Police get lucky - this time!

[Devonian]

http://news.sky.com/story/1535791/seven-...ns-seizure

A rather interesting collection of weapons seized by the police at a marina in Kent.

The story talks about the potential for these weapons ending up in criminal hands, but assault rifles are not really the type of weapons used by criminals in the UK, so it makes you wonder if there is any terrorist connections (IS) and how many previous shipments may have already come into the country???

Could this be part of a build up to something else....?

[bigpaul]

not something your going hunting with is it? as far as I can see those only have one use and that is "military" type use, terrorists and the like. wasn't that something like what was used in the Tunisian beach shooting??

[Devonian]

Yes.

And at Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

The weapon of choice for your Terrorists.

[MaryN]

Oh dear, this doesn't bode well, does it! Got to wonder just how many other shipments have slipped under the net. Not exactly your average squirrel shooting piece!

[Sunna]

tunis and paris both ak47.......for some years now gangbangers have been using things like mac 10 s and uzis , the two teen girls shot and killed in brum some years back got killed with a machine gun .
in the long running turf war between the burger bar boys and the johnsons .....nice bunch of lads.....

[Mortblanc]

Those rifles a VZ58 Chech surplus weapons that have just been released on the market this past year. The Scorpians are also Chech. These are not arms that were dumped on the surplus market over many years time or over a wide area, as were the AK rifles. The VZ rifles have been released only through government channels and hit the market over here last year.

Sounds like a sting operation to me, with arms furnished by government agencies to trace where they wind up.

What also puzzles me is the low magazine and ammo count.

They only have two mags per rifle and only 45 rounds per weapon. That is not even enough ammo to fill all the magazines, and only 1 1/2 mags of ammo per gun.

It seems to me that purchasing a large amount of ammo to supply the rifles would be as attention drawing as any activity one could preform.

Sounds like they were insuring that if the arms got out of their control they would have as little potential for damage as possible with few mags and practically no ammo.

I see they nabbed 7 people in the roundup. That is not surprising.

[CharlesHarris]

When I was in Italy a few years ago, my host was retired from the carabinieri and showed me the cache of WW2 weapons they had recovered and stored over the years. The Ities waste nothing and refurbish and store all the old stuff. The little town I was in had enough MG34s, spare barrels and ammo to set up access control points on every motorway leading into the city, and adequate small arms and ammo to equip every policeman with an SMG, pistol, multiple magazines for each, 1000 rounds of ammo and sixteen hand grenades without even getting into the modern era stuff! If the Swiss or Austrians ever decide to invade Bergamo, they are all set!

[Midnitemo]

Skorpion is a particularly nasty weapon to be on the receiving end of ....fires a poor cartridge but you get hit by a few and it's game over , Aldo Moro and his CP team hit by one in the 70's they were a good stop by the police.. we don't want them floating about amongst the UK's undesireables mainly because they pack a lot of punch in a very compact package.

[Mortblanc]

If I remember correctly the Scorpion has one of the highest rates of fire on an individual weapon, emptying its 20 round magazine in less than one second.

I have only seen two of them, one in training and one captured in the field. When we found the one in SE Asia we were pretty sure we had just wounded a Russian advisor, causing him to abandon his personal weapon.

[CharlesHarris]

Probably more controllable than a MAC11 or Micro-Uzi....

Dating myself, but Swedish K or Walther MP1 far superior.