A gun-dealer convicted of illegally supplying pistols and ammunition to criminals has left a legacy of potentially lethal weapons on Britain’s streets.
Detectives said the seizure of 50,000 rounds of ammunition and guns imported or brought back into service by Paul Edmunds was a ‘major victory’ on gun crime, which had undoubtedly saved lives.
But while 17 pistols criminally-linked to Edmunds have been taken out of circulation, police said of the 280 guns imported between 2009 and 2015, the whereabouts of 207 remain a mystery.
Meanwhile, officers have also recovered about 1,000 of his hand-crafted rounds from crime scenes, but shells are ‘still coming in’ more than two years after Edmunds’ arrest.
The tendrils of the licensed firearms dealer’s cottage-based manufacturing operation spread the length and breadth of the country, including Nottingham, Birmingham, London, Manchester and Sheffield.
At least nine police forces came across weapons and ammunition linked through forensic testing to the 66-year-old and his garage workshop.
He side-stepped UK laws on importing old guns for which ammunition was commercially available, by falsely declaring to the authorities in customs paperwork they were obsolete ‘antiques’.
The guns, whose importation is subject to complex rules, were not checked in any detail at UK customs.
Trial judge Richard Bond described how he had been ‘aghast to hear evidence of one dealer being waved-through on occasion by customs at Heathrow’.
Self-confessed ‘ammunition freak’ Edmunds made 37 trips to the United States, checking the guns into airlines’ holds as ‘antiques and curiosities’.
Many of the guns were antique revolvers but he also imported Colt pistols from the 1950s following trips to Chicago, Las Vegas and Denver.
Six French-made St Etienne revolvers seized at crime scenes were also linked to Edmunds.
The gun-buff effectively exploited his legal dealer status and ‘encyclopaedic’ knowledge of weapons for years, falsifying records and avoiding detailed border checks.
Detectives pointed out one weapon, imported by Edmunds from the United States and found at a crime scene, was ’25 days from Tulsa’ to Handsworth, Birmingham.
Another weapon imported on November 14, 2013, was used five weeks later in the Boxing Day murder-shooting at the Avalon nightclub in London.
Four of Edmunds’ bullets were recovered from the victim’s body.
Firearms certificate holder Edmunds, from Bristol Road, Hardwicke, Gloucestershire, machine-tooled cartridges in out-of-date calibres bringing guns which were out of use back into circulation.
All those guns could be classed as antiques, because they were more than 100 years old and had ammunition no longer commercially available.
Edmunds sold the weapons and cartridges to middleman and fellow gun-nut Mohinder Surdhar, who fenced them on to a crime gang armourer, Sundish Nazran.
But ballistics experts found the same microscopic markings on each of the slugs, confirming there was a single ammunition-maker.
A touch of good old-fashioned detective work followed, when an officer followed an invoice paper-trail leading to Edmunds.
An officer then spotted of bag full of the tell-tale red-dyed rounds – matching the colour on seized bullets – under Edmunds’ exhibition table at a Birmingham gun show.
Regarding a possible motive, Detective Constable Phil Rodgers, of West Midlands Police, said: ‘We think there was a bit of arrogance but he was also swamped with debt – he’d got £70,000 worth.
‘His fascination with firearms and his obsession could not support his lifestyle.’