Welcome to gun city 2002

Chris, a stocky but affable thirty-something South Londoner recently retired from a career in armed robbery, comes bounding back from the bar with a cheeky grin on his face. 'It'll be about 20 minutes,' he says. 'Less time than it takes to deliver a pizza and plenty of time for another drink. Same again?'

We are sitting behind a busy pool table in the dingy annexe of a pub on the outskirts of Catford which, according to Chris, is one of the easiest places in the capital to buy an illegal gun.

After spending a few minutes obtaining the phone number of a local underworld armourer from one of the pub's regulars and placing an order, the only thing left to do is wait.

Few will be surprised that the number of illegal guns used on the streets of London is currently at an all-time high, with at least two shootings and four armed robberies every day since the start of the year. In the past two months there has been a vicious spate of gun crime: the shoot-out at Nando's restaurant in Shepherd's Bush which left a teenager dead and a waitress wounded; the 19-year-old from Walthamstow who was shot in the head during the robbery of her mobile phone; the man discovered in the front seat of a bullet-riddled car outside Battersea police station last month... and so it goes on.

Firearm incidents involving 'Yardie-style' gangsters in London rose by 133 per cent in January compared with the same month in 2000. Six hundred guns are recovered by the Metropolitan Police every year, and those are merely the ones that reach the surface. Even in the light of such grim statistics, I am still stunned at how easy getting hold of a lethal weapon appears to be. After the Nando's gun-battle, one witness, 18-year-old Andrew Reynolds, commented, 'You can pick up guns like a bag of chips.' Tonight, in Catford, you can see exactly what Reynolds means. The only difference is you don't have to queue for quite as long.

Chris, who has agreed to be my guide to this area of the underworld, describes the terrifying efficiency of an average gun purchase in South London. 'I'm known in here so there's no problem with people trusting me. That's why it's going to be so quick. If you came here on your own as a new face, you would be under suspicion, but that just means it would take a bit more time and a few more calls. But at the end of the day, there are people out there who would much rather have the money than the gun, so they're always willing to sell. To get in touch, all you have to do is get friendly with the barmaid or a bouncer and, sooner or later, you'll been put in touch with someone,' he says cheerfully, as if he's talking about the possibility of buying a secondhand Volkswagen.

For Chris, it's all a bit of a laugh, part of a normal, sociable evening down his local. In between telling me about how to make the ideal gun purchase, he continues to chat up an indifferent-looking brunette in the corner. 'She's a lapdancer,' he grins. 'Nice-looking, isn't she?'

Although he officially retired a few months after his last spell of imprisonment, Chris is still fully tuned into London's gun culture. 'Pricewise, you're looking at around £250 for a small, newish .22 revolver. You can get .32 automatics for a lot less, around £100, but it's almost impossible to get ammunition for them so they're just for show. The older generation like .38 revolvers, good old-fashioned guns. The younger boys all want 9mm automatics and Uzi sub-machine guns but they tend to end up with .22 pistols because there are so many of them around. They're still deadly, but they tend to be more of a fashion accessory than anything else. There are also some .22 automatics but because they're usually converted from blank- firing guns, they tend to jam after each shot. You're better off with a revolver.'

At this level, buying a gun is akin to making a fashion purchase - a bit like shopping for a pair of trainers or a mobile phone. Facile as it may seem, the most desirable models are those used by film and television heroes. When the Lethal Weapon films first came out, people wanted 9mm Berettas, because that was the gun Mel Gibson used. When Dirty Harry was top of the box office, they wanted the .44 Magnum - even though the gun packed such a powerful recoil it was almost impossible to hit anything. Black gangster films such as Boyz N The Hood and Colors popularised the Uzi sub-machine gun and its smaller, deadlier cousin, the Mach 10. More recently, endless tales of the gung-ho exploits of the SAS and other specialist military units have pushed the Glock 17 to the top of the wish list.

But availability is a far more powerful factor than fashion. Of those 600 guns seized in London each year the vast majority are deactivated (when the firing pin is removed and the barrel blocked to make the weapon inoperable). They are generally sold to collectors, and subsequently restored to full working order. Only criminals with the best contacts and deepest pockets can get access to more sophisticated weapons, most of which are smuggled into the country from abroad.

'The last gun I had was a Glock,' says Chris. 'It was brand new and cost me £900. Beautiful gun. I also had a .22 Derringer, which was just for my personal protection. It was easy to hide and I had dum dum bullets made for it [special 'softened' bullets that spread out in the body causing maximum damage on impact, they are banned under the Geneva Convention]. A couple of years ago I had a Mach 10 which cost me £1,200, but I didn't have it for long before I got rid of it. The trouble was that it looked like a box with a bit of pipe sticking out of the end. You can't use it to hold up a bank because people don't know what it's supposed to be. They expect a pistol or a sawn-off. The only thing Uzis and Mach 10s are good for is shooting at people.'

It's just over half an hour before Matt, the gun dealer, arrives. He nods at Chris and the three of us make our way to the gents' toilets, squeezing into the cubicle furthest from the door. Anyone looking on would probably think we were buying drugs not guns, but this is how the majority of weapons are bought and sold - in the dark corners and bathrooms of dodgy London pubs. With Chris acting as lookout, Matt swiftly pulls a plastic bag from the folds of his jacket, delves inside and shoves a black lump of metal into my palm. The first thing that strikes me about the gun is that it's much heavier than it looks, so heavy, in fact, that it's almost a struggle to hold it with one hand. It is covered in a thin layer of smelly oil which stains my hands as I examine it, fascinated.

