priti Patel said it was vital the evil weapons “no longer find their way on the streets of Britain”.
She said last night: “This important investigation by The Sun on Sunday shows why we have to do all we can to protect people from these deadly weapons.
“When I was Home Secretary I wanted to ensure all fast parcel deliveries were subject to safety and security checks, but unfortunately that was blocked by my colleagues.
“I would urge them to continue working with our partners on the continent to ensure these deadly weapons never make it across the Channel.
"It is imperative we do everything to stop guns terrorising our communities.”
Despite a Europe-wide crackdown on weapons, our investigators found a potentially deadly arsenal for sale over the counter at AFG, an unassuming weapons shop in a back street of Partizanske, Slovakia, 87 miles north east of the capital Bratislava.
Our team was told locals could walk away with the firearms — costing just a few hundred pounds — by showing ID and filling out a registration form.
When asked what would happen if the guns were later handed to criminals, the shop worker shrugged and said: “That’s not my problem.”
The worker did demand to see a British gun licence before he would sell any weapons to our team.
We found decommissioned Skorpion sub-machine guns for sale at the shop’s online site for as little as £470.
The shops selling them said the gun came with a certification “confirming change of the weapon type from its original version to a flobert weapon.”
Similar guns were on sale in the Czech Republic.
European gangs are buying them to sell to British crooks.
Amateur gangland gunsmiths then convert them back into their deadly original purpose.
Ex-Met detective Peter Bleksley said villains could turn the pellet firing guns into deadly weapons in a matter of minutes using just “garden shed gunsmiths”.
The former cop said: “In the early days of my detective work it was predominantly revolvers and sawn-off shotguns we saw on the streets.
A revolver would fire perhaps six rounds and then it’s got to be reloaded, which is a skill in itself.
Now, if you’ve got semi-automatic weapons, they can have a magazine that can cause carnage in a very short space of time.
“Look at Liverpool over Christmas, just one weapon and five people were shot, killed and injured in a matter of seconds.”
While gun crime across the UK is generally falling, in the year up to March 2022 there were 5,750 firearms offences, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NCA stresses it has not seen a rise in the use of sub-machine gun use.
But in the North East firearms crime has more than tripled, from an average of 91 firearms offences a year between 2009 and 2012, to 294 a year between 2019 and 2022.
And stats show that Border Force seizures of guns have dramatically fallen in the past decade.
In 2013 it confiscated 1,543 lethal firearms and 2,118 non-lethal firearms, but those figures have dropped to 134 and 774 respectively from January to September 2022.
The NCA says this is because it targets the smuggling gangs in Europe, rather than at the border.
Converted Skorpion sub-machine guns and other pistols are being favoured by the criminal underworld after the EU cracked down on the sale and ownership of automatic weapons in the wake of the Paris terror attacks in 2015 that left 130 dead.
But flobert guns were mistakenly not included in the new laws in Slovakia and the Czech republic and that loophole was being exposed by gangs.
A report by European anti-illicit weapons think tank Project SAFTE warns: “Flobert guns can be bought legally without authorisation in several EU member states and can easily be altered to fire more powerful ammunition.
"The circulation of altered flobert firearms will become a significant security problem in the coming years.”
In February 2020 22 converted flobert guns were seized in a car heading for out shores in the Dutch port of Hook of Holland.
They had already had their use changed for criminals to buy.
AFG claimed it had not sold a Skorpion sub-machine guns for a number of years.
The NCA said it has asked the EU to amend its weapons laws to “restrict the availability of certain firearms, in particular high-powered semi-automatic weapons.”
And a 2021 European Commission report revealed Europol — the EU’s FBI — said it had seized thousands of converted flobert guns coming from the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
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It called on all EU countries to properly classify the weapons “as firearms”.
The NCA said: “We work closely with law enforcement partners, both in the UK and internationally, to identify supply routes and target the organised criminals who supply and use such weapons.”
Toll on Britain's streets
- A GIRL of seven was left fighting for her life after a drive-by shooting at a church near Euston Station in Central London.
- A 12 year-old girl and four other women were injured.
- Beautician Elle Edwards, 26, was killed and four others injured after being shot on Christmas Eve last year at a pub in Merseyside.
- Gran Jackie Rutter, 53, was gunned down on her doorstep in the Wirrel in October last year.
- Olivia Pratt-Korbel, nine, was gunned down in her Liverpool home after gang violence on the street outside in August last year.
- Sam Rimmer, 22, died in hospital after being shot several times in Liverpool last summer.
- Council worker Ashley Dale, 28, died after being shot by a man who burst into her Liverpool home and fired multiple shots last August.
- Oliver Tetlow, 27, died in a hail of bullets in Harlesden, West London and opened fire using a Skorpion submachine gun in 2016.
- In 2015 Erdogan Guzel, 42, was the innocent victim of a gangland machine gun drive-by killing in North London.