Posted on 04/09/2004 4:48:09 PM PDT by 45Auto
The law finally got tough with gunmen when a Birmingham criminal was sent down for seven years. Damain Smith felt the full force of the city's anti-gun crackdown after admitting possessing a gun and ammunition.
And police chiefs today welcomed the sentence saying it was warning to others that they could expect tough treatment if found with a gun.
The weight of the punishment will come as a relief to police who only two weeks ago saw Edwin Hayward convicted of possessing a gun but then walk free after the judge accepted he had thought the weapon was a cigarette lighter.
Today Birmingham anti-gun campaigners stepped up their drive to get weapons off the streets with a shocking new film that has already been banned by one television station.
Twenty-six-year-old Smith was arrested last September when officers swooped on two houses he owned in Woodgate Valley and Quinton following a tip-off to police.
During the search, police found a pistol and a quantity of ammunition.
Smith, from Birmingham, was sentenced to five years for possession of a firearm and two years for possessing ammunition to be served consecutively.
A force spokesman said: "This shows what we can achieve with the help and support of the local community.
"We are determined to take firearms out of circulation and make our streets safer.
"Although Smith has no previous convictions for firearms offences, and the weapon was not used to commit an offence that we are aware of this sentence should emphasise to anyone illegally in possession of a firearm that they can expect a significant prison sentence."
Not always. One of the more significant cases in English law (hundreds of years back, though) involved a man shooting the local sheriff to death when the sheriff forced entrance to his home in order to arrest him without due cause. The court aquitted him.
Now they have completely forgotten the freedoms they once had. The confiscation of guns (regulation) started in the 1920's, on the behest of certain politically-connected nobles who feared an "uprising".
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