(UK)Chunnel security shambles

[Geezah]

Taken from the Sun newspaper so take it however you want,

A SUN undercover reporter smuggled a pistol into Britain using the Channel Tunnel — just like Harvey Nichols killer Michael Pech.
Our man bought a Walther P-38 gun at a Czech market, then drove to Calais and on to the Chunnel’s shuttle train without being searched or quizzed.

Evil Pech, 30, used the same route to smuggle in a gun and murder shop girl Clare Bernal before killing himself.

Gun crime each hour

GUN crime is soaring in Britain — with an armed offence committed EVERY HOUR.

The number of firearms incidents has doubled in England and Wales since 1997.

Cases of attempted murder with firearms have also doubled to over 1,200 annually — more than three every day.

In the year up to June, 11,160 gun crimes were recorded, up five per cent on 2004.

A study has revealed that one in ten teenage schoolboys in London had carried a real handgun, replica, or ballbearing gun in the last year. The list of victims falling prey to firearms is also growing.

They include schoolgirl Danielle Beccan, 14, who was murdered in a drive-by shooting as she returned from Goose Fair in Nottingham in October 2004. Two men were jailed this month.

And in another crime which shocked the nation, Toni-Ann Byfield, seven, was shot alongside her drug-dealer father Bertram Byfield, 41, at a flat in North West London two years ago.

Link (http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005500493,00.html)

I can imagine how easy it is, I remember when I was 13, we brought back suppliers packs of French bangers into the UK.

[Hydro]

It's very easy unfortunately to smuggle things through the Channel Tunnel. You get a cursory car search at your point of departure, but they don't exactly push the boat out. It's more of a search for possibly bombs and other explosives that could be detonated on the train, rather than illegal goods. The problem is that the sheer volume of traffic moving through the Tunnel would make detailed searches time consuming and costly.

All these journalists undertaking illegal activities to highlight "security problems" are going to be caught out one day. This guy could be arrested, and the fact remains he still broke the law, and any amount of "I was acting in the public interest" won't remove those handcuffs.

[Para]

Now if they caught him i hope they will lock him up and throw away the key. there is nothing in the law to say that Newspaper reporters are allowed to flout the law while they are after a story.

[Bob Lawbla]

If he was doing this in the interest of the public, then the only peolpe he should have told would be the authorities. By making an article out of it he announces the embarressment to everyone, including anyone looking for a way to get a gun across. Bad way to make a reputation.

[moonmonkey]

Theirs no way customs can stamp this out as said before their is just too much traffic to search, and you can easily find a way around it with all the hundreds of miles of unprotected coastline throughout the UK where you can land small boats with illegal guns and the such

[MrScruff]

There was some guy in UK who got sent two Winchesters by accident after ordering something from America. Just get someone to send you a gun with 'flowers' slapped on the customs slip ;)

[Geezah]

Football Hooligans were doing the same thing with CS Gas from Germany. They would recieve the goods to the right address under the wrong name. They would wait a few months to see if customs show up, if they did, they would play innocent and hand the unopened package over, and tell customs you were waiting to see if someone would pick it up. If they don't show up after a few months, they would open the package and sell the gas.

[joe mama]

If he was doing this in the interest of the public, then the only peolpe he should have told would be the authorities. By making an article out of it he announces the embarressment to everyone, including anyone looking for a way to get a gun across. Bad way to make a reputation.

Oh god forbid the all powerful authorities get embarrassed by someone showing their failures. A function of a free press should be to show THE PEOPLE how their government is functioning. Now people have the option of paying attention to what the government does in response to this.

[Minardiau]

Geezah

I'm an Aussie and you as an ex pom should know the Sun is not a paper to be taken seriously.

It's the FoxNews of the UK!

:)

[SPQR]

"Our man bought a Walther P-38 gun at a Czech market, then drove to Calais"

Hmmm, I could use a nice P-38 to complete my WWII collection.