'It's a Browning Hi Power 9mm,' says Matt. 'Argentinian, someone's souvenir from the Falklands, but it's in good nick. Been well looked after. The clip's half full, but I can get you more ammo if you need it.'

The 9mm semi-automatic is one of the most deadly guns on the streets of London. The majority of shooting incidents investigated by Operation Trident, the Met's anti-black-on-black crime initiative, involve 9mm handguns. They were used at Nando's; and the dramatic CCTV footage of the murder of off-licence owner Raj Pandya in Southwest London last November shows a killer calmly firing two shots from a 9mm handgun.

As these thoughts are running through my head, I'm still turning the gun in my hand, too dumbstruck to speak. Then I start to panic; I'm a journalist investigating a story. The last thing I want to do is actually buy the gun. But I realise that I'm getting my fingerprints all over it - and, besides, Matt seems to think the sale is a foregone conclusion.

I hand the weapon back and try to think of a way to avoid upsetting him, especially as he now has a loaded gun. Thankfully, Chris is there to smooth things over.

'What's the history?'

'It's been fired,' says Matt, scratching his nose. 'Dunno if anyone got hurt.'

'I need something clean, sorry, mate, have to pass on this one. Let me buy you a drink for your trouble.'

With so few brand-new guns in circulation, a 'clean' weapon usually means a newly reactivated one. A recent Home Office study found that at least 30 per cent of guns used in London shootings had been reactivated. With certain models, particularly machine guns, the process is relatively simple and needs only a few tools. More worryingly still, last month the National Criminal Intelligence Service also warned that Brocock ME38 Magnum air pistols can be converted to fire .22 ammunition with relative ease. The guns, which can be bought brand new, without any kind of licence, for £120, have been linked to a handful of murders including that of taxi driver Mohammed Basharat, 33, who was shot dead with a converted Brocock in Bradford last October. Another was used in the attempted murder of two police officers in South London last year. Next month, Asher D, a member of the So Solid Crew garage outfit, will appear in court in South London accused of illegally possessing a Brocock with intent to cause fear, after an alleged incident involving a traffic warden. The problem has alarmed the Association of Chief Police Officers, which has called for a change in the law to ban Brococks so that they can no longer be illegally converted.

During the mid-Nineties, it was widely reported that dozens of petty criminals set themselves up as underworld armourers, each holding a selection of guns and hiring them out to anyone who needed them. It meant that villains didn't have to risk having a gun on them all the time but could get access to one within minutes. The idea was that you paid a certain fee to hire the gun but, if you fired it, you lost your deposit and had to dispose of the weapon yourself.

Chris is sceptical as to whether this still happens, but nevertheless takes me to a basement flat in a terraced house in Lewisham where a man who is known to 'keep' guns for various villains lives.

'If I needed a gun in a hurry, this is where I would come,' he explains. 'This guy holds them for me and a few others.'

Inside, I am introduced to Dave and I look on as he pulls out the bottom drawer of a chest in the pastel-coloured living room. He produces three handguns. There's a two-shot .22 Derringer, a 9mm semi-automatic, which looks like the gun Matt had, and a smaller, sleeker gun which Dave says is a Buck Browning.

The conversation quickly turns to the question of hiring out weapons. 'These days I only hire out the replicas and the blank-firing guns,' says Dave, 'and mostly to teenagers who can't afford the real thing. They want them either to scare people or to show off in a club, saluting the MC or something. There's no point in hiring real guns. There are too many shootings and you never know what the gun's been used for. If the police come in here, I'm in enough trouble without being put in the frame for a couple of murders I know nothing about.'

Today, illegal handguns have become a must-have accessory for even relatively low-level drug dealers and teenagers wishing to enhance their street credibility. With firearms used simply to threaten in 90 per cent of gun-related offences, replicas are considered to be as effective as the real thing, and their use is becoming widespread. Several schools in some of London's roughest boroughs have even introduced regulations for pupils carrying imitation firearms. They face instant expulsion for brandishing them inside the classroom and, if they are caught on the premises with them, will be suspended. 'It's mainly the 13- and 14-year-olds who carry them,' says one teacher at an East London school. 'Once they get older than that, they either think guns are stupid. Or they want real ones.'

The police know only too well that every new shooting incident increases demand - petty criminals and low-level drug dealers become convinced they need guns because it seems that everyone else has them. It's simple really: no one wants to risk being ripped off in the middle of a drug deal so they take a gun along, which means the person they are buying from feels compelled to have a gun themselves.

Philip Etienne - a former undercover policeman who has bought dozens of guns during his career with the Met, as detailed in his book, The Infiltrators - believes the problem is growing rapidly because criminals increasingly feel pressurised into carrying firearms.

'I never felt completely safe buying guns, but what surprised me was that no one ever tried to rip me off. There are so many guns in circulation that, to the people selling them, they are just another commodity, just a way of making money. That's the business they're in and it wouldn't occur to them to do anything else. When I was in the police force, we concentrated on taking them out of circulation rather than making arrests. If we heard someone had guns for sale we would just go and buy as many of them as we could. But today there are so many out there, I don't think we could keep up.' Unfortunately, Etienne looks to be right.