GOOD OLD GUN-FREE BRITAIN

One in ten teenage schoolboys has carried some kind of gun in the past year, according to the largest study on the impact of Britain's firearms culture on urban youth. The Times has learnt of the alarming extent of weapons use in London by children as young as 11 just as Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, has been criticised by the Prime Minister for not doing more to crack down on young gangs who terrorise local communities. Mr Clarke was called to meet Tony Blair two weeks ago to be told that he needed to act now or a "sense of fatalism" would creep into the public's view of the Government's promises to cut social disorder.

The unpublished government-funded report, commissioned by the Metropolitan Police, shows that gun culture is now rampant in urban schools, The Times has learnt. Although the Violent Crime Reduction Bill, now making its way through Parliament, proposes a ban on replica guns and raising the legal age for buying dangerous knives from 16 to 18, critics fear that the problem is already out of hand and needs a far tougher response.

Of the 11,000 Central London teenagers under 16 who were questioned, one in ten boys and girls had carried a knife in the past year, and one in 10 boys had carried a gun or a replica gun. White boys were more likely to say they had carried a gun than black boys. Many children blamed a growing sense of lawlessness on the need to carry a gun or knife in self-defence. The most common reason was the fear of attack from other children. Only a tiny minority said that they had been caught by the police. More than half of the children said that they could easily get hold of a knife, and one in five reported that they could get hold of a replica gun.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, called them "extremely alarming statistics". "[Mr Blair's] failure to live up to his promise to be `tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime' is tragically dragging children as young as 11 into serious crime." he said.

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