NCA raise concern over gun links between UK gangs and terrorists

The National Crime Agency (NCA) has warned that half of the terror plots prevented in the UK over the last two years involved extremists attempting to purchase guns from criminal gangs. The news comes as a major campaign is being launched to try and clamp down on the supply of illegal firearms and as the UK terror level is severe. Of the estimated 6,000 organised criminal groups in the UK, 750 have access to guns, or are trying to access them. While counter-terror officers have maintained that Britain has an added advantage in controlling the flow of guns because it is surrounded by water, a recent increase in the number of guns seized from criminals is making them anxious. Lynne Owens, chief of the NCA, warned: “Criminal networks, who think nothing about who they sell firearms to, present a significant route by which extremist groups will try to access the sort of weapons used in recent attacks in Europe." Mark Rowley, Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner and national policing lead for counter-terrorism, said: "With terrorism you've got some vulnerable, lost people who just get hooked by an ideology. "You've got some very bright, determined, clear-thinking people who buy into and fully commit and are drivers of Daesh (Islamic State) propaganda and terrorism. "And then you do get gang members, criminals, people who are already angry, difficult people causing problems in communities who perhaps get given a more clear purpose for their violence by a terrorist ideology, whether they pick that up on the streets or in prison. "Those gang criminality links are an issue that concerns us and we have seen evidence of it potentially linking firearms into terrorism